A hand-built guitar doesn't have to be something expensive and exclusive. Having a guitar built according to your own concepts has long ceased to be a privilege of a few professionals and wealthy collectors.

The instrument reviewed here, a Karelia Standard, is the most inexpensive model from the Finnish luthier Markku Henneken, who has his workshop in Karelia near the Russian border. He's often in Germany, you can meet up with him for example at the Wiesloch Guitar Festival or at the Osnabruck "Open Strings" for example, where he presents his jazz guitar models. 

The Karelia Standard has a markedly curved body form. The top as well as the back and sides are much more rounded than in many guitars of this category. At its widest point the body is the normal 43.5 cm wide, but the waist is only 23.5 cm. The top consists of two mirror-symmetrically arranged pieces of spruce, hollowed out and shaped by hand carving. The back is also made in the same way - albeit with much less curvature - from two pieces of maple. The sides are of figured maple and are fitted with a plastic binding with ivory grain, which was also used for finishing the f-holes. The bridge and tailpiece are carved from ebony and fitted perfectly to the guitar. The bridge is adjustable in height by means of two screws, and offers the strings a relatively broad supporting surface. The tailpiece is fixed to a kind of strap button in ebony, which looks very stable and also rather smart. The construction reminds me of the way the tailpiece is attached on a cello. However, it's not quite clear how a strap could be attached, since the space immediately below the attachment for the tailpiece is occupied by the socket for the cable jack.

The neck consists of three pieces of maple cemented together in the grain, with two further pieces of maple attached at the sides to create the broadening at the headstock. The three pieces of maple are each separated by a fine sheet of rosewood, which looks very good. The maker's name in abalone decorates the ebony veneered headstock, and abalone is also used for the manufacturer's signet at the 12th fret of the fretboard. The fretboard and headstock are finished with the same binding as the body.

Unusual for a jazz guitar are the 21 frets, so that C# can be reached on the high E-string (editor's note: jazz guitarists really aren't strat or tele players). The frets are 2.5 mm wide, set cleanly in the ebony fretboard and perfectly polished. The excellent tuning machines from Gotoh are already familiar to many guitarists from the PM100, the Pat Metheny model from Ibanez.

The electronics are minimal, consisting of a Kent Armstrong "Sky" pickup, a volume pot and the jack socket beneath the tailpiece mounting. The pickup can only be adjusted for height at the cost of more holes, and there's no tone control. It's clear that the principle in operation here was to drill the absolutely minimum number of holes in the beautiful wood.

The first time you take it out of its case, you're immediately struck by how light this instrument is and how easy it easy to handle in daily practice. The guitar lies as pleasantly light as a feather in your hand and feels very good to play, even though the 21 frets take some getting used to (see above). This is particularly noticeable when you dig yourself in at the upper frets and try to orient yourself on the highest tone.
The acoustic tone is light, transparent and very balanced. Plugged in, the Karelia sounds relatively full, with a tendency to feedback on the C# on the E and A strings. The guitar is intended to be used in small groups and at moderate volumes. The sound is clearly jazzy, but with a very personal tone, somewhat reminiscent of Jim Hall.

I personally would have preferred a pickguard, and the position of the volume pot is also somewhat awkward when playing, especially as it has no markers. But since it's not a series production model, all wishes can be taken into account in the construction. According to the luthier, the test model is a slightly modified variant of the Karelia Standard - with no pickguard and with as little space between the strings and the top as possible. However, this had the disadvantage that two of the six string ball-ends were in contact with the top. The guitar was strung with a set of D'Angelico Flatwound Lights from .011 to .052, which I found a little "soapy". In addition, the instrument was tested with a polished .012 set from Pyramid and with an unpolished .011 set from D'Addario. The guitar reacted extremely well-tempered to the change in string gauge and made a good figure with each set of strings, although it sounded much better defined and clearly more jazzy with the polished strings.

It's really welcome that a guitar with a hand-carved top is available for less than DM 4000. The Karelia Standard is an interesting guitar for jazzers looking for something special, with a clearly "acoustic"-sounding amplified tone. Individual modifications to the customer's own wishes are possible in some cases at no extra charge, so getting in touch with the luthier is certainly worthwhile.