Cebu’s Guitar

Cebu’s guitars are famous throughout the Philippines because of their affordable price, durability and world-class quality.

Filipinos are a musical people and guitar making has been long known for Cebuanos. Cebu has a long history of guitar making due to its traditional industry. Cebu-made guitars are popular with local tourists and foreigners, who buy them as presents, and for a new beginner who wants to learn guitar. 

The center of guitar-making industry in Cebu is in Lapu-lapu City in Mactan Island. In addition, other string musical instruments that made from Lapu-lapu City include ukuleles, banjos, and mandolins. In Lapu-lapu there are famous guitar makers the Alegre and Malingin families.

Guitar making started when Spanish settlers discovered the Philippines. And though the earliest six-string guitar is come from Naples, Italy and it is believed by many that the first guitar manufactured came from the island in the Philippine South Pacific.

How to manufacture guitar?

The first thing to do is to select a wood for guitar construction. The wood must be free of flaws and have a straight, vertical grain. The construction process varies from section.

The lined up in a row, a guitar is created starting with drying a wood-drying process that could take up to 6 weeks. The wood is tested for moisture content to make sure that the wood does not shrink. Bookmatching is a method by slicing the wood into two sheets that has the same length and width. Guitar is assembled without any nails or tacks, and held together in place only using glue. It looks like quite simple from outside and inside, the guitar has sticks that crisscross along the frame to give it a better sound. Guitars are made from different kinds of wood like jackfruit, lawaan and mahogany, by selecting the type of woods will affects the sound quality of the finished product, as well as the price on it.

Guitars vs. Ukuleles

Ukulele is more likely less expensive than guitar. It is much easier to transport and it requires much less strength and toughness of fingers than a guitar. It only has 4 strings and it means it is bit easier to understand. Guitar has a lot more range than ukulele and it has 2 full octaves from where a ukulele can do. Perhaps the biggest difference between a guitar and a ukulele is in the effect that if has on people when you play it.