Pablo Requena 2026
"Hommage a Santos Hernández"

In our opinion, Pablo Requena is one of the well-established names in Spanish guitar making today. He is highly respected within the Spanish guitar-making community for the precision and consistency of his work throughout the different stages of building a guitar.

This can be seen clearly in the photographs. His work is particularly clean and precise in areas that require a high level of skill, such as purflings, bendings, joints, the angle between the soundboard and neck, the head and the rosette. The same attention to detail can be seen in the different types of finish.

Pablo’s approach is closely connected to the work of the great historical Spanish guitar makers, such as Santos Hernández, Marcelo Barbero and Antonio de Torres. At the same time, he has also spent considerable time studying the work of the German guitar maker Hermann Hauser. This guitar reflects these influences both in its construction and in the way it feels and sounds.

One of the characteristics we particularly associate with Pablo Requena’s guitars is the warmth of the tone.

Further down the page, you can watch a video that gives an idea of its sound. We are always somewhat cautious about recordings, as they cannot fully convey what a guitar sounds like in person, but they can nevertheless be useful and give you a general impression.

This guitar has a very good balance across all registers, from the basses and middle register to the trebles and high trebles, without any loss of volume between them.

Colour is something we value greatly at Madera, and with this guitar you can really explore that unique characteristic of the traditional Spanish guitar. Added to this is the warmth that Pablo achieves in his guitars, which we find particularly attractive. It combines the palette of colours that can be achieved with a spruce soundboard with an expressive and beautiful warmth sound.

Perhaps one of the qualities we find most appealing in this guitar is simply that it makes you want to play. Its combination of playability and sound makes it a very enjoyable instrument to spend time with, and one that naturally invites you to keep playing and express yourself through music.

The soundboard and neck angles are very well executed, the shape of the neck is one we particularly like at Madera. All woods adn materials used by Pablo in this guitar are of the highest qualities as you can see in the photos.

This is a particular Pablo Requena guitar conceived by Pablo and Madera, with the idea of making it an “Hommage a Santos Hernández”. Santos Hernández is a historical Spanish guitar maker whom both Pablo and we at Madera greatly admire, with no doubt one of the very big names and most important guitar makers in the history of the Spanish guitar.

For this homage, Pablo Requena chose one of the rosettes made by Santos Hernández during his career and reproduced it with great care and precision. It is a particularly demanding design to execute, and the result can be seen clearly in the photographs. It gives the guitar a distinctive aesthetic and adds a very personal element to the instrument.

A high-quality guitar in every respect, now available to our Madera clients.

Please also watch the video interview below, which we recorded with Pablo at his own workshop, where he talks in detail about this particular guitar and his general approach to guitar making.

In his own words:

“I was born in Málaga, Spain.

I had always been interested in the guitar as an instrument, from the range of music it produces to the way it is constructed. My passion, right from the start had been to find out how the old masters constructed their guitars, what made them so special and what techniques they would have used to implement their ideas.

Often I use tools like routers and bandsaws etc, but I really enjoy the making process when I can do things with my hands, even if it takes a bit longer. Attention to detail is very important to me as it reflects the high standards that I am trying to achieve with my instruments.

Over time I have been very fortunate to repair and restore instruments from great makers like Torres, Hauser, Santos Hernández, Manuel Ramírez and many others which have greatly influenced my work.

I build my guitars with the player in mind and my aim is to find a way to build an instrument so that the first reaction from the player is “Wow!”. The two main things that I focus on as a maker are the beauty of the tone and the playability. “