LubosNaprstek.com

Features:

Back and Sides: Indian Rosewood
Top: Adirondack Spruce
Bridge: Indian Rosewood
Neck: Cedar
Scale: 650 mm
Fingerboard: Ebony
Machine Heads: Gotoh
Finish: French Polish
Width at nut: 52 mm

This Guitar has Barbera Transducer System

Thank you for your feedback on my Guitar building art and all the support from my family which has a great deal on increasing popularity of my Classical Guitars.
I am building my Arch top Guitars and Parlor Steel String Guitars on limited basis.
Making steel string guitars and carving tops, backs for the Arch top instruments, I developed a good skills with consistency to build responsive Classical Guitars for the most discriminating players.

All my Classical Guitars are build in a traditional way with Spanish heel, all high grade wood to master grade wood, Spruce or Cedar for the soundboard.
The finish is your choice of French Polish or Lacquer. If you wish to have Lacquered backs sides, neck and French Polish Top, it’s also an option.

The current base price of my Classical Guitars is $ 6500

For my Classical Guitars I use only the best quality of wood. It is definitely serious guitars with plenty of volume, sustain and quick projection. They are very light, thin and responsive. The soundboard thickness is from 1.7 to 2.2 mm depending on the stiffness and resonations of the Spruce or Cedar wood.
Whether you play simple harmonics or heavy trebles/basses in any register you will get good support from the instrument in any size Concert Hall. More Sustain or Volume can be achieved during construction by proper thinning of the top, back and controlling the amount of energy going to the neck. If you like you’re your guitar to be loud or bright with fast projection, more sustain or more volume it can be done.
I believe, that the only prove of my descriptions is playing my guitars to feel the effort and time I put in to my guitar building art.

Standard features of my Classical Guitars:

Back and Sides: Indian Rosewood or Maple
Neck 52mm at nut: Cedar or Mahogany with Scarf Joint Headstock
Fingerboard: Ebony 640 mm or 650 mm
Tuners: Premium Schaller or Gotoh
Top: Cedar or Spruce
Binding: Indian Rosewood or Maple, 4 Ply
Case: TKL or Guardian
Life Time Limited Warranty

Upgrades for exotic wood: Brazilian Rosewood, African Blackwood, Macassar Ebony, Birds Eye Maple, Bubinga, Ziricote, Cocobolo , Quilted Mahogany or other highly flamed wood please inquire for pricing.

Bam High Tech: Price Inquire
Calton Custom Case: Price Inquire
Sloane or Alessi Tuners: Price Inquire
Adirondack Red Spruce or Lutz Spruce: Price Inquire

- For Pricing on custom order, please call Lubos Naprstek at 917 204 4189
- All custom orders require 20 % deposit.
- Instruments are for 3 days approval and must be paid in full prior to shipping.
- If not satisfied, full refund will be returned less credit card fees and shipping cost.

Warranty

All Lubos Naprstek instruments are covered by limited warranty to the original purchaser for life against defective materials or workmanship.
Lubos Naprstek, upon notice of any defect, will repair or replace, at his option, any defective part of material. Purchaser shall assume and pay the cost of all shipping or postage charges of the repaired guitar.
Damage incurred by misuse, accidents normal wear or natural cracking of wood of finishes due to changes in temperature and humidity is not covered under this warranty.

Anyone who would like to addition my Classical Guitars is welcome to visit my workshop. Which is located in Hamburg, New Jersey.
For appointment please call Lubos Naprstek at 917 204 4189 or contact me via email.

Lnaprs@gmail.com

Prices are subject to change without prior notice.
No Third Party Ordering please!

Cancellation Policy:
If you wish to cancel your custom order, I will refund your deposit when instrument is sold.
Any custom features such as: personal inlays, unconventional neck shape, neck width and string length.
I will collect 40% deposit which is nonrefundable.

Before you look at my Classical guitar construction I will share a little story with you.

About 7 years ago I was very busy building guitars and took way too many repairs, more than I could handle. My wife came to my workshop and reminded me that we will have visitors coming soon and we have to paint our living room before they come. She is a great supporter to my career so I said no problem.

I called professional painter to do this job, so I could go on building and repairing for my customers. The painter came to my house and started doing his job while I was doing mine. In one hour my wife calls me check out the color of the paint. The color did not matter to me as much as the skill of the painter. He worked with amazing speed and efficiency. I watched his technique and asked him few questions regarding his skills. He shared with me a few tricks and my next painting adventure was very easy for me.
The job was neat, no mess and just like a pro.

Guitar building is more challenging and I always enjoyed challenges in my life so don’t call me to paint your house please.

I build my first Classical guitar about 29 years ago when I was 17 years old.
I build over 140 musical instruments and I consider myself self-taught luthier who learned from observing, researching and taking good advices from the luthiers.

The very first Classical guitar had incredible projection and I was very proud of myself. Someone played it and asked me if I can make him one also. That was my first custom order and I was actually getting paid for what I enjoy to do.

The second Guitar was nothing but disaster. Very low volume no projection and it almost sounded like there were pillows stuffed inside the box. The instrument was also very heavy. My friend who is experienced Guitar Builder evaluated this construction of my second guitar and pointed out all the mistakes I made. Soundboard was too thick, the back bracing was too fat, and the neck felt like a baseball bat. The first Classical Guitar sounded great, because with out knowledge about guitar construction I was very close to the right thickness for that particular soundboard and back board. It’s that simple.

To the present time I’ve build guitars from different variety of woods. Whether it’s Mahogany for the backs, Ebony, Maple or Rosewood each set is graduated to the thickness for maximum resonation. Same principles will apply for the Spruce or Cedar Tops.

Let me demonstrate this custom order that has unusual neck dimensions
The neck is 60mm at nut and string spacing at bridge is 65mm.

Features:

Back and Sides: Aged Cocobolo Rosewood
Top: Master Grade Western Red Cedar
Radial Bracing
Binding: Blood Wood, 7 ply. Bounded heel
Neck: Spanish Cedar ( V-joint neck)
Fingerboard: West African Ebony
Bridge: 12 hole Brazilian Rosewood with Mother of Pearl
Gold ” Evo” fret wire
60mm nut width tapered to 70 mm at 12th fret
50mm string spacing at 1st fret – 65mm string spacing at saddle
650mm scale length
Alessi Ivory Tuners with Kidney Buttons
Side dots at 5th and 7th fret ( MOP 1.5 mm)
Finish: French Polish
TKL Case

The choice of wood for this guitar is Cocobolo Rosewood. Note the dark grain streaks of the book matched half’s. This is a sign of an aged Cocobolo Rosewood.
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First, I plain the back, than I used the scraper to make it perfectly flat. I don’t use any thickness sanders, or any other heavy duty power tools to build my guitars. The only power tools I’m using is band saw, drill press and router to rout binding channels.
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The back is glued.

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The back thickness for this particular set is 2.1mm at the center and 1.8mm on the sides. Braces are glued in my 20’ radius concave dish, using Go bar clamping method. Customer ordered bright and responsive guitar with good amount of volume and sustaine. If the customer wanted guitar with dark and deep sound, overwhelming volume, the thickness will be slightly different.

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The top is Western Red Cedar with radial bracing and open harmonic bar. The thickness of the soundboard is 1.7mm and 1.8mm. Selected perfectly quartet Spruce is used for my soundboards. Now I am half way to have the customers’ desired projection of this Classical Concert Guitar.

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V-jointed Headstock is a tedious and time consuming work. I will make four neck this time and it will take me the whole day of work. The first neck is usually 3 hours of labor to achieve perfect joint. Once I get the rhythm going, the third and fourth necks are done in about one and half hours of labor. My preferred wood for necks is Cedar.

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This is my simple way of gluing V-jointed headstock. The headstock is just about in the right thickness so I can see if I really have nice and tight V on the wood. The neck is slowly tighten with my clamp and the same time propped up with the scrap wood to keep my headstock from opening it up. Maybe there is a better way to do this, but this works for me.
In three hours I will remove the clamp to allow the leftover of the glue moister cure. Whatever I glue on a guitar never stays clamped over night. The longest clamping time is gluing the bridge which is twelve hours.

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Major parts of this guitar are ready for assembly including the neck which has also Spanish heal block glued on, the Cocobolo head plate is finished and the neck is reinforced with 3mm graphite.
Solid Cedar lining will be used to support the back and the sides of the guitar.
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Here is a Traditional Spanish heel and a side of the guitar inserted for dry fit. Note; the wedge sticking out and the extra groove is to hold the sides securely in place while the wedge is carefully tapped in for tide glue joint.
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Here I am gluing the neck to the braced soundboard. The ebony is in perfect taper and it’s just a caul to glue the top.
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Another view of this important step is shoving the Spanish heel of the neck and soundboard.
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Now I am gluing the sides on my solera and the tenteleones to support the soundboard.
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Solid lining is glued to support the back of the instrument.

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This Classical Concert Guitar will have bounded heel. To do this elaborate feature with multiple binding is starts right here before I glue the back to the rims.

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Top and back is glued.

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The Guitar is ready for binding.

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Binding channel has been cleaned and checked several times.

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The top of the guitar was sealed with couple of coats of shellac for protecting the soundboard before I routed the binding channel. This step will safe me a lot of trouble cleaning the glue after binding installation.
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Leveling fingerboard before I do the fret job.

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The guitar has now multiple binding installed, fingerboard glued, it’s time for fret job. For this guitar I used Gold Evo wire.

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Smoothing the fret ends and filling the gaps with black super glue.

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