The story of Kantare® Guitars originates in the year 1986, in the city of Helsinki, Finland. It was the year, when Master Luthier Kauko Liikanen quit his daily routine work, carried out his passion and started to make classical guitars full time in his own workshop.
Photo: Kauko Liikanen, early years
Over the past 3 decades Liikanen Guitars workshop has manufactured about 1000 handcrafted classical guitars. Guitars that have been played by a generation of classical guitarists in Finland, students as well as performing artists. Liikanen guitars have been sold widely abroad too, totally in 18 countries around the world.
Before his career as a leading classical guitar luthier in Finland, Kauko Liikanen was working with acoustic research, and this experience and knowledge he has always used in guitar making. His innovative and open-minded attitude led to an innovation in guitar construction, when Kauko Liikanen, together with classical guitarist and Luthier Uwe Florath, developed LRS soundboard.
Finnish guitarist Osmo Palmu in a concert, playing a Liikanen guitar with LRS Double Top construction:
The LRS soundboard construction was finally patented in year 2001. Since then, the LRS soundboard has been used in all Liikanen concert model A and student model H guitars.
Finnish guitarist Tatu Varis plays with Kantare® L100C guitar, updated recently as Kantare® Brillante C-model:
Photo below: Measuring resonances with
Technically speaking about the basis of these advantages, here it is expressed by the inventors themselves, with more precise and professional terms:
“The sound of a LRS guitar is very sensitive and responsive with an exceptional good sustain, because the vibration energy produced by the strings is evenly shared to the soundboard via the stiff middle area. The resonance curves of LRS top are more even than in traditional built guitars. There are no high gained amplitude peaks which yield to an unharmonic sound and often wolf notes in the descant frequency range. LRS allows a much better balance between the mass and the stiffness of the guitar soundboard.”
