Review: Esteve 4ST S.48

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Guitarras Esteve is a traditional Spanish guitar shop near Valencia, offering a wide range of classical and flamenco guitars, as well as more unusual instruments from the guitar family, such as the Requinto or the Cuban Tres.

This time, we received a parallel version of the classic Esteve 4ST model with a narrower neck from Esteve’s importer, Vantaan Musiikki. The model is called the Esteve 4ST S48, and its list price is 569 euros.

One of the cornerstones of Esteve instruments is their traditional Spanish heel, which was already found in the instruments of the inventor of the modern classical guitar, Antonio Torres de Jurado (1817-1892).

In the Spanish heel, the neck is not glued to a separately built soundbox, but here the body is built around the neck blank. The neck thus becomes an integral part of the entire instrument. The Spanish heel is visible when looking from the soundhole into the shell towards the neck. ”Normal” glued joints show a square neck block, while the Spanish heel is visible as C- or L-shaped protrusions that support the top and/or bottom of the soundbox.

The Esteve 4ST S48 is a beautiful and skillfully built classical guitar. The neck is carved from Gabon mahogany (okoume) and the fingerboard is made of rosewood. The bottom and rims of the soundboard are made of high-quality sapele mahogany plywood. The solid top of the test instrument is carved from very beautiful American red cedar (thuja plicata), but the 4ST S48 is also available with a solid spruce top.

Both the neck and the body have been given a thin layer of beautiful satin varnish, which makes the guitar feel very pleasant in your hands.

The well-functioning machine heads are of the traditional variety. The bridge is made of rosewood, and both the bridge and saddle are made of genuine bovine bone.

The width of a standard steel-string guitar neck at the top nut is around 43-44 mm, while the same point on a classical guitar can be up to 52 mm. In addition, the traditional neck profile of a classical guitar is quite flat and relatively angular.

For a classical guitarist, such a neck is a great playing surface, because the wide fingerboard gives plenty of room even for difficult fingerings. But if you are a beginner guitarist who would like to add a nylon-string guitar to your instrument collection, the angular and wide neck might seem inconvenient.

The Esteve 4ST S48 offers a functional solution to this dilemma. The 48 mm wide neck at the nut gives the instrument enough of a classical guitar feel, while it – and also the more rounded profile of the neck than traditional – increases comfort for the average guitarist. The Esteve 4ST S48 model’s neck profile is also suitable for a young guitarist who can already play a full-size classical guitar, but whose fingers are not quite long enough for a standard-width fretboard.

In terms of playability and sound, this Esteve is – once again – a bull’s eye. High-quality ingredients and careful craftsmanship have created an instrument with a warm, open and – in a nice way – straight-laced sound. The Esteve 4ST S48 is a high-quality Spanish guitar that will surely only improve with time and playing.

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