Scharpach Guitars - They have some pretty things

[AlsoRan]

I never heard of this luthier, but after a quick look, I can see he has some nice models.

Scharpach Guitars - Jazz Guitar Today

[iim7V7IM7]

FYI....

Wall of Shame #3

Customers + Contact - best EuroSpruce: MoonSpruce + other Tonewoods

[AlsoRan]

Wow! So the lesson learned here is to not get taken in by fancy marketing only. Do your research.

I hope the company is doing a better job of doing right by their stakeholders, since it is a few years later from that controversy.

Thanks.

[Ol' Fret]

Many years ago Theo Scharpach bought old stock archtop guitar plates (spruce and maple, accurately prerouted) from Artur Lang's widow.
Lang strictly used longitudinal bracing for his archtops, so the plate thickness and graduation had been tweaked for that bracing - and Lang was a hot shot of optimizing. While it should often be doable to "regraduate" plates designated for X-bracing into (thinner) plates for longitudinal bracing, doing the other way round would be questionable, at least from the POV of a Lang admirer. On his website Scharpach himself had reported to use X-bracing.


Theo Scharpach and Menno Bos were (allegedly equal) business partners since 2001 or so.
Quote from an article in the German guitar magazine "grand gtrs" (https://www.grandguitars.de/index.ph...089c3ebc07925a ): Curiously, the two have found asymbiotic form of cooperation, in which both have to put their ego far back - probably a rarity among guitar makers. While Theo Scharpach acts as an idea generator and designer in questions of design and sound, Menno Bos takes care of all woodwork. Staining and painting, however, is again Scharpach's profession.

Strong rumours say that Scharpach and Bos split up some time ago. That leaves one with the question of who's actually doing the woodwork on Scharpach guitars? You might want to know that, especially if spending $20k or 30k for an archtop guitar, don't you?

[Spook410]

Kind of fascinating considering how expensive these guitars are.

[AlsoRan]

Business can get really dirty, as you folks already know. Sometimes, a person can leverage themself into a corner and be unable to make payments - then what do you do? I guess the next step depends on a business regard for their fellow man/woman. Many just won't come clean and avoid confrontation.