Alpha / Alfesta Guitars

These guitars were made at the former Egmond factory in

Boxtel (The Netherlands) Around 1975 they produced

midrange steelstrings for Martin using the Martin blueprints.

They marketed these guitars under the Alpha brand

for the european market and the Vega brand for the

Americain market. As Egmond didn't meet the high standards

required by the Martin company the latter decided to stop

production of these guitars in the Netherlands.

As Alpha was the brandname entered by Martin the

Egmond company used a subbrandname Alfesta to

be able to produce mostly lower priced models for

the domestic market in general.

The guitar presented here is a Alfesta W160 which

must have been a lower priced model deduced from

the sticked soundhole decoration and the rather poor

and sloppy gluing. But by using a good concept and honest

materials as solid spruce for the top and (stained) maple

for its' sides this guitar sounds pretty good.

The poor neck to body construction can be seen here by 

clicking on the picture above. It will hold this time but in a 

lot of cases it didn't. By changing the cheapy bridge 

saddle and a good flattening of the bridgegap this guitar is 

really surprising soundwise though it is my opinion that

wide grained tops generally do a good job on steelstring 

guitars. I will come up with some more models but the

pictures have to be made again because something went 

wrong when uploading these ones: Alfesta W160, ST090, 

and Alpha A 690, A 687 and A 100 (gutstringed guitar).

Presented here is the Alpha 690 which is the copy of a

Martin D28. Workmanship is good apart from the neck /body

construction that has been repaired now. Materials are

of a slightly lesser quality than on a genuine Martin but

the sound result is astonishing. Lots of volume, good

balance and a very nice overall sound. There was

a seam between the two halves of the top but an inlay

will do the work and will colour to its' surroundings

in time. The inner woodwork follows that of the

Martin D28 and even the center inlay on the back in

the next picture is exactly the same as on the D28.

The tuners on this guitar had an ugly form to my

believe so I changed them with more recent Schaller knobs.

The neck has a nice profile and is stable enough.

This is the Alfesta ST090 which is believed to be a subbrand

in order to produce and export guitars without the Martin addition.

Workmanship is of lower quality than on the Alpha instruments

but the sound is good anyway. A bit of a Gibson LG sound but

with more volume in spite of the remarkable small soundhole.

Materials used on this guitar are maple for the back and sides

and solid spruce for the top. The neck is believed to have been

made out of maple as well. Maybe a bit chunky but the

tuning holds up well with this guitar.

Yes, I keep on searching for all the Alpha models.

This one's a A 688 model with maple sides and back.

As has been previously stated all materials are solid.

Again the prone neck / body construction but after

some work it is playable again.

The heelblock of this guitar has the interesting addition

V 646 which stands for a Vega model sold by Martin

in the USA. Martin quickly ceased the import of

Vega guitars from the Netherlands and most likely

this was a left-over so Alpha decided to put a

plastic shield on the head, probably over the original

Vega inlay.

Presented here is a gutstring model A 100 that

 still can be found in the Netherlands at various

places. Though the materials used were quite

honest, the matt laquer didn't appeal to most

of my pupils at that time apart from the fact that

they were more expensive than their Japanese

counterparts. Spruce soundboard and mahogany

sides and back, all solid. They sounded quite

good anyway. This one came to me with a

broken neck probably caused by rude package

sending. They gave me my money back as

the package was insured but only after several

calls (and months)

Not the most beautiful example in this serie but a
spanish style acoustic guitar labelled Alpha A 250.
These guitars came in the following models:
A 100, A 200, A 250, A 300,  A 400, A 450, A 500
and A 550. The 500 series being executed with
a rosewood soundbox and nice tuners as well.

As the other examples in this serie quite a straightforward

execution of the soundbox and neck. But all solid materials

and this model has an inlayed rosette while on the A 100

they were stickered. Sides and back are stained in

order to give these instruments a mahogany look.

Probably a bit more attention to detail in assembling these

guitars regarding the higher end models. Better glue work 

for instance and a better quality soundboard.

As this guitar was obtained very cheap I decided to

do an experiment with this instrument. At first I had 

to make a repair on the soundboard in the lower 

bout as on the left. It had several cracks due to an

earlier accident. After that someone probably stained 

and varnished the guitar. And to mask these short-

comings the outer ends of the lower bout were 

stained a bit darker.

The insert can be seen here and the problem with newer 

wood and the inevitable leveling of the insert is that the

color is somewhat lighter. After having read an article

about an Arias guitar that has been carefully controlled

regarding thickness of the soundboard it became ob-

vious that around the edges Vicente Arias made his

soundboards thinner in order to make it work like a

membrane. So I made the soundboard thinner on

the edges for about 0.2 mm and probably even more.

The result was a much more resonant instrument

with beautiful basses and a better response on the 

higher notes. As these guitars have a very traditional 

Torres bracing you are able to get that woody "older"

guitarsound. From a bit dull instrument it turned

into a lively, very usable guitar!