Johann Georg Staufer, 1830

It is not often that we get to offer a guitar nearly two hundred years old that was built by the hand of one of the most important luthiers in the entire history of the instrument. This is a genuine Johann Georg Staufer, built around 1830, and it is his celebrated Luigi Legnani model, the design that carried the sound of Vienna's golden age of the guitar.

These were the instruments of the great virtuosos of the romantic era. Niccolò Paganini, the legendary violin virtuoso and composer, was also a devoted guitarist, and he performed in duo, on violin and guitar, with Luigi Legnani, a consummate guitarist and composer in his own right whose many guitar works and caprices are still performed today. It is Legnani who gives this model its name. Mauro Giuliani, the towering figure of the Viennese guitar, and Johann Kaspar Mertz, who wrote some of the most important works in the entire classical guitar repertoire, also played Staufer guitars. To hold this instrument is to hold a direct link to the players and the music that defined the guitar in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Staufer was the most important Viennese luthier of his era, and his workshop sits at a remarkable crossroads in guitar history. It was here that a fifteen year old apprentice named Christian Frederick Martin learned his craft before emigrating to America and founding Martin Guitars. The line runs directly from the salons of Vienna, through the hands of Paganini and Legnani, to what would become the largest guitar company in the world.

This particular guitar has survived beautifully. The spruce top has aged to a deep, even color darker than almost any cedar top, and the flamed maple back and sides remain striking. It is not only an exceptional music making instrument but a genuine work of art, and it would be an invaluable addition to any serious collection of early guitars.

Specifications

Year: c. 1830

Construction: Traditional (minimally braced)

Action: Approximately 3.5 mm at both the 6th and 1st strings

Tuners: Wooden friction tuning pegs

Condition: Excellent for age, with a repaired crack on the lower bout and a couple of small repaired cracks

Sound & Playability

Play a single chord and you are transported in time. The sound is charming, clear, and immediate. What surprised us most when we first picked it up is the bite and power in the bass. Lean into the strings and you feel a real punch and authority that hints at the very inspiration for the steel string Martin guitars that would follow. It is a genuine shock to feel that from a two hundred year old instrument.

The trebles have a unique singing quality. Each note blooms and blossoms into its own, and the melodies carry a hauntingly beautiful voice. The guitar positively invites open strings, which ring with a relaxed, lovely charm that points to exactly why so much of the music of the period is written around them. High up the neck, around ninth position, it projects with real strength.

The neck is thin and narrow, which makes playing wonderfully comfortable, and the 615 mm scale with a 44 mm nut feels intimate and easy under the hand. The action is set beautifully for an instrument of this style, roughly three and a half millimeters on both the sixth and first strings. On this style of guitar a slightly higher action actually feels loose and easy, and it plays cleanly without buzzing even when you dig into the bass. Guitarist Drew Henderson recorded Paganini's Romanza on this very instrument, a wonderful demonstration of how expressive and vocal it can be.

Construction & Design

Like other Viennese guitars of the period, this Staufer has the distinctive figure eight body shape, echoed in the outline of the headstock. It is built with bridge pins and a metal saddle, holding gut or nylon strings in the manner of the time. Rather than the scroll headstock with metal machine heads seen on some Staufer instruments, this example carries a more understated headstock with wooden friction tuning pegs. These take a little getting used to at first, but they hold tune well once you have the feel for them.

Underneath, the top is remarkably minimally braced. There are just two braces running against the grain above the sound hole and a single brace below it, roughly halfway between the sound hole and the bridge, with no other bracing beyond the reinforcement from an old crack repair. This spare, responsive construction is a large part of what gives the guitar its open, immediate voice.

About the Luthier

Johann Georg Staufer (1778 to 1853) stands alongside Pierre René Lacôte of Paris and Louis Panormo of London as one of the greatest luthiers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Born in Vienna and trained under the luthier Franz Geissenhof, he began by building in the Italian style of masters such as Fabricatore and Vinaccia before developing the signature Viennese guitar that would define a whole school of makers after him, including his son Anton.

His influence went far beyond a single model. Staufer built violins, violas, and cellos, invented the arpeggione immortalized by Schubert, and pioneered the terz guitar and early contra guitars. In 1825 he introduced the scroll headstock and in line machine heads that still bear his name, a design so enduring that its silhouette would later inspire the headstock of the Fender Stratocaster. His experiments in design and innovation influenced a generation of instrument builders, and though he died impoverished, his ideas shaped the guitar as we know it.

Historical Context

Vienna in the first decades of the nineteenth century was the world capital of music and, in many ways, the city of the guitar. Staufer's instruments were at the center of that world, played in concert by the finest virtuosos of the day. Mauro Giuliani, Luigi Legnani, and Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806 to 1856) all championed these guitars, and Legnani, the guitarist who partnered Niccolò Paganini in duo, gave his name to the model you see here.

The instrument's reach extended even further. Christian Frederick Martin was born in 1796 in Markneukirchen, Germany, a center of instrument making. At fifteen he came to Vienna to apprentice with Staufer, then the most celebrated guitar maker of the day, and remained there until at least 1827. After a dispute with the local guild of luthiers over the rights of cabinet makers to build guitars, Martin emigrated to the United States, where he carried Staufer's mechanisms with him and founded Martin Guitars. The Staufer scroll headstock lived on in Martin's earliest American instruments, a direct thread from this Vienna workshop to the modern guitar.

For an instrument approaching two hundred years old, this Staufer is in remarkable condition. The spruce top is beautifully and evenly aged and, aside from a repaired crack on the lower bout that was cleated long ago and a couple of small repaired cracks, it has been exceptionally well preserved. There are a few minor marks here and there, as you would expect, but nothing that detracts. The flamed maple back shows lovely, honest evidence of two centuries of play through the center while remaining structurally perfect. This is a guitar that has stood the test of time and plays extremely well today.