Every guitar has it’s story. This Spezial/La Onda guitar hand-crafted by the German luthier Mario Gropp ( https://www.gropp-gitarren.de/en ). Mario completed this guitar in December 2012 as Spezial SE-C II model serial number 515, which is top of the line of his guitar at that time.
During 2014 Mario took this guitar to Shanghai for exposition of Music China. After the event he left this guitar to his China exclusive distributor Guitar Era. I bought this guitar at 2015 from Guitar Era. I am delighted with this guitar, it’s beautiful exotic appearance, ease of playing, the balance and pleasing tone….etc.
I played this guitar in most of my performances. After years of playing the finished are wear out and I send it back to Mario last July to refinish it and fix a problem that there’s some buzzing from the bridge sometimes. But Mario couldn’t find out what’s the problem, he even took the guitar to a laboratory to check what’s happened but no idea.
Mario suggested that to change the soundboard and with his latest top model design – La Onda. Of course it cost some money but Mario offer me a very special price, he even let me change the soundboard from cedar to a bear claw spruce, then I accepted the offer.
I received this new born Spezial/La Onda guitar at last September. I found that the guitar sound is more focused especially on the bass and more tone variety(maybe because of spruce?).
Here’s the links that I played with the old Spezial and new La Onda of Mario Gropp guitar to let you compare the difference.
Muse music services 妙思樂社 