Boaz Elkayam is a renowned guitar maker and player with more than 50 years of experience. He built his first guitar at the age of 12 and continued crafting instruments throughout his teenage years. Following his military service, he spent over a decade traveling through Europe, South America, and Central America, apprenticing with traditional rural luthiers and absorbing diverse techniques from the craft.

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Boaz’s building philosophy focuses on achieving exceptional acoustic performance while minimizing reliance on specialized tools. As a personal challenge, he created some of the earliest known travel guitars for backpackers, constructing them from whatever local materials were available with almost no tooling. Many of these early instruments are still played and praised for their sound today.

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After completing around 200 guitars, he was invited to collaborate with Professor Michael Kasha of Florida State University’s Applied Mathematics Department on groundbreaking acoustical research. Working with leading luthiers, Boaz integrated Kasha’s advanced mathematical theories of guitar acoustics with his own minimalist approach. Extensive testing in FSU’s an echoic chamber and acoustic labs, supported by physics and calculus models, demonstrated the superior tonal qualities, projection, and pitch stability of his classical guitars.

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Today, Boaz is a sought-after guest lecturer at prestigious institutions, including music academies in Moscow, Kiev, and Jerusalem, as well as the Moscow Conservatory. He also speaks at universities across the United States and participates in international guitar festivals in places such as Thailand and Singapore. An adventurous spirit continues to drive him to travel the globe in search of exceptional tone woods for future instruments.