True Colours

A pair of acoustic guitars at contrasting price points from a builder based in the Czech Republic – how will they fare in today’s highly competitive marketplace?

- David Mead

The Furch story starts back in the 70s when Frantisek Furch began making instruments in what was then socialist Czechoslovakia. In those days it was difficult to find good guitars, banjos and so on in the country and anybody setting up a building service was taking a risk as such things had been forbidden under the former communist regime. Imports were prohibitively expensive and so Frantisek – a metalworker by trade and keen musician by night – began to build instruments in his garage and word about their quality soon spread among his colleagues.

Fast forward to 1989 and the final collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia and Frantisek, free from the former political restrictions, opens his first factory. By that time his reputation as a first-class guitar builder had grown, although initially, his instruments were available only to the home market. Over the ensuing years, the company grew in size and today occupies a 16th-century mill complex in Velke Nemcice in the Czech Republic, employing 60 skilled workers, producing a wide range of acoustic guitars.

Today, Furch offers its color model lines – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet – and the premium Rainbow Series, which allows customers to order their ideal instruments from 160 variable features, including body size, tonewoods, hardware, and pickup systems.