Thank you for visiting my website, and any interest you might have in the instruments I build. Please take a look around and enjoy.
My name is Maarten Van Guyse, I started playing the classical guitar at age 11, and continue to do so to this very day. It was also from around that time, at the age of 13, that I have my first memory of wanting to build guitars, which at the time seemed impossible to do. Along the way I also ventured into playing the electric guitar in different combos and bands, but the classical guitar remained my first love.
Life going the way it goes, I later moved on to get a master degree and PhD in bio-engineering, but the love for the guitar lingered and in 2007 I built my first electric and steel string guitars, without any formal training, by just diving in at the deep end. They weren’t master pieces by a far cry, but they still get played to this day. That was also the moment I decided it would be a good thing to go to school if I were to take my guitar building to the next level.
So in 2008 I started the course on classical guitar construction at the Centre for Construction of Musical Instruments (CMB) in Puurs, Belgium, under the guidance of Walter Verreydt and Karel Dedain. In 2016 I finished my formal training, and since then I have kept on taking small steps on the long road to mastering the craft of building guitars.
On this road I have already met amazing people and musicians and I hope to continue along this road for many more years to come.