2024 Jialan Chen, Coclea Thucea, “Fibonacci”

Homage to Andrea Tacchi

Cedar, spruce, cedar top

Wenge back and sides, laminated with mahogany

650 scale

VS custom tuning machines with jade buttons

Brand New

A stunning looking guitar, with equally breathtakingly beautiful sound, and robust performance.

This is Jialan’s homage to his maestro’s highest model, “Coclea Thucea”. Coclea, is the latin word for the inner part of our ears that transforms vibrations to sensory of tone, volume, and timbre. Thucea, is the combination of the latins words “Thuja Plicata” (cedar) and “Picea Excelsa” (spruce). The way Tacchi combined spruce and cedar maximized the efficiency and strength needed for a guitar’s soundboard. The result is a guitar that is loud and responsive, without compromising a bit of beauty of sound. This design is the representation of maestro Tacchi’s acoustic and artistic understanding of the fine arts of guitar luthiery.

As mentioned earlier, this guitar features spruce and cedar soundboard. The back and sides were made of wenge- a very tough wood widely used for percussion instruments. The wenge back and sides were also laminated with mahogany. One would assume an instrument like this would be heavy in weight and stiff-sounding, but the result was the total opposite. This guitar is surprisingly light, and the sound is natural, deep, and tastefully robust.

This guitar has a very unique “Fibonacci rosette”. As we can see, the golden inlays (that are made of real gold!) in the rosette spell out the Fibonacci numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…), the sequences observed in math and nature; from music, the number of petals in a flower, paintings, structural designs, or even the human anatomy…. The two ends of the rosette were also matched with gem stones that you can physically touch. Needless to say, it is also very difficult to make. Yet another presentation of both Tacchi and Jialan’s artistic expression and mastery of the luthiery art.

The VS tuning machines feature jade buttons, a nice reference to Jialan’s Chinese origin. There is also an elevated fingerboard granting easier access to the higher frets. The bridge of the guitar used mahogany, dyed on both sides. It was also a practice started by maestro Tacchi to cut the weight off the guitar, while not compromising strength on the bridge or the aesthetic elegance.

Jialan was a student of Andrea Tacchi. During his study with Tacchi, he absorbed as much wood-working, artistic, and acoustic knowledge as he possibly could. This homage model built by Jialan, was fully endorsed by his maestro, with Tacchi sharing every bit of detail on the construction of this guitar. Jialan then faithfully recreated this amazing guitar.

Jialan is an amazing classical guitar player on top of being a luthier. He has an outstanding understanding of timbre, control of tone and nail techniques. Before sending out every guitar, he would personally inspect the sound quality and dynamic range. This guitar used Italian Alpine spruce Jialan personally selected from val di fiemme, the same region Stradivarius selected his spruce for violins. Cedar from Canada, and wenge from Africa. Sound-wise, I personally find it very similar to a late 90s Friederich.