In 1985, having just moved home and the FBG workshop from Richmond, NH to Newfane, VT, I wanted to build a guitar for my son Jacob. I had a very fine set of koa which came from my days as the shop foreman at Gurian guitars. The back had been damaged so that it was only suitable for a parlor size instrument and the sides had been bent for a Gurian guitar. The shape had to somehow accommodate the lines of the Gurian contour and the existing back. These constraints and possibilities led me to come up with the P-12.
I used a fine 1876 vintage German top and worked with a 24.75” scale length. The size of the guitar was markedly smaller than anything I had previously designed, and I was looking to come up with something rich in tonal complexity and with more volume than the parlor size guitars I knew well. The guitar worked far better than I imagined. Responses were appreciative from the outset, along the lines of “the biggest little guitar I’ve heard.” It was an overnight success, and it is often acclaimed as “the biggest sounding parlor guitar around” four decades later.
While I have always avoided publicizing the names of famous clients as misleading and exploitative, at the tail end of my career, I can acknowledge gratefully now that one of my greatest honors as a builder has been having Mark Knopfler own a lovely P-12 model of Brazilian rosewood and 19th century German spruce. The guitar was gifted to him by a very gracious friend we shared, and was used to record the soundtrack for the film Altamira. The P-12 is tonally lush, extremely well balanced, and Mark’s unique and unmistakable finger-style technique has always felt like an exquisite match for this guitar. Thank you, Mark. Your music brings me enormous joy and has from the very first note.