Marcelo Barbero (1904-1956)

“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.” Alberto Cuéllar (Madera Founder)

Marcelo Barbero is in third position on Alberto Cuellar’s “THE 20 BEST GUITAR MAKERS IN HISTORY. ALBERTONE SOUND RATING”

Birth and Early Years
Marcelo Barbero was born on July 16, 1904, in Madrid, Spain. Not much is known about his early years, but it is clear that he did not come from a family of guitar makers. His entry into the world of guitar making was driven by his interest in music and his proximity to other great builders in Madrid.

Beginnings in Guitar Making
Barbero began as an apprentice in the workshop of José Ramírez I in Madrid. There, he learned the fundamental principles of guitar construction and developed skills that he would later refine throughout his career. He worked for several years in this workshop, but it wasn’t until later that he would establish his distinctive style.

The Influence of Santos Hernández
A pivotal moment in his life occurred after the death of Santos Hernández in 1943, another of the great Spanish guitar makers of the 20th century. Hernández, who had been an apprentice to Manuel Ramírez, created a legacy based on the traditional Spanish construction system. After his passing, Santos Hernández’s widow asked Barbero to finish the incomplete guitars left by her late husband. This commission allowed Barbero to study Hernández’s style and techniques in great depth, which had a significant impact on the development of his own style.

Construction Style
Marcelo Barbero blended the influences of Santos Hernández with his own innovations, achieving a balance of power and projection, ideal characteristics for both flamenco and classical guitars.

Barbero experimented with various technical aspects, such as the placement of fan bracing and the thickness of the soundboards, resulting in guitars with a unique sound. His instruments are highly regarded for their warm tone, the extraordinary balance between bass and treble. perfect intonation on all registers and a richness of harmonics difficult to find in any other guitar.

There was a turning point in the development of his guitars when, in the 1950s, he introduced a flat bar reinforcement under the bridge. This change is considered to have significantly enhanced the beauty and quality of their sound.

In a recent frequency analysis we conducted on three of his guitars here in Granada, we found that all three were tuned to D#. These guitars were a 1945 Viuda de Santos Hernández and two with Marcelo Barbero labels, from 1946 and 1953.

Recognition and Legacy
During the 1940s and 1950s, Marcelo Barbero established himself as one of the leading guitar makers in Spain. His reputation grew not only among flamenco guitarists but also among classical musicians. Renowned guitarists of his time, such as Sabicas and Niño Ricardo, played his instruments, further enhancing his prestige.

Although his career was relatively short due to his untimely death, he left a lasting impact on the Spanish guitar-making tradition. Many consider Marcelo Barbero’s guitars to be among the finest ever made.

Death and Legacy
Marcelo Barbero passed away in Madrid on July 17, 1956, at the age of 52, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy in the world of guitar making.

Today, Marcelo Barbero’s guitars are highly collectible and greatly valued by musicians and collectors worldwide. His name remains synonymous with excellence in Traditional Spanish guitar making.

Santos Hernández is in second position on Alberto Cuellar’s “THE 20 BEST GUITAR MAKERS IN HISTORY. ALBERTONE SOUND RATING”

“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.” Alberto Cuéllar (Madera CEO/Founder)

Santos Hernández Rodriguez was born in Madrid in 1875 and also died in Madrid on 8 March 1943.

Together with the guitar maker Antonio de Torres, he is considered the most famous Spanish guitar maker in history.

For many, he is also the guitarrero who has created the most beautiful sound in the whole history of the instrument.

He started the guitar making career at a very young age in the workshop of the guitar maker Valentín Viudes, from Valentín’s workshop he went on to work briefly in the workshop of the guitar maker from Granada, José Ortega, who was based in Madrid. From this workshop, he moved on to the one located in Calle Carretas 33, which belonged to the heirs of Francisco González (Hijos de González).

The last workshop that Santos Hernández worked for others was that of the historic guitar maker Manuel Ramirez. He stayed there until the death of his master Manuel in 1916. In the same year, Santos founded his own workshop at number 27, Calle Aduana. A street located in a very central part of the Spanish capital and very close to the most famous square in Madrid and also the most famous in Spain called Plaza del Sol.

We can see that the trajectory of Santos Hernández is quite impressive as he has been working in so many famous and historical workshops, especially that of Manuel Ramirez. And therefore the great knowledge and experience he already had before opening his own workshop.

Santos Hernández was already very famous during his lifetime, and he received orders by mail from all over the world, the vast majority of which Santos was unable to carry out. It is said that he had a very good collection of stamps from all over the world from the countless letters he received every year asking him to make a guitar. All the great Santos contemporary guitarists, both classical and flamenco, wanted to have a guitar made by him and it was considered a great privilege to have one of his guitars.

The famous classical guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza was a good friend of Santos Hernandez. Regino played with a Santos Hernández guitar made by the maestro in 1934. This guitar made back & sides with maple wood had also the name “La Rubia” (The Blonde). La Rubia was a historic guitar as Regino played with it the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra composed by the composer Joaquín Rodrigo at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona on the 9th of November 1940. This concert was the world premiere of this concerto, the most famous and most played concerto in the history of the classical guitar.

Regino liked to visit Santos in his workshop in Calle Aduana on a regular basis. In a very interesting press article written by Regino in a Madrid newspaper with the title: “El Artesano Santos Hernández, armador de guitarras”, Regino comments that when he opened one of the letters from someone who wrote to him asking for a guitar, Santos replied: “But it takes me 4 months to make one!”. Regino tells us in this article that Santos liked to work alone and every detail of the instrument was made and controlled by him. In another article about an interview with Santos Hernandez written by Spanish journalist Paulino Masip in 1929  ( Revista Estampa ) Santos says “ it takes me a month or more than a month to make a guitar. But I don’t know because I never make only one at a time “. As is often the case, guitar makers normally make two, three, four, or even more at the same time spending months to finish them all together.

Santos liked to control the entire construction process himself without any help.

Regino Saiz de la Maza comments: “Santos takes a long time to make a guitar… he turns a piece over a thousand times before putting it in place… nothing matters to him except that his instrument is perfect”. He also tells us that the workshop is simple. With subtle and primitive tools. And a very small lathe. And that the workshop smelled of “delicate resins and varnishes”.

There is also a very old carpenter’s bench and the mother-of-pearl and ivory pieces shine.

In the midst of all this, there is always “the silent and tacit figure of Santos Hernández… A quiet man with a broad, good-natured and somewhat sly smile”.

Santos’ workshop was frequented by many guitarists, many of them famous, who spent hours with the master, talking to each other and playing while Santos worked. A truly special atmosphere. A kind of cultural center was formed there around the guitar and everyone appreciated the noble and generous character of the great master Santos Hernández.

One of Santos’ most famous guitars was the one used by Andres Segovia in his concerts from 1912 to 1937. With a beautiful story behind it.

Andrés Segovia himself tells us that when he was very young he went into the famous workshop of Manuel Ramirez at number 10 Calle Arlabán to rent a guitar.

There he met Manuel Ramirez himself who, on seeing him badly dressed, told him that he would not rent him a guitar. Segovia took a guitar that was in the workshop and began to play while Manuel Ramirez looked at him sideways. He told him again that he was not going to rent him any guitar, went to the back room and took out a guitar, and told him again: “I am not going to rent you a guitar. Take this one and walk around the world with it” He didn’t rent it to him, he gave it to him as a present.
That guitar was one made by Santos Hernández who at that time, as we have said, worked in Manuel Ramírez’s workshop.

Manuel Reyes Maldonado was born in 1934 in a very small village called Jayena in the south of Spain in the province of Granada. He died in 2014 in the Spanish city of Córdoba.

When Manuel was 10 years old his parents Manuel and Evangelina decided to move to the city of Cordoba looking for work for the family.  Soon Manuel Reyes’ father and his brother found work in a sawmill in Cordoba called “La Forestal”. While little Manuel also helped the family economically by running errands for merchants.

It was at that very early age that Manuel already began to be interested in and amazed by musical instruments. Once in the house of a neighbor called Carmen, he saw a guitar that was abandoned and broken and asked her to give it to him to try to fix it. Manuel gave it back to her after a while without much success in fixing it, but it gave him a chance to have a first idea of how it was built and to lay his hands on the instrument for the first time.

Since his brother and his father worked in the sawmill at home there were some woodworking tools and also some pieces of wood and Manuel decided to try to make his first guitar without any success, then the second one without success again. But little by little and with a lot of determination, he managed to make better and better guitars. By his teenage years, Manuel’s talent was becoming known to family and friends, and although he made the guitars for pleasure, they began to commission him to make them. Word of mouth kept on working until he started to sell them later on.

Manuel has always said that his way of learning was self-taught. Although there in Cordoba he had the opportunity to meet several times another of the great builders of history, Miguel Rodriguez Beneyto.

Manuel was also impressed by the quality of a guitar made by Marcelo Barbero that he heard and saw in 1954 in Cordoba. He was able to meet Marcelo Barbero on a trip to Madrid and Marcelo, seeing his talent, even offered him a job in his workshop. However, Manuel decided to return to Cordoba where he preferred to live, work and develop his very successful career as a guitarrero.

Manuel Reyes became over the years one of the most important and admired Spanish guitar makers in history.

In Granada, Spain, in the 50’s, there was a flourishing artisan activity with all kinds of craftsmen with a certain national prestigious who were dedicated to Granada ceramics, handmade clothes, furniture, Granada wooden crafts called Taracea, etc.

Here we find a very young Antonio Marín Montero (born in 1933) who was only 14 years old working in the furniture workshop of Don Claudio Carmona located in a well-known street of the city called Calle Elvira. Soon Antonio showed his talent for woodworking and the use of different tools and Don Claudio, despite his youth, appointed him head craftsman of the workshop.

As the years went by Antonio Marin felt attracted to making guitars. It was a job that required talent, skill and delicacy with the pieces of wood. Guitar making in Granada has a long tradition of 200 years with historical guitar makers in the 19th century such as Jose Pernas and Agustin Caro.

For Antonio, the skills he had acquired in furniture making with wood and tools could be taken to a much higher level with guitar making and brought to a final result close to a work of art.

There was one person who could help him with this. The guitar maker Eduardo Ferrer ran a very well-known guitar workshop in the city. Antonio’s father was a friend of Don Eduardo’s as they had made drums together during the Spanish Civil War.

Antonio Marín Montero started going to Eduardo’s workshop and asking him about the construction process. Eduardo’s father, Benito Ferrer, was also a great guitar maker from Granada born in 1843. So, learning with Eduardo meant going deep into the deepest and most deeply rooted tradition of guitar making in Granada. So, we find Don Eduardo teaching the art of construction to Antonio Marín Montero who, given his great intelligence and talent, soon knew all the processes involved in making a whole guitar.

Eduardo not only taught Antonio but also a large number of guitar makers from the present and from the history of the city. One of them was a friend of Antonio’s called Manuel Bellido who curiously enough had also been working with him in Don Claudio’s furniture workshop. So, the two of them got together to make guitars in the 60s. Guitars with a label called Montero y Bellido.

In 1974 something very important happened in Antonio’s career as a guitar maker.

Antonio has always been very sociable and has given friendships with so many people, among his friends at that time was a Japanese man called Taguchi. Taguchi, who had a home in Granada but during the year traveled all over the world, told him on those afternoons when they would have a glass of wine together in the workshop chatting that he knew a very famous French guitar maker that he had to meet and that he wanted to introduce to him. This French guitar maker was the one who made the guitars used by the prestigious Lagoya-Presti classical guitar duo. His name was Robert Bouchet. And it happened and in 1977 they met.

They became friends and Antonio admired Bouchet’s profound knowledge of the guitar, even on a scientific level he told me when I interviewed him for the book “The Granada School of Guitar Makers”. And Robert also admired Antonio Marin’s great woodworking and tool skills. Bouchet was much older than Antonio but that did not prevent them from becoming good friends and that same year they made a Bouchet-Marin Montero guitar together which the master Antonio still has with him and which is of extraordinary quality and historical importance. It combines Bouchet’s fan bracing with the craftsmanship and tradition of Granada that Marín Montero boasted.

The history of meetings did not end there and in 1979 another mutual French friend called Deseglise arranged for the two of them to meet again, this time in France in a small village in Normandy. Deseglise’s house was a beautiful French chateau with high ceilings. And again, they made three guitars together, Deseglise was also fond of making guitars. They spent a fantastic time together building guitars, drinking wine, and to top it all Deseglise’s wife had an oyster farm and they ate oysters to their heart’s content.

That same year Antonio Marin Montero and his nephew Jose Marín Plazuelo, at that time very young and already learning to make guitars together with his uncle Antonio, moved to a new workshop at the end of the Cuesta del Caldeiro and from 1979 until now (2022) they both continue to make guitars there. Marín Plazuelo has been working with his uncle for “only” 42 years side by side. And he makes exceptional guitars just like his uncle and follows precisely the same construction process.

This construction process is the so-called Bouchet-Marín Montero model which has given the master so much success all over the world and which has made him so famous.

One quality of Antonio Marín Montero that should not go unmentioned is his great human quality. Antonio has selflessly helped a large number of guitar makers both from Spain and abroad who have gone to his workshop to ask for advice and help and Antonio has offered to teach them everything they needed in an impressive manner of generosity.

Antonio is loved and admired by all the guitar makers in the city of Granada and by anyone who has the privilege of knowing him and enjoying his kindness, intelligence, humility, and endearing personality. And a very large part of the current tradition of guitar makers that we have in our city of Granada is due to him and his generosity in teaching his art to so many people who decided to stay and live and work in our city near the great master. 

Alberto Cuellar -Madera Guitarras Founder-

In his own words:

“I was born in Málaga, Spain and moved to Sussex in the UK to learn English in 1997 where I started my career as a guitar maker. (Pablo lived in England for 20 years and moved back to live in Málaga in 2017)

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, 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. “

José Vigil was born in Avilés, Spain.

He visited Granada in 2005 and made contact with Granada guitar-makers for the first time. He returned two years later in 2007, this time to settle there and learn the craft. Little by little he gathered the material, tools, and patterns he needed to set up his workshop. He made his first guitar that year with the knowledge he could glean from books and short visits to different makers. These days José builds around ten guitars a year. He says his guitar-building took a great leap forward when he moved to the city center and became friendly with Antonio Marín, who taught him the assembly methods used in Granada.

Antonio Marín Montero even invited him to bring his work to his workshop and advised him how best to proceed. It gives a clear idea of the human dimension of this great guitar maker master and person from Granada. Cause not only did that with Vigil but he did the same with so many other young guitar makers during his whole life.

José Vigil is adamant that it is a great privilege to be able to learn guitar-making in Granada from maestros with decades of experience, who have themselves learned from previous great masters. He maintains that there are processes and methods in Granada that cannot be learned in books or from teachers who have studied in lutherie schools.

José Vigil:

“I can think of two different moments I feel when my guitar-making took a turn for the better. The first time was when I got in touch with professional guitar makers. First I tried to learn by my own. I felt I was trying to study a language reading and studying a dictionary.

And then I met some guitar makers in Granada and especially Antonio Marín Montero and José Marín Plazuelo and when I started to visit them and see them working and they explain to me the fundamentals of guitar making in Granada… it was like… learning a language traveling to the country and living in a country and spend the time there. Then you realize how much you didn’t know and how much you were doing wrong.

The second is when I started measuring more and more things about the tops I used. Up until that moment I look to the top I flex it, I thickness it, and flex it again with my hands and try to feel it, tap it… Then I started measuring; flexibility, densities, frequencies … I am not letting that part guide me on which top I am using but I am trying to complement what I thought a good top was with actual facts and actual measurements about that top. And that’s been very interesting”

Paula Lazzarini was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During her youth, she studied History at the University. She explains here:

“ at a certain point in my career I found a strong interest in objects and artifacts from the past which eventually led me to enroll in a Masters’ Program in Restoration and Conservation at the University of San Martin, Argentina. . My curiosity for woods and musical instruments gradually led me to work, first, in instruments repair and, later on, in making classical guitars, under the direction of Ricardo Louzao, who taught me the art of guitar making as well as the passion to disseminate the Spanish classical guitar. Since my early years in guitar making, I have always aimed for my own style and sound for my guitars.”

Paula made her first guitar in 2007. In 2016 she moved to Cremona, Italy where she opened her own guitar workshop. During her career, she visited and was influenced by European guitar makers from Italy, Holland, France … with whom she shared her passion for instrument making and restoration.

It is worth mentioning the brief stage he spent with the great master Daniel Friederich in Paris and more recently with guitar maker master Marín Montero in Granada, Spain.

An important moment in her career is the year 2021 when Paula entered the International Guitar-Making Competition in Granada and won the First Prize. It was a key moment for her excellent work and talent to be known all over the world and she started to be commissioned guitars, especially from the USA, China, and Japan.

Paula Lazzarini:

“Guitar making is a long and dynamic process, whereby I not only transform and reshape the wood, but also my own passion for the instrument takes shape, in a ceaseless search for sound and, eventually, for the object that best represents me in every new guitar.”

Here a biography wrote by Raya Pardo himself which you can find in the book – The Granada Guitar Makers School published in 2015 (page112) who Alberto Cuéllar –Founder of Madera Guitars- is its main author –

Antonio Raya Pardo (1950) is one of the most representative of Granada’s guitar- makers and has received widespread international recognition for his work. In his contribution to this book he wrote:

“I was born in Huelma, a village belonging to the province of Jaén. When I was fourteen years old, my parents decided to come and live in Granada, where I did various jobs and where I met my wife, Pilar Ferrer, the granddaughter of Don Eduardo Ferrer. This is one of the reasons why I decided to become a luthier, or as we say around here a guitarrero, which I suppose means the same although it sounds different, it is more what we are, what we feel. In 1972 I joined José López Bellido’s workshop as an apprentice. I wasn’t there for long and I learned only the most basic aspects of this profession. A year later in 1973 I decided to go it alone. This was when my apprenticeship really began and when I realized what a long way I still had to go. But I had two important things on my side. I was very young and very keen. So I had to come to terms with the fact that I had to start again from scratch, investigating and searching for the sound I had in mind. You make many mistakes on this quest but you also gain enormous experience.

Over the years I have travelled to several countries such as the United States, Japan and China, and I have seen guitars made by the best guitar-builders in history. To see these instruments, to be able to play them and hear the sound they make has been amazingly useful. This is when you discover something that is very difficult to see and to illustrate what I mean perhaps I can borrow a quote from someone else, which rings particularly true in this profession: ‘You don’t have to do extraordinary things to be successful. You have to do simple things, but you have to do them extraordinarily well’”.

Paco Rey was born in El Puerto de Santa Maria, a small and beautiful town in the province of Cádiz in southwest Spain.
This is where Paco has his guitar workshop. This workshop was previously a cabinetmaking workshop also owned by Paco Rey where for years before becoming a guitar maker Paco worked.
From a very young age he was always interested in the guitar and one day he decided to move from cabinetmaking to building his own guitars. After learning how to make guitars with another guitarrero from his province Cádiz called Rafael López Porras, he transformed his cabinetmaking workshop into a guitar workshop to become a guitar maker, and soon became one of the most important and admired names in the world of guitar making in the southwest of Spain.
We are talking about an area with the highest concentration of flamenco guitarists and flamenco artists worldwide. Most of the big names in this musical style have been born within a radius of no more than 200 kilometers from Paco’s workshop.
Like almost all guitar makers in Spain, Paco builds both classical and flamenco guitars. And the world of flamenco and its special sonority is undoubtedly an enormous influence on Paco Rey. Therefore, his guitars have a marked stamp of traditional Spanish construction and sonority for both his flamenco and his classical guitars.
Paco, in spite of his youth, is already a very well-known guitar maker in Spain and deserves soon also all over the world.

Knud Sindt was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1966.

From an early age, he was attracted by instruments and instrument making, especially stringed instruments. Following his vocation, he went to study at the Civica Scuola di Liuteria di Milano in Italy, one of the most prestigious universities in Europe to study luthiery. After graduating there he stayed briefly in Italy before deciding to move to Spain. For more than 20 years he has been living in Granada where he has his family and where he has developed most of his career as a renowned luthier making only period instruments such as Laud, theorbo, baroque guitar, and romantic guitar specializing in 19th-century French school guitars such as Grobert or Lacote.

Daniele Chiesa (1973) was born in Bergamo, Italy. At an early age he began studying classical guitar and then moved to Cremona to study musicology at the university. Near the faculty was the Cremona School of Instrument-Making and he made friends with some of the students there. He became interested in learning to build bowed instruments and decided to enroll at the school where he studied for forty hours a week for five years. This was a great start on the road to what he really wanted which was to make guitars.
Shortly after graduating he became interested in archtop guitars and went to California to learn to build them. He ended up in a workshop where they made classical guitars and he realized that this was where his future lay. He, therefore, decided to go to Spain to learn a better, more deeply-rooted tradition of guitar-making. He had heard good reports of the courses organized by the Córdoba Guitar Festival and taught by Granada guitar-maker Paco Santiago Marín and in 2002 he signed up for one. He remembers with admiration the enthusiasm and effort that Paco Santiago put into his classes. After the course he decided to move to Granada, where he remained in touch with Paco. He would take his guitars to Paco and show him how he was getting on: the tops, thicknesses or fan-bracing. Daniele also began to frequent the workshops of René Baarslag and Antonio Marín and remains in touch with them even now. He also visited the workshop of Rolf Eichinger who, according to Daniele, has helped many members of the younger generation, especially the foreigners. He says that if you got on with Rolf, he was very open and would spend hours explaining techniques and methods and giving advice.
Later, Daniele met his wife and after living in Granada for eight years they moved to the Costa del Sol in Málaga where he has his workshop today. He says that he still works in the style that he learned in Granada, and although he has experimented with artificial materials, the results have not convinced him to put aside traditional Granada construction. He believes that if you receive a solid grounding like the one he received in Granada, with its clearly defined characteristics, changing directions is not a good option. “If you start using new technologies, you risk losing the advantages of the traditional system without necessarily gaining the possible advantages of modern construction methods.” The main problem with guitars made using new technologies is that the sound made by these instruments differs greatly from the traditional guitar in terms of dynamics and tone colour. “Dynamics are of the utmost importance, much more than just volume” he claims. Daniele likes to hear the subtleties of the music and the guitar even when the guitarist is playing softly. As an example he cites a guitar made by Ana Espinosa which he heard in a large hall. He says that even though he was sitting at the back he could hear the guitarist’s changes in tone and dynamics perfectly. “The Smallman style of guitar has a very loud sound, no matter what, whether you play piano or forte and that is a distinct disadvantage.”
In Cremona, Daniele learned that in the evolution of an instrument there can be no drastic, overnight changes, and that the individual changes and developments made by each maker are key factors in continuing the tradition. He prefers to adapt the traditional model, moving it forward in the subtlest of ways to keep his instruments up to date. In his opinion, the Granada school evolves slowly without deviating from the very Spanish sound, colour, and timbre. He also believes that the traditional guitar still has plenty of room for experimentation. If he had stayed in Cremona building violins he would have done nothing else but preserve an immobile, unvarying tradition. However, the traditional guitar allows him to experiment and implement interesting discoveries.
Daniele believes there is a Granada school of guitar-making in Granada today. Granada has a deeply-rooted, unbroken tradition of guitar-making in the same way that Cremona has a strong tradition in the construction of the violin. Each guitar-maker has his own ideas, his own bracing and measurements, but the roots of the process and the way of understanding the instrument are the same. And this Granada guitar is very much alive today.

Victor Quintanilla is one of the most outstanding and successful guitar makers of his generation in Spain.
Victor started very early to work with wood as a professional carpenter at the age of 20. He quickly dedicated himself to his great passion, the study and construction of the guitar, starting very young with less than 20 years old in his first steps in the school/workshop of the guitar maker Jose Angel Chacon in Malaga. But he quickly began to get his first commissions and established his own workshop in the village of Mijas near Malaga in the south of Spain.
He already has more than 20 years of experience in guitar making and at only 40 years of age, he has already won several prizes such as in 2019 the Granada International Guitar Making Competition where every year guitar makers from all over the world compete with their guitars.
Very admired in Spain great Spanish professional guitarists like Rafael Aguirre or Pedro Sierra play with his guitars.
Victor is a close friend of the guitar maker Daniele Chiesa who lives very close to him in the province of Malaga in the south of Spain and whom he visits and meets regularly. Victor considers Daniel Chiesa to be one of the greatest influences on his knowledge of the profession.
But apart from his influences, Victor’s guitars have great quality, personality, originality, and identity of their own. He is one of our favorite guitar makers of his generation.

In his own words:

“Classical guitar making has evolved a lot over these last 40 years. Taking into account the astonishing progress in guitar-playing technique is important in order to give birth to an instrument capable of adapting itself perfectly to the player and his sensitivity, without imposing any constraints on the interpretation of the pieces he chooses. The instrument must allow him to express himself fully and to be heard by the audience whatever the configuration of the hall (small or large) and its acoustics. Also, he must be able to deliver a perfect sound texture for studio recording.

Modern guitar-making has seen the emergence of new technologies such as the “double top” (or “sandwiched-top”, utilizing composite materials) or “lattice” bracing, which now offers levels of dynamics and power unheard of a few years back. In parallel to this technological evolution, a more traditional yet still interesting approach continually strives to revisit the old tenets of Torres and Hauser, accepting a more intimate and capricious sound identity which makes its use more difficult in large concert halls.

Thus, although I tirelessly experiment with new techniques, I currently use only natural materials in the construction of my guitars. I also like to think that Nature is far from having delivered all its secrets, and I prefer the sound result more “organic” and faithful to the essence of the instrument it offers us.

It is thanks to this original conception and a thorough knowledge of the needs of a concert guitarist, that I offer a truly innovative instrument, combining beauty and sound richness to the performance of the best modern guitars. I make no compromises on the musicality, authenticity, and loyalty to the traditional guitar sound, whilst providing the sensitivity, depth, and ease of use that a performer needs today in order to perform every piece of the repertoire from early music to contemporary works.

A “concert-grade” classical guitar should, in my opinion, offer the necessary power, dynamics, and projection for a modern instrument, but should also have a sound that is harmonically rich and balanced, as well as capable of extensive artistic expression.

Therefore, my approach has been to base my personal research upon a solid heritage and resolutely innovative construction methods and proceed from that starting point, in order to unite these qualities in an instrument dedicated to a musical expression genuinely free of constraints.”

Luciano Lovadina is an Italian Classical guitar maker. He has his workshop in the city of Treviso. With more than 40 years of experience in guitar making, he has a very clear idea of what he wants in his guitars. His guitars have a very strong identity and originality of their own. The best way to get to know him is for him to talk about his work:

” I think experience is a very important thing in this job.
The knowledge accumulates over the years.
And doing this job I think is a bit like being a chef.
For this reason, raw materials are really important.
Of course, you need to know how to use it but to know how to choose it I think is fundamental…

And about the aesthetic of an instrument is very important I’ve never seen an ugly guitar that sounds good.
I’ve seen beautiful guitars that sound bad but never ugly guitars that sound good.
Therefore, the aesthetic taste goes together with the sound of an instrument.
So, an instrument to sound good must also be beautiful.
Cause guitar making is above all an art. It is not only a technique so it is necessary to know how to manage this beauty.
Must have a personal taste and a sense of the beauty of the instrument.

Anyway, I want to say when you take an instrument with your hand and you look at it the instrument must touch your soul.
it shouldn’t leave you cold. It needs to make you feel emotions…

Talking about the sound quality, the only winner card possible on the evolution of this instrument, and the research of better quality in this instrument is to try to ennoble the sound make it more musical make it more transparent and profound, and finally, give a greater musicality to the sound.”