About the luthier
Daniele Chiesa was born in Bergamo in 1973 and first approached music as a guitarist, studying both classical and jazz from an early age. In 1994 he moved to Cremona to study musicology, immersing himself in a city whose history is inseparable from the highest traditions of Italian string instrument making. It was there, through the unexpected loss of his own guitar, that he turned toward lutherie. What began as an attempt to replace a stolen instrument became the starting point of a professional path that led him to graduate in 1998 from the violin making school in Cremona as a Maestro Liutaio.
His training continued through a sequence of formative workshop experiences that broadened both his technical knowledge and his understanding of different guitar making traditions. In California he worked with Kenny Hill, gaining direct experience of the traditional Spanish guitar, and later spent a year in the workshop of Tom Ribbecke in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he encountered a distinctly different approach through the making of archtop instruments. Further work with tonewood preparation and grading, including Brazilian rosewood, deepened his material knowledge.
A decisive step followed in Crdoba, where contact with Paco Santiago Marn led Chiesa to settle in Granada and place himself within the living centre of Spanish guitar making. There, working alongside makers such as Antonio Marn Montero, Jos Plazuelo, and Rolf Eichinger, he refined the methods that would shape his own instruments. Since the early 2000s he has continued to build in Andaluca, developing a personal voice grounded in the Granada tradition while remaining open to careful structural evolution based on long term workshop experience.
About the guitar
This 2025 anniversary model by Daniele Chiesa is a cedar double top built with Nomex and Indian rosewood, conceived as an advanced extension of his long established work rather than a departure from it. In Chiesas own account, this model has occupied much of his recent development, with each new instrument serving as a further refinement of structure, balance, and response. The present guitar reflects that ongoing process through a series of deliberate choices, including laminated sides, an asymmetrical six fan bracing pattern, and a reworked fingerboard structure that allows more exact preparation before final assembly.
What stands out musically is the combination of speed and order. The guitar is highly responsive, with an immediate, fast developing attack, yet the sound remains notably clean. That balance is central to the conception of the model. Chiesa speaks explicitly about the risks that cedar and double top construction can present when left unchecked, especially a tendency toward excessive darkness or an undefined blending of tones. Here those problems are clearly held in control. The voice is focused, even across the fingerboard, and capable of great activity without losing definition. Chords do not collapse into a single mass, and the sound keeps its shape even under a very lively response.
The tonal impression is that of a double top that preserves a strong connection to the traditional guitar. There is colour, detail, and balance in the sound, but also a roundedness and ease of response that belong to the reduced mass and efficiency of this construction. Rather than pushing toward an exaggerated modern effect, Chiesa seems to aim for a more natural integration of double top advantages into a musically familiar language. The result is a voice that feels elegant, precise, and structurally coherent, with a broad dynamic capacity and a particularly even behaviour from one register to another.
Part of that control comes from the underlying construction logic. Chiesa closes this model from the top, a method he values especially in double tops because it reduces the accumulation of edge tension and helps the soundboard remain more relaxed throughout its surface. He also uses interior finishing on the back and sides as a balancing tool, introducing a little more brilliance where cedar and double top construction might otherwise become too dark. These decisions are not presented as theory alone, but as the outcome of long empirical comparison between closely matched instruments. That attitude is characteristic of Chiesas work. The guitar is not designed around novelty for its own sake, but around carefully tested adjustments that shape response, clarity, and resilience in a controlled way.
As a result, this anniversary model offers a persuasive synthesis of refinement and power. It reacts quickly, remains composed, and speaks with a clean, elegant tone that avoids both heaviness and excess. For players seeking the immediacy and dynamic ease of a double top without giving up tonal discipline and a strong sense of traditional orientation, this guitar represents a mature and highly resolved interpretation.
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