- Maestro guitars
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Maestro is a brand of guitars from Singapore, who produces Classical guitars, Steel-string acoustic guitars and Ukuleles. Maestro Guitars are some of the guitar companies from Singapore. The company own their own production facilities in China.
Contents
History
Maestro Guitars was founded in 2004 by Mr Ho Zen Yong (Hozen). Hozen, the son of a piano distributor, immersed himself into the local music industry at 12 years of age. He helped out at his father’s piano shop, Renner Piano, off Selegie Road. Passion and influences from fellow guitarists eventually persuaded him to leave Renner Piano and start up Maestro Guitars.
After acquiring help from his father with a workshop space in Renner Piano’s warehouse, Hozen journeyed to India where he spent three weeks in Goa with British luthier Chris Horton on an apprenticeship. Contacts with other luthiers were also made to try gain knowledge and advices on guitar-making. These included Kenny Hill (Hill Guitars) and Hideo Kamimoto. Maestro opened its first retail store in September 2004, at the Excelsior Shopping Center selling China-made acoustics.
Within a span of 5 years, Maestro Guitar now has 4 retail stores in Singapore. Maestro also opened a retail store in Bangkok in 2009, their first retail outlet outside of Singapore. Its retail shop at the Esplanade closed down in 2009. The newest retail shop is currently at *SCAPE, located off Somerset in Singapore’s busy Orchard Road shopping belt. In 2010, in a bid to try better their qualities of guitars, Maestro established their own in-house production factory in China. This factory supplies China-made guitars which are shipped to Singapore for installation of hardware, fret-leveling and setup.
Construction
Maestro promotes themselves with a ‘high performance to price ratio’ policy and approach when building their guitars. They are known to use tone woods from Canada, Europe and Asia.
Maestro’s classical guitars are made in the original Spanish way, with either a traditional fan-bracing or Greg Smallman’s lattice-bracing. Maestro is also known to base some of their classical guitars directly on well known instruments like the 1888 Antonio de Torres 9-strut bracing or the 1951 Barbero flamenco guitar.
Maestro adopts the Bolt-on neck design for their steel-string guitars, with a double action truss rod, which is seen as a feature for easier servicing, repair and set-up. Maestro’s steel-string guitars use the Scallop-X bracing method, which Maestro explains it to provide a strong and resilient top from the high tension created by steel strings.
Besides guitars, Maestro also builds Ukuleles of the 4 recognized sizes of Soprano, Concert, Tenor and Baritone. Many different variables of tone woods are used in Maestro’s line of ukuleles, including Flame maple, acacia koa, Red Cedar, Cocobolo, Java Rosewood and Granadillo.
Highlights
Carbon Fibre Reinforced Neck
Carbon Fibre Rods are used to place on each side of the truss rod in a guitar’s neck to reinforce in and also to deter it from any form of warping.Brass Toneplate
A brass plate is placed behind the bridge on the top wood of a guitar, which reinforces the bridge area. The brass plate vibrates during play from the bridge and this is also seen to increase the sustain and bass response of a guitar.See also
External links
Categories:- Guitar manufacturing companies
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