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Dr. Samo Šali, guitarmaker and Mechanical Engineer (SLO)
Since childhood, Samo Šali has been interested in both technology and music. He gained his first experience in craftsmanship at a model-making school. At the age of twelve, he saw a film featuring a paddlewheel steamboat sailing down the mighty Mississippi River. At that moment, he felt an irresistible urge to build a model of such a boat himself. A few months later, his wish became a reality – the small steamboat, equipped with motor-driven paddle wheels, illuminated passenger cabins, and navigation lights, successfully completed its maiden voyage on a nearby pond. Dreams can come true, and that feeling should never be forgotten.
A few years later, new dreams emerged, marking the moment when Samo Šali decided to dedicate his work to playing, researching, improving, and making guitars. In 1993, he defended his diploma thesis on the impact of machining processes on the acoustic properties of wood at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Ljubljana. His understanding of guitar acoustics was further enhanced by nine years of classical guitar training at the Vič-Rudnik Music School in Ljubljana from 1988 to 1996.
In 1997, he successfully completed his master's thesis, in which he defined a unique criterion for determining guitar tone quality, called the "consonance-dissonance rule," which he also published in scientific literature. Two years later, Samo Šali completed his doctoral dissertation, in which he presented an algorithm for optimizing guitar sound. In 2002, he began collaborating with Croatian guitar maker Mirko Hotko.
In 2005, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia awarded him the title of an independent instrument maker. Since then, Samo Šali has been developing and crafting Šali guitars in his own workshop in Mlaka pri Komendi. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Savart Journal, which focuses on the science and technology of stringed instruments.