Kostal Guitars

Jason Kostal didn't come to lutherie young. He grew up studying fingerstyle at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, then became a US Army officer, then earned an MBA at Emory in Atlanta — where, on the side, he met Kent Everett of Everett Guitars and got his first introduction to building. After the military he took a Fortune 500 management job in Salt Lake City, kept building on the side, and eventually walked away from the corporate world for Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix. He stayed on as an assistant instructor in the acoustic program for three and a half years after graduating, teaching while opening his own shop and building the first Kostal Guitars. In November 2008 he attended Ervin Somogyi's voicing class, and Ervin offered him an apprenticeship that started the following February. He closed his Phoenix shop, moved to Oakland, and spent thirty months building under Somogyi's tutelage. That period reshaped his work; the Mod-D — Modified Dreadnought — that has become his calling card is a Somogyi-derived design that Kostal has spent the years since refining in his own direction. The guitars are heavily customized for each client, built from base specs that include Honduran mahogany necks, Gotoh 510 tuners with ebony buttons, Hoffee cases, and a Stained Glass rosette signature. The base model is $26,000 — and that's before tonewood upgrades, which can run another $10-$20k for figured rarities. Among the small community of buyers who shoot between top-tier boutique builders — Olson, Ryan, Traugott, Greenfield, Manzer — Kostal sits squarely in that conversation. Michael Watts and Willy Porter are both vocal owners; AGF build threads track his guitars closely. Jason builds a small handful of instruments per year, and the wait list is measured in years. He relocated his shop to Princeton, British Columbia, but the work has not slowed: he is still the only builder on the bench, still working through commissioned builds one at a time, and still — as he puts it — taking pride in instruments meant to last a lifetime and play incredible music for generations.