Sebastiano Fracasso - 2025 Arenaria

About the luthier

Sebastiano Fracasso is an emerging Italian luthier whose work reflects a deep commitment to musical craftsmanship and material expression. His journey in guitar making has been shaped by his time in the workshops of Ennio Giovanetti and Roberto De Miranda, two respected Italian luthiers who passed on a strong sense of structural refinement and artistic purpose. Fracasso’s approach emphasizes lightness, responsiveness, and a clear tonal voice, paired with a thoughtful design philosophy rooted in both historical tradition and personal experience.

His guitars are built with an eye toward both sound and meaning, blending classical construction principles with unique material choices and artistic symbolism. In naming his model “Arenaria” after the sedimentary rock sandstone, Fracasso connects his work to themes of permanence, human creativity, and his personal passion for climbing—where sandstone is often encountered as a medium for exploration. This poetic perspective carries through the entire instrument.

About the guitar

This 2025 Arenaria model was conceived, in the words of the luthier, as “an uncompromised tool made for serving music”—a lightweight, expressive instrument built to realize the true purpose of the musical craft. The spruce top is Italian alpine spruce from Val di Fiemme, a region famed for its resonance wood. It is supported by a 7-strut bracing system inspired by Torres but personalized through Fracasso’s own experience, adjustments, and tonal goals. The back and sides are made from Bosnian birdseye maple, a choice that contributes to the guitar’s light weight and distinctive clarity.

The neck is carved from Spanish cedar and shaped into a C-profile chosen for comfort and ergonomics. Fracasso personally selects the wood based on density and grain orientation. The fingerboard is African ebony and the bridge is Indian rosewood. The scale length is 640 mm, and the guitar is fitted with Schaller GrandTune tuners and Knobloch EDC 34.0 strings. The shellac finish is applied by hand in the traditional French polish method, preserving the natural response of the tonewoods. The body resonance lies between D# and E, and the guitar weighs just 1470 grams.

The Arenaria also carries a deeply personal touch from the maker: inside each of his guitars, Fracasso includes a unique, hand-written inscription inspired by the moment. For this particular instrument, he inscribed the Russian sentence “Рукописи не горят” (“Manuscripts don’t burn”), taken from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita. This quote symbolizes the resilience of art and intellect against oppression and censorship, echoing the novel’s own story of survival during Soviet repression. With this gesture, Fracasso imbues the guitar not only with musical depth, but with a reflection on the enduring power of artistic expression.