This project was a promotional video produced some time ago to illustrate a guitar luthier’s build of his 12/15 model. It was shot in Jacksonville, Florida after receiving the instrument from Steve’s Utah workshop which I visited while working on the west coast that year. It was also a first test of a new pair of Schoep CMC 641 mics.

Steve Fischer is one of those luthiers who works steadily and quietly in the background, handmaking beautiful acoustic guitars in his remote Utah workshop. This model, his 12/15, is one of those guitars that you pick up and immediately fall in love with. It is a unique build. It is a twelve fret to the body style but, unusually for such a guitar, it still sports a full size 15” lower bout body - which helps tp give its sound body and volume.

It was his first build of this design and comprises some much loved Brazilian Rosewood for its back and sides. It has a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard, bridge, edge bindings and headstock facing. The rosette inlays and purfling are made of spalted maple. The soundboard is made from book matched master grade German spruce.

If that isn’t enough uniqueness for one instrument, the sound this guitar produces is really beautiful; solid rounded bass with even, crystalline trebles. The guitar is very dynamic and has a wonderful presence in the mid-range with a very long sustain. In the example piece, listen to the sustain of the bass notes under the trebles as they play the melody. This is all due to the extraordinary tonewoods, the light build and the excellent craftsmanship.

The piece in this example recording was composed to showcase the guitar’s great qualities. It’s called Gabriela’s Fancy, written and played here by Michael Letchford. The recording was made with a Sony PMW-200 video camera, using two Schoep CMC 641 supercardioid microphones recording directly into the camera.