Passau Tourism
Meticulousness for the Perfect Sound
The guitar must nestle against the body as if it were a part of it. If you then strike the strings, you feel the vibrations, you feel the sound, absorb it through every pore. That's exactly how it must feel when you play the perfect guitar. That is the requirement for Mario Götz, guitar maker, musician, and operator of the manufactory "Treibholz" in the Theresienstraße. He has been building and repairing plucking instruments for 25 years and is also an expert in sound pickups.
"The guitarist is usually searching for their tone," Mario Götz says. He helps with this search. Many customers bring their guitars in for repair or optimization. He takes an electric guitar from the wall of his workshop. "I look it over: How is this one bent?" he says, stroking the guitar's neck. "Can I get a reasonable grip? Is the gap between body and instrument too big?" The guitar has to be tailored to the body, so to speak, says Mario Götz.
In January 2018, the Passau native moved with his equipment into the small store on the side of the pedestrian zone. His shop window is an eye-catcher. People stop in front of it every few minutes. A boy admires a sky-blue guitar on display. Mario Götz was also very young when he learned to play the guitar - or rather taught himself. "I listened to records and tried to copy the chords," he says. First on the acoustic guitar, and soon after on the electric guitar. From the first pay packets he earned after school, he bought an electric guitar. Mario Götz soon played in the school band. Since 2012, he is part of the music cabaret duo "Saitenscheitel".
If you have your guitar completely made by Mario Götz, you get a meticulously customized one-of-a-kind piece. His trademark: an individually designed round button embedded in the inside of the neck. For the instruments, Mario Götz uses wood from alder and ash, "or from mahogany, maple, walnut," he lists.
He builds a relationship with every piece he works on for a long time, Mario Götz says. It almost makes you wonder why he only owns seven of his own guitars. "There used to be 35," he says. "Seven is enough. But it doesn't work below that number either."
More about Mario Götz: www.treibholz-gitarrenmanufaktur.de
