Towet Guitars
As a child, I actually wanted to learn the saxophone. However, since no instrument was available for a six-year-old, my parents borrowed a children’s guitar from friends. Since then, the guitar has played an important role in my life.
I moved into my current workshop in Kevelaer on the Lower Rhine after completing several training courses in woodworking, the music industry, and as a guitar and violin maker in England. The individual wishes of my customers are always at the center of my work.
My instruments are handcrafted and exclusively custom-made. I design them with a powerful, balanced tone and select beautiful tonewoods. I also carry out all types of repairs on string and plucked instruments. Techniques from the field of string instrument construction are applied in the building, repair, and restoration of string instruments as well as classical and steel-string guitars.
The continuous collaboration with national and international amateur and professional musicians ensures that my instruments are always evolving. For me, music is its own language that must be spoken, creating both friendship and joy.
The Craft
Jens Towet works in the tradition of the classical guitar tradition — a tradition that prizes hand work, careful wood selection, and the pursuit of tonal balance across the instrument's full range. Classical guitar construction at this level requires deep knowledge of wood acoustics, the ability to read and shape individual pieces of timber rather than treating them as interchangeable, and a patience that cannot be hurried. A concert guitar typically demands several hundred hours of work from raw materials to the finished instrument.
