Here are a few more details about the Torres guitar that I have been studying at the Segovia museum in Linares, Spain. It is very well-preserved and does not seem to have suffered any great modifications except for the restorations commented below. This makes it a great instrument for learning more about Torres and his style of working as well as getting an idea of his sound. This guitar doesn’t have the typical wear of long or hard playing, the damage seems to have come from humidity swings and perhaps an accident (broken side).

There appears to have been two restorations carried out by two different people (in the second case I use the term restoration very loosely). The treble rib has a very well executed patch which is cleated on the inside very cleanly. I really can’t see how that could have been done without removing the top or back and there is no evidence to my eyes of that. Now I realize that it would be possible with such a large patch to place the cleats and then place the patch in an operation similar to replacing a rib. There is some glue squeeze-out to support that theory. The same hand seems to have cleated a few cracks on the top, again very cleanly and professionally.

The french polish covers the rib repairs very nicely so it is safe to say that there was shellac re-applied after that repair. The top is harder to judge but I would imagine that the shellac was also touched up there. I am glad to say that the top was not sanded to give a perfect surface and re-varnished at least not on the last repair. The bass rib also has an ugly crack which was re-inforced the first time with musical notation paper as is typical of the time. As far as I can see that is the extent of the first restoration.

What I believe to be the second “restoration” would be better described as an attack. White glue was use to glue brown veneer over a top crack and the bass side rib crack. In both cases it was stuck over previous repairs and so is bonded only in some places and open in others. Another top crack is splinted but in making the saw cut the repairperson cut right up to one of the braces and cut right into it. The bridge was taken off or was lifting at some point in time and has been re-glued. In this case hide glue was usedevidenced by some squeeze-out which was not cleaned up. The bridge was slightly damaged at its thinnest points and this is what makes me think it was during the second intervention despite the use of hide glue. There is also more hide glue mess inside the guitar than I would expect from the first

restorer so maybe there were more interventions than two or some other possibility that I haven’t considered.The other thing that I think this person must have done is to fill and re-drill the holes for the tuning machines. In reality the slots are very badly cut also so the head is very hard to decipher.

The joints between each of the three back panels are cracked completely to the point of cracking the re-inforcements too. I was unable to hear any vibrational noise when tapping or playing so I would be willing to leave those as they are. The quality of the back wood is not very good and I think this has contributed to the oblique cracks which can be observed in the waist area.

This all sounds terrible but actually cracks in a 150-year-old guitar are not a big deal if they are immobilised. Speaking of which, there is a long crack from bridge to rosette which needs to be immobilised and another beside the fretboard. These are susceptible to shearing and moving while under string tension and can not be left as they are. The other thing that needs to be dealt with is the setup. The nut is broken and only half of it seems to  be present. The nut which is being used as a substitute has unevenly-spaced saw cuts in which the strings bind badly. The saddle has been supplemented with paper and wood veneer and needs to be replaced or supplemented in another way. The frets too should be examined and levelled if that is required. This is what I would recommend doing to this guitar in order make it playable. And this only because the owners wish to promote the Segovia legacy through concerts on his guitars. Any further work would cause the loss of the evidence of its history, including the hack who used the white glue on it. Of course it would be great to remove the veneer pasted over the cracks but in addition to going against the current trends of museum-style restoration, it might be very dangerous and necessitate removing the back. For a more in-depth view on current restoration criteria please see various publications by CIMCIM (International Committee of Museums and Collections of Instruments and Music) specifically by Robert Barclay. Another good source is “Adopting a policy of faithful copies of historically important musical instruments as an alternative to restoration.” (John Ray et. al.) in Wooden Musical Instruments: Different Forms of Knowledge. Paris 2018 Cité de la Musique.

According to Angelo Gilardino this guitar was given to Emilia Corral by her father. I don’t know if that was before or after she married Andrés Segovia but in all probability the guitar has been in that family since their marriage in 1962. Mr. Alberto López Viñan tells me that the guitar came to Linares 23 years ago. There is really no doubt in the minds of any of the parties that this is an authentic Torres. Apparently nothing has been done to the guitar in those 23 years. María José Tirado who is volunteering at the museum offered to play it for a taste of how it sounds. I had to record it with my digital camera so the sound is awful but  I think it is still worth hearing.

The Casa museo “Andrés Segovia” in Linares is shrine to the Segovia legacy and was established in 1995. He left his belongings to the city of Linares when he died and his tomb is there also in the museum. The documents, photographs, instruments and personal effects tell endless stories of a very special life. It is well worth a visit but get a start by visiting the website and the facebook page. I was invited to study the Torres guitar which is housed there but discovered a world of history and music. In terms of guitars alone the legacy is astounding. Two by Hauser, 1950 and 1958, a 1970 Manuel Rodríguez, two rosewood guitars by Marcelo Barbero 1948 and 1951 ( which was damaged beyond repair long before it ever came to Linares), two Ramírez from his later years, the Torres (1883) and there was a romantic era guitar in one of the display cases which I did not get a look at. In my internet searches I have found a few photographs and mention of some of these guitars but I think it is time we made an effort to publicise this great legacy and find a way to hear some of these fantastic guitars in concert. Alberto López Viñan and a small group of volunteers are working hard to promote this legacy and to catalogue photographs and documents and I am pleased to offer any help I can with the instruments. For more about the Torres guitar check back in a few days as I will be sharing more details. My thanks to all those in the photo: Leopoldo Neri, María José Tirado and Alberto López.

It was an honour to be asked to examine a Torres guitar which so far had escaped inclusion in the official (and unofficial) catalogue of his instruments. I hope to be able to share more information soon but so far I can offer these photos and details. I was able to examine the guitar at length and it shows striking similarities to La Invencible and other Torres guitars that I have studied. Among other aspects is the open transverse bar with the fans passing underneath. The typical pencil lines and the joints on the neck are all in the “right” place. The construction details all seem to match as well; re-inforcements, thicknesses and wood species. The age of the instrument seems to be about right although I have no method of solid confirmation for that. Before examining the instrument I was a bit sceptical because of the green colour used in the rosette and the fact that the rosette is exactly like SE 105 but my doubts were greatly lessened after the internal examination. Back and sides are what the guitar-makers here in Granada call sicomoro. One translation is sycamore but what they refer to is basically maple with no figure.  One of the things that makes me think that this could only be Torres is the origin of the guitar and the length of time that it has been in the same hands; possibly since 1962.

I usually write here with the guitarist or guitar-maker in mind or at the very least someone with in interest in woodworking. However, the other day I was explaining the concepts of “quarter-sawn” and “split billets” to a layman and there were a lot of things that I took for granted. I am going to try to explain those concepts here. First let me clarify a few definitions. When I want to use a piece of spruce I look at the fibre of the wood and the tree rings. There are many other considerations but in terms of structure that is it. The fibre or grain is what runs along the length of a tree and very often along the length of a piece of wood. A splinter in your finger is a short length of fibre. If you work along the grain (or against the grain) that is the dimension I am talking about. Tree rings are the lines that you see on the end grain of a board; circular but on a piece from a larger tree the sections of a circle can look straight. When I use spruce for tops or bracing and cedar for necks and braces I usually want wood that is cut perfectly along the fibre in the length and I want the tree rings to be sitting perpendicular to the plane of the neck or the plane of the top. In the photos of the bookshelf below you can see circular tree rings on one board and perpendicular tree rings on the other.

bookshelf1

bookshelf2

The question is how do I get wood which is cut along the grain and has the tree rings in the configuration I am looking for? The only way to cut your wood along the grain is to split it and then use that surface as a reference. You have to correct it a bit because it will neither be flat nor smooth. As for perpendicular tree rings it is just a question of cutting the wood so that the width of the board ends up being a radius of the circular section of the tree. The way to do that is to rift-saw your tree. If you quarter-saw a tree you will end up with some boards that are a perfect radius and the rest will be close. This is why many folks refer to perpendicular tree rings in wood as quarter-sawn wood even though this is “incorrect”. Rift-sawn actually gets misused as well probably because quarter-sawn is taking its place. The problem is that the words refer to the process but we want to talk about the result so we use the best word we have. Flat-sawn gives you wood like you see in the bookshelf photos above, some good, some not so good but there is no waste. Most applications that use wood will use wood with any ring orientation, not so for instrument-making. A quarter-sawn top is stiffer across the grain and so can be worked thinner and lighter which is desirable for sound production. Quarter-sawn wood will also react less to humidity changes and so will lose less volume over the years across the width (less likely to crack) and will warp less. Wood cut along the fibre of the tree is stronger and stiffer along the grain and theoretically will transmit sound better. It is also easier to carve when you scallop the braces or carve the shape of the neck. We are always looking for maximum responsiveness, maximum strength and minimum mass. (This is a massive generalization but useful here.)

guitar top

Above is a photo of a guitar top’s edge which shows the tree rings perpendicular to the width of the top so they are vertical to the plane of the top. I am including a video which shows a board which I split in order to see how the fibre runs and there you can see the tree rings portraying how I will have to modify the cut to get “quarter-sawn” braces out of it. In the photo below of the thicker brace you can see the final result that I am going for in cutting braces. I want the rings to be tall and parallel to the height while for a top I want the same “vertical” orientation and parallel to the wide dimension.

In conclusion, if you can split your own wood and examine the rings you will always have perfectly cut wood. If you are examining the wood on a completed instrument there are indications that a top has perpendicular tree rings (the appearance medullar rays) and that a top was cut following the split line (the reflections on a bookmatched top). You can use these tricks when choosing tonewood which is almost always sold with cut, not split surfaces.