I'm Marc from Blankenberge (Belgium) and I've been building various stringed instruments since the year 2000.

I began my training as a "restorer of plucked instruments" at Syntra West, where I made my first instrument, a hummel. Whilst working on my second project ( a ukelélé ), I started classes at the Cmb in Puurs ( Belgium ) where I took lessons untill june2017. The first instruments I learned to build were constructed following existing plans. As I gained more knowledge and experience I began to develop my own designs. 

 

 

 

 

Since 2009 I have been teaching steel string guitar building in the "Arts and Crafts" departement at Syntra West. Here you can learn to build your own acoustic steelstring guitar. You start with building a travel guitar (or backpacker) that I designed myself. While building this instrument you learn all the basics that you need to build your own steelstring afterwards.

 

 

In 2012 I received the 'Golden Finger Plane' award - a prize for talented builders - from the Cmb.

 

 

 

As a contributer to the "Leonardo Guitar Research Project", I made 5 steelstring guitars from different non tropical woods.

 

 

 

 

 

For the second part of this project, I made 2 Martin OO guitars. The first one is made of tropical wood, the other one is made of non-tropical wood.

 

 

By way of experiment I also built 4 round guitars, each with their own specific sound. To do this I applied different combinations regarding the use of either an arch-top or a flat-top back or soundboard.