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Schwartz Guitars
Toronto-area luthier Sheldon Schwartz specializes in fingerstyle flattops. A scientific approach to construction, carbon fiber-reinforced braces, and long scales results in guitars with a unique voice and distinctive appearance.

By Simone Solondz


Photo Credit: Jim Craigmyle
“I am not an inlay artist,” insists Canadian luthier Sheldon Schwartz. “I’m a guitar maker.” Schwartz unwittingly earned a reputation for inlay in the early ’90s when he began his professional lutherie career by showing elaborately decorated guitars at California’s Healdsburg Guitar Festival. In contrast to this flashy beginning, most of the models he currently builds are simply appointed, designed as much for a player’s ears as they are for his or her eyes. All of Schwartz’ models are built in the same mold (so they’re all the same shape and size), making it fairly easy to switch from one model to another when he’s at work in his shop.

Schwartz’ first original design was his Advanced Auditorium model, which he developed specifically for fingerstyle players. His goal was to fatten up the sound of the trebles and increase the guitar’s overall volume. “When I was buffing a guitar one day on the buffing wheel, I could hear that each portion of the back had its own resonance, and the back wasn’t working as a whole,” Schwartz recalls. He solved this problem by using an X-braced (rather than ladder-braced) back. “The whole guitar worked better,” he says. “It got louder, and the trebles came out nicely.”

His next innovation was inspired by a Greg Smallman classical guitar he heard played by a guitarist in Canada. “He played the Smallman unamplified, and it was just outstanding,” says Schwartz. “It filled the church with sound, and you could hear every single note.” He’d read that Smallman used lattice-braced tops, and he began to experiment on his own, using just a bit of graphite to provide reinforcement without compromising the flexibility necessary for good response. “I experimented and came up with the double-walled sides, which are very strong and very light,” he adds. “I think that the stiff sides prevent the action from changing from string to string, so it doesn’t change from tuning to tuning.”

Schwartz approaches his work scientifically. He carefully measures and photographs his works in progress, notes the flex of each top, and evaluates the resonances of his guitars’ bodies in three different places to determine which note each is tuned to. By the time he began experimenting with graphite-reinforced lattice-braced tops, he’d learned precisely how much flexibility was needed for a top that would sound great and hold up over time. “By knowing the deflection of my regular tops, I could make a lattice-braced top and get it in the range that works,” he explains.

He then went on to design a guitar specifically for those who favor open tunings: the Pinnacle Fingerstyle, which features a 26-inch scale that facilitates low alternate tunings without the strings getting too floppy due to lack of tension. The Pinnacle 7 features a low seventh string for jazz players and uses slightly heavier bracing to compensate for the additional tension.

Schwartz’ most visually outlandish creation is the Oracle Fingerstyle, which also features a 26-inch scale, as well as offset elliptical soundholes, a 24-fret fingerboard, and a beveled cutaway that provides access to the highest frets. The offset soundholes allow the center of the top to be braced more lightly so that it’s more responsive in open tunings. The Oracle is popular among players who use two-handed tapping in their playing (Schwartz refers to them as “the heavy-wood crowd”), and he says that they describe its tone as “loud and cello-like.” A shorter-scale model, the Oracle 25.5, will be available soon.

Schwartz works alone in his recently-built dream shop north of Toronto, Canada, and puts out about ten guitars per year. He offers a wide variety of tonewood options and finishes his instruments with nitrocellulose lacquer. His waiting list is currently three-and-a-half-years long, and his guitars start at $3,900.

Schwartz Guitars
(905) 729-0024
www.schwartzguitars.com







This article also appears in Acoustic Guitar, Issue #162



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