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Manuel Caceres, Madrid 1985

Gesigneerd

Manuel Caceres Pizarro

Manuel Cáceres Pizarro is one of the leading representatives of the Madrid school. Born in 1947 in Camillo de Llerena, a small working town near the Rio Guadámez, when he was about thirteen, his family moved to Madrid. A few days later, he found work as an apprentice in the Ramirez workshop. After a brief time, however, his family moved to Germany. Unhappy there, Manuel returned to Spain and work as a farm worker with his brother. He soon found this work monotonous, and decided to return to Madrid where he again found work in the Ramirez shop, assisting Pedro Manzanero and Ramon Peñalver in the repair department. In 1964, he was transferred to the construction department, and spent four years there before he had to do his military service. After doing his stint in the army, Manuel returned to the Ramirez shop and was soon promoted to master craftsman. He continued to work for Ramirez until 1978, when he decided to go out on his own. The guitars he made in Ramirez bear the initials MC. In the years since, Manuel work has been recognized not only by international awards but also by increasing numbers of professionals who have bought his instruments such as Paco Peña, Los Panchos, Manolo Sanlúcar, Paco de Lucia. He has also given master workshops on guitar making in Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. In recent years, he has divided his time between working in his own shop and working with Arcángel Fernández.

(bron:Zavaletas)

Manuel Contreras sr., Madrid 1987

Doble Tapa Fichte/Rio palissander

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Manuel Contreras sr.

Born in Madrid in 1926, Contreras began his working life as a cabinet maker, and reportedly even tried his hand as a bullfighter. In 1959, he joined the Ramirez workshop as a senior journeyman. It was Contreras who made the first José Ramirez guitar Andrés Segovia bought in 1960. After three years with Ramirez, Manuel opened his own guitar workshop in the center of Madrid. He soon earned a reputation as one of the finest and most innovative luthiers in Spain. Among his innovations is the “double top,” a guitar in which a second top is mounted between the braces of the back, improving both the tone and the volume of the guitar. In 1983, Contreras designed a radically different guitar without an upper waist or sound hole for the Uruguayan guitarist, Abel Carlevaro. The assumption being that by enlarging the surface area of the top, the volume and tone would improve. The guitar has also an extra back and sides inside body to isolate the box from the damping effect of the player's body. Instead of a sound hole, there are slits that around the edge of the top, between the sets of sides through which the sound emerges. I have played this model in his shop, and indeed it has better volume and tone, but is a very heavy instrument. His most popular models, however, are built in the Spanish tradition. They are large, long scale instruments, with fan braced tops, based on the successful Ramirez formula. Contreras died in 1994 of cancer, but his shop continues to build the same models under the direction of his son, Pablo Contreras.

(bron: Zavaletas)

Manuel Contreras sr. Madrid 1984

Doble Tapa Ceder/ Rio Palissander

Gesigneerd

Ignacio M. Rozas, Madrid 1993

Gesigneerd

Ignacio M. Rozas

The Spanish luthier Ignacio M. Rozas was born in 1943 in Mesones, Guadalajara. As young man, he apprenticed as a cabinet maker in Madrid. In need of competent wood-workers, Jose Ramirez and his foreman Paulino Bernabe approached him and offered him a job. He apprenticed as a guitar maker with José Ramirez, working there from 1959 to 1969. After leaving Ramirez, he went to work for Manuel Contreras, a former Ramirez craftsmen who had set up his own shop. Ignacio Rozas worked as a luthier for Contreras building flamenco and classical guitars as he had for Ramirez from 1970 to 1987. In that year, he established his own shop. In 2001, Ignacio ceased building for about a year. He has resumed building his handmade classical and flamenco guitars, and now shares the workshop of the guitar makers Mariano Tezanos and Teodoro Pérez, who were also former Ramirez luthiers, and old friends.

(bron: Zavaletas)

Felix Manzanero, Madrid 2001

Flamenco

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Felix Manzanero

The Spanish luthier Felix Manzanero was born in Madrid in 1937. He had learned a little about guitar making from Modesto Borreguero (1893-1969)-- who been trained by Manuel Ramirez (1864-1916)-- and was a friend of the family. So, at the age of 14, when he learned that the Ramirez shop was looking for someone, he applied. Felix Manzanero began his apprenticeship under José Ramirez II (1885-1957) doing varnishing and building bandurrias, and working along side Alfonso Benito and Jose Ramirez III, the only others in the shop. He recounts how he secretly made his first guitar out of scraps of wood he saved. When Ramirez saw it, he was impressed, and then allowed Felix to build guitars, eventually promoting him to a master craftsman. After 12 years there, Felix started his own business and workshop.

Felix Manzanero is one of the foremost luthiers of classical and flamenco guitars in the Madrid school. His classical guitars have won such prestigious prizes as First Place in Acoustics in the Concurso Internacional de Maestros Guitarreros in Tarbes, France in 1989. Manzanero is mentioned as among the best guitar makers in Spain in books by Cano, Evans, Mairants, Morish, and Urlik. I would concur.

His flamenco and classical guitars are completely handmade using traditional methods, and the finest quality woods. The wood he uses is at least 25 years old, giving guitars a special sound, and guaranteeing they won't crack or warp.

(bron: Zavaletas)

José Ramirez III, Madrid 1993

Flamenco

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José Ramirez III

José Ramirez III was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1922, and was only three when his father returned to Spain to take over the workshop on Concepción Jerónimo 2 in Madrid. Apprenticing with his father, through the difficult times of the world depression and Spain Civil War, José III soon proved to be a tireless investigator of the instrument, and an able business man. Under his supervision, the workshop grew not only into a major enterprise, but José III recruited and trained a host of apprentices--many of whom worked in his shop for years, and many of whom have since become famous luthiers in their own right: Paulino Bernabé, Felix Manzanero, Manuel Contreras, Manuel Rodriguez, Ignacio M. Rozas, Manuel Caceras, Miguel Malo Martinez, José Romero, and José Ramirez IV to name but a few. José Ramirez III is also generally credited with the introduction of cedar as a tone wood. During the 1960s, as high quality German spruce became hard to find, and increasingly expensive, José III discovered and promoted western red cedar by building his both his 1a and 2a models with cedar tops, and by convincing great artists to use them. When Segovia began playing a Ramirez in the 1960s, it became the guitar that every aspiring guitarist wanted.

(bron: Zavaletas)

Ricardo Sanchis Carpio,Valencia 1978

Flamenco

Ricardo Sanchez Carpio

The Ricardo Sanchis dynasty of guitar makers was founded in 1915 by Ricardo Sanchis Nacher (1881-1960) a talented luthier with close ties with the shops Manuel Ramirez and Domingo Esteso. The Ricardo Sanchis factory is now headed by his grandson, Ricardo Sanchis Carpio, born (1937). Ricardo's father died when he was but 18 months old, and so he was brought up and trained as a guitar maker by his grandfather. Aside from this informal instruction, Ricardo has a masters in guitar construction (1970). Recently, adding another generation of luthiers to the Sanchis family, Ricardo's sons, David and Herman Sanchis Lopez, have joined the firm. Although their production line flamenco and classical guitars are still made under Ricardo's supervision, they are now marketed as "Guitarras Hermanos Sanchis Lopez," and the "Ricardo Sanchis Carpio" label is reserved for their handmade models of classical and flamenco guitars.

Although his shop employs 12 craftsmen, produces about 1200 guitars a year, much of the work is still done by hand, machinery being limited to milling wood and finishing. The Sanchis shop is modern in the sense that it is specially designed to control humidity and to provide the optimum conditions for building guitars. As his factory is located within minuets of the warehouses which supply wood to all of Spain's guitar makers, routinely he is first to select woods from new shipments. Ricardo Sanchis also has developed his own secret formula of French polish--without oils that dampen the guitar's vibrations--that gives his guitars superior acoustic characteristics and aesthetics.

(bron: Zavaletas)