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By the early 19th century, guitars looked very close to the six-stringed instruments of today but were smaller in size. In the mid-1800’s, Antonio de Torres Jurado, a Spanish musician and luthier, began creating the style of guitar that would give rise to all modern guitars. Though in modern times he doesn’t get quite as much credit as he deserves, he is in many ways the grandfather figure in the history of the guitar.
With a broadened body, increased waist curve, thinned belly, and machined head which replaced wooden tuning pegs, his creations became particularly notable thanks to an innovative form of fan bracing and body design, which give classical guitars their distinct voicing and thick, heavy sound. Andres Segovia, another influential Spanish guitarist, took the classic guitar that Torres had created and established it as a concert instrument. He also transcribed early polyphonic music and created complex musical compositions that we now think of as ‘classical’ guitar music.
Meanwhile, European immigrants carried a steel-stringed version of the reshaped Spanish instrument with them to America, where the history of the guitar really started to take shape—and where the flat top, the archtop, and eventually, the modern electric guitar would be created.
The Modern Acoustic Guitar is Born
The flat top acoustic guitar
Even today, almost two centuries after its invention, the flat top guitar continues to be the most popular form of the acoustic guitar. It was developed by Christian Frederick Martin, a German-born American luthier who made his first guitar in the United States in the 1830s. Martin created an X-braced guitar body which was able to handle the extra stress generated by modern steel strings, which created too much tension for the Torres-style fan braced Spanish guitars.
The tight steel strings also resulted in a different style of playing that made use of a pick. This fundamentally changed the type of music that could be made on steel-stringed instruments, and the precise and delicate melodies of the classical guitar were replaced by brighter, chord-driven music. The common use of picks to play also led to the development of a pickguard, added below the soundhole on most models of the flat top guitar.