Pius Truffer is the owner of the world-renowned Truffer Natural Stone Quarry in Vals, Switzerland, and he asked us whether we could build a guitar using «his» stone. Initially, the conversation was about an electric guitar, but after talking with Pius, it became clear that it had to be an acoustic, as he wanted to hear the sound of the stone, not that of the electronics. It goes without saying that this project was a major challenge – it was something that had never been done before – but that’s where the fun begins!
Using stone for the entire instrument would have been too heavy, both in terms of the actual weight and the sound of the guitar. Accordingly, we decided to combine a top made out of Vals Quartzite with a back and sides made out of ziricote wood. The stone top started out as a boulder weighing several tons, and many hours of cutting and sanding brought it to a final thickness of just 1 millimeter!
Stone is of course extremely strong in terms of resisting great pressure, but it’s not good at withstanding the torque that’s applied to the soundboard of a traditional flattop. As a result, we had to come up with a completely new way of guitar construction. Combining various building styles, we ended up not only the first acoustic guitar with a stone top, but also our first flattop guitar that uses an archtop’s string path. In order to achieve the necessary string angle for exerting enough pressure on the guitar’s floating bridge, we fed the strings through small holes in the top, then attached the strings to a removable panel in the end-block.
Completing this project took great efforts, but the results are very surprising, and we’re very proud of it.
A special word of thanks goes to Marco Mainetti, who made the top, and without whom it would have been impossible to realize the original vision.
