I received an email from a friend in the United States asking me to create a list of the best guitar makers in history and to assign them a rating based on the sound of their guitars. My name is Alberto, and he said: “Alberto, I’d love you to make an Albertone Sound Rating List of the best guitars in History.”
Well, aside from the humor of the “Albertone,” I found the proposal interesting. The first thing I thought was that, indeed, I’ve been in contact with guitar makers and playing guitars of all kinds almost nonstop since I was 13 years old. Now, at 51, that means 38 years playing guitars built by guitar makers. During that time, I’ve had the opportunity to try guitars made by some of the greatest guitar makers in history from all over the world. So, I might be someone perhaps interesting to know and qualified to share which ones I found to be the best.
However, I didn’t want this list to be based only on my personal opinion. I wanted to look for a list that had a certain level of consensus among guitar professionals, players, guitar makers, and collectors—a list where, with small variations, all the big names were included. Although I know always in a list like this one there will always be names that some consider should be there.
Additionally, I decided that the list would include only guitar makers who are no longer with us.
A very important aspect of this list is that it’s based on guitars I’ve personally had the chance to play. The best guitars. As you know, each guitar is unique, even if it’s made by the same guitar maker. Additionally, guitar makers go through periods of great work and others that are not as strong. Many times, I’ve played two guitars from the same maker: one was marvelous, while the other didn’t appeal to me at all. Even when the guitars were built just a few years apart.
There are many possible reasons for this: maybe the guitar wasn’t actually built by the guitar maker, even though it bears their label. It could be that the guitar maker changed their construction system, used lower-quality materials out of economic necessity, or simply didn’t think their work would have such a lasting impact in the future so someone asked him for a cheap guitar and he made it. We are talking about guitars sometimes made 150 years ago, we don’t know the situation at that time with some guitar makers. There are countless reasons why a guitar, even from a great master, might not meet let’s say expectations.
In many cases, collectors buy guitars only based on the label. But having the label of a famous doesn’t necessarily guarantee that a specific guitar will sound very good. Consistency in quality also is a value that some guitar makers have, but others don’t. Often, even they themselves don’t know for sure why one guitar turned out exceptional while another didn’t.
For this reason, someone might think that a guitar maker should be higher on the list because the guitar they played from them was extraordinary. But my rating, the Albertone Sound Rating that you will see here, is based I repeat on the guitars I’ve played throughout my life. The opposite could also happen: you might think a guitar maker should rank lower because the guitar you tried from them wasn’t particularly special. Every guitar is unique and different as I said before.
With that said, let’s start the list, going from number 20 to what I consider number 1.
We now enter the highest positions in history.
At this point, I want to pause, because the following names made guitars that are a sublime experience to play. I am not saying that with some guitars from the list before I felt something similar but with these next ones the mere act of plucking an open string, a chord, or a musical phrase on one of these guitars is quite amazing. It’s an experience that stays with you, replaying the moment in your mind for like hours. It is a really special feeling. A chord you’ve played hundreds of times, like let’s say E major or E minor, sounds like entirely different on these guitars. There are harmonics, qualities of sound, that make it feel like you’re hearing it for the first time in that way. For many, the sound of a traditional guitar is the most beautiful sound humanity has created, and these guitars are the ultimate example of that beauty.
This name might surprise many. Marcelo Barbero, born in 1904 in Madrid and passing in 1956, died at just 52 years old. In his final years, he made mind-blowing guitars. Imagining what he could have achieved in his 60s or 70s… is speculation, but he might have been the guitar maker who achieved the most beautiful sound in history. Who knows…
The first time I played a Marcelo Barbero was in Tokyo. One by him from the fifties. Ufff… I didn’t know much about Marcelo Barbero but… that day after playing this guitar I was thinking about its sound And the feeling out of it for several days. Since that day I was completely in love of the guitars of this guitar maker.
Many guitar professionals: guitarists, collectors and dealers that I met have told me that the best sound they’ve ever heard came from a Santos Hernández guitar. Besides its sublime sound, his rosettes are considered the best in history: beautiful, balanced, and full of character. But here we talk just about sound. And I consider for that Santos Hernandez second in History. In Madera we are lucky because we own one of the best cypress guitars by Santos Hernandez made in 1939 4 years before he died.
So let’s go for the number one. As many of you already guessed, number one is:
Antonio de Torres receives a perfect 10 because I’ve taken him as the reference for all others. So he is the 10 qualification. You may think his fame comes from being the father of the modern guitar or the one who unified ideas to create the dimensions and characteristics we know the guitar as we know today. But we need to talk about the most important aspect in a guitar, which is the sound. The guitar is a musical instrument.
Antonio de Torres also produced, created, the most beautiful, impressive, and sublime sound ever achieved. We don’t know what he had in his head, what he focused on that we don’t focus on now today, his ability to understand the wood or perhaps he simply had a talent and feelings and understanding of the instrument that only he had. But nobody since him never reach the quality and the beauty of sound he was able to achieve.
Well, there is the list.
16 Spanish, 2 Germans and 2 French. That is the list that I consider to be the best guitar makers in history, remember, not counting those who are among us today. Hope you find it interesting.
