My initial training in the construction of classical guitars was given to me by Peter Barton in England from 1994 to 1996.
In the following years I worked for a guitar repair shop, a guitar dealer and a violinmaker in Munich. In 2007 I opened my own workshop where, in the beginning, I built classical as well as archtop guitars.
Nowadays I focus on the construction of traditional classical guitars. Each instrument is the result of a long and intensive building process, created one at a time and using hand tools only. With every new guitar, I strive to refine my skills further.
The Craft
Michael Brey works in the tradition of the Spanish 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.
