2016 - Raymond Kraut 00 - European Spruce & Brazilian Rosewood

Raymond Kraut builds in the Sonoran Desert north of Tucson, in a workshop he constructed himself at the foot of the Tortolita Mountains. A Roberto-Venn graduate and the third apprentice of Ervin Somogyi, he has spent two decades pursuing what he calls the optimally responsive guitar — lightly built, individually voiced small-body steel-strings that answer the quietest touch. Kraut is equally a visual artist: a lover of art and architecture whose Nouveau designs bring minimalist lines, geometric inlay, and constellations of small soundports to instruments that remain traditional in voice. He builds a small number of guitars each year on three platforms — a modified dreadnought, an OM, and a 00 — each designed as a single unified whole.