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Adrien Savary Freestone

From Archeology To The Ancient Masters: His Quest To Build The Modern Musician’s Guitar

TEXT BY IVAN LIM
Apr 4 2024

It’s true that if you look closely at a period instrument, you will notice a few small defects, but you have to bear in mind that there were fewer machines at the time, and those that existed were much less affordable than they are today. I am still impressed by the quality of Torres’ or Garcia’s instruments, for example, because they had to work by hand!

You probably know that some great luthiers were excellent cabinet makers before they turned to the elegant craft of guitar-making. Daniel Friederich was one – coming from an eminent family of cabinet makers of German descent who moved from Luxembourg to France, and Francisco Simplicio was making cabinets in Barcelona before becoming an apprentice of master luthier Enrique Garcia.

But while those masters ditched their cabinets for guitars, young Parisian luthier Adrien Savary-Freestone made the decision to study cabinet making enroute to becoming the rising star of luthiery he is today. But it was by no means an attempt to emulate those masters – he studied cabinet-making because it was necessary.

“I didn’t have the slightest experience of manual work – I barely knew how to use a drill!” says Adrien. “When I visited the luthiers in Paris, my main aim was to get an internship in their workshop. They all advised me to take up woodworking, and more specifically cabinet-making, in order to get a solid grounding and a better understanding of wood,” explains Adrien of his initial foray into the world of guitar building. That meant a three-year course in cabinetmaking combined with work experience in a school in Paris.

“I had excellent teachers who were very kind, very dedicated to their work, and who encouraged me despite my complete lack of experience. Without their support, I might have given up, who knows?

“I am still in touch with them, and occasionally go back to see them to show them my work, or to ask them for some technical advice.” While it may be convenient to say that the rest is history, it should be noted that before he got into cabinet-making, he was studying archeology at the Sorbonne University in Paris when it dawned on him that he needed music in his life.

“I grew up in a musical environment. My father was a music teacher and a guitarist, and I started taking lessons when I was quite young. Music has always been important to me. I started playing the guitar when I was a teenager.

A DIFFERENT WORLD
“I started studying archaeology at the Sorbonne, but soon realised that this wasn’t for me, and that I really wanted a job related to my real passion, music. I’d already thought about guitar building when I started learning to play, but I hadn’t really looked into it thoroughly yet.

“It was really when I left college that I threw myself into the world of lutherie: I’m lucky enough to live near Paris, so I visited luthiers to find out more. The more I learned, the more it fascinated me,” says Adrien. And his interest in instrument-making was not channelled towards building classical guitars.

“At first, I was much more interested in acoustic and electric guitars,” he confesses. But that was quite quickly corrected. “When I finished studying woodwork and started instrument-making studies in Newark, UK, I chose to make a classical guitar simply out of curiosity, seeing it as a student exercise that I would never do again once I became a professional luthier.

“However, the very first guitar you make usually takes an enormous amount of time, and I began wondering about the kind of sound I was really looking for. This led me to watch more and more classical guitar videos on YouTube, and I slowly fell in love with the classical guitar, both by making one and by listening to its repertoire.

“During this period, I believe I listened to nothing but classical guitar records and videos, even in my spare time.”

THE ANTONIO MARIN MONTERO GUITAR BUILDING PRIZE
That devotion to the classical would pay off handsomely: Adrien won Third Prize at the prestigious Antonio Marin Montero Guitar Building Competition in Granada, Spain, in 2022. Today, Adrien is known for building homage models of Hauser, Bouchet, Torres, Arias and Garcia. How close to the original instruments would his 21st Century creations be?

“It’s true that if you look closely at a period instrument, you will notice a few small defects, but you have to bear in mind that there were fewer machines at the time, and those that existed were much less affordable than they are today. I am still impressed by the quality of Torres’ or Garcia’s instruments, for example, because they had to work by hand!

“I believe that today’s standards, the quest for perfection in guitar aesthetics, came later. I am thinking in particular of Daniel Friederich, who raised the level of woodworking to a very high standard,” says Adrien, and is quick to remind me that Friederich came from a cabinet-making background.

“Of course, I would never claim that my instruments are better than the originals! The word, better, is itself open to debate: are we talking about the sound, the quality of the workmanship, or perhaps both? Judging an instrument is so subjective,” says Adrien.

“When I make an instrument inspired by an ancient model, I want to do so in accordance with its aesthetics: the shape, the ornamentation, but also the sound: the bracings, the thickness of the wood,” he reveals.

“What has changed is more a question of today’s woodworking standards, such as French polish. Another difference is the action: the guitars of the times of Torres or García had a much lower action, which we would describe as ‘flamenco action’ nowadays. This is because there wasn’t much distinction between classical and flamenco guitars at the time. In order to have a more ‘classical’ action (3mm to 4mm), I build my models with a slightly thicker fingerboard than the originals, and that is already a big change.”

The NEW HYBRID-LATTICE MODEL
Quite recently, Adrien decided to move away from his homage to the great masters by creating his own hybrid-lattice model.

“My decision to make this new lattice model has a lot to do with my teacher, Walter Verreydt. When I was in the very last year of my studies in Belgium, I was no longer at school, but in his personal workshop. Walter works extremely fast, and every time he finished a guitar, he would ask me to test it without telling me the type of construction: I was always surprised when I found that they were his lattice models, because the guitars retained a great complexity of sound that we usually associate with traditional guitars.

“Walter also advised me to quickly design my own model, and it was through listening and talking to musicians that I realised that the vast majority of them wanted more volume. I chose this type of construction, the ‘hybrid’ lattice, because it seemed to me the best way to meet their expectations: it has a sound that I really like, and the rest of the construction is very traditional, which is my favourite type. The best of two worlds, to sum it up.”