Responsive steel-strings with rich, balanced voices
Mark Gaiero spent more than two decades building custom objects by hand, including ten years designing and constructing stop-motion puppet armatures at LAIKA Studios. Since 2015, his creative work has focused entirely on steel-string acoustic guitars. From 2016 to 2019, he studied as a full-time apprentice to Ervin Somogyi, an experience that fundamentally shaped his understanding of acoustic design and voicing.
Working alone in his Portland, Oregon workshop, Gaiero builds each guitar by hand with close attention to responsiveness, tonal richness, and the natural character of its materials. He carefully evaluates every individual piece of wood rather than treating species alone as an indication of tonal potential, and has maintained a commitment to using woods from non-threatened tree species.
Gaiero’s OM offers a rich, balanced voice suited to both fingerstyle and flatpicking, while his Modified Dreadnought combines strong projection and robust bass with responsiveness to a light touch. Each instrument is individually configured and voiced, bringing Somogyi-influenced acoustic principles together with Gaiero’s own precise and understated craftsmanship.
