Author Archives: johnray

Manuel Ramirez 1911

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I was recently asked to restore a Manuel Ramirez from 1911 that had once belonged to Francisco Calleja.  This guitar has a long and lively history of concerts and accidents, restorations and modifications.  Here you can find more information, in Spanish, about this guitar.  Some time between 1955 and 1966 the Banchetti brothers modified the guitars from a 7-string to a 6-string and there were extensive repairs made later by Hilario Barrera between 1966 and 1968.

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My first task was to decide with the owner Carlos Blanco if we should undertake a complete restoration (and surely change the sound) or rather limit ourselves to what was necessary for the conservation and playability of the guitar.  Often what is so appreciated in older instruments is the sound that comes with age, so we decided that we didn’t want to change that.  There is something to be said for architectural renewal of an instrument and giving it new acoustic life but the sound does change often for the better but it does change..  One reason that we decided not to do that is that it had already been done in one of the repairs that it had undergone and the result was not what I am sure they had hoped for.  Most of the bracing on the top was “new” and this new bracing had failed to support the doming fo the top.  P1030636

guides

GUIDES

Although I had to change the machine heads, file the fret ends and stop the bridge from coming up the most critical part of this job was to repair a new crack in the soundboard and to immobilize some old loose bits.P1030631  One thing that happens often with old guitars is that the top next to the  purfling or the rosette will pull up and vibrate.  On this guitar there were loose parts of the top in the lower bout and near the rosette.  This sort of problem is difficult because you can’t just put a cleat on, there is usually some sort of re-inforcement too close by.  In the second case I put the re-inforcement on the bar under the rosette so as to mitigate the added mass.  As for the crack that needed fixing I wanted to use as little mass as possible and to centre the cleats on the crack as closely as possible.  Pyramid-shaped cleats are easy to make if you take the back off and can work un-encumbered to give them that shape after you glue them on.   In order to achieve the same effect I prepared them all at the same time and then cut them all the way through. making diamonds Of course then I needed a caul to glue them on with.  At the same time I wanted to make sure that the grain was correctly oriented so I made something that would be easy to control as I worked blind.  P1030736What I used to centre the cleats was a combination of two methods, one being the thread which I pulled up through the crack and the other being two temporary guides which I placed inside the guitar. P1030728 This is common in restoration, you spend a lot of time preparing so that everything goes smoothly but then when you start working it goes more quickly.  Speed is important as we are obliged to use hot hide glue on instruments which were built with it in the first place.  It is also relevant that vestiges of this glue will not impede future restorations.  IMG_20140210_095551_0This means that if in the future someone thinks that my restoration criteria were flawed they can take off what I added and start again.  Here you can see the three cleats that I used for the crack.  You can also see some of the previous work.  I thought we should have a recording of this guitar just to see what the sound is like after so many years.

Conference in Paris “WoodMusICK

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The opening conference of the Cost Action FP1302 “WoodMusICK” took place in Paris on February 27 and 28 and I was invited as an instrument-maker and restorer representing Spain.

“The main objective of this COST Action will be to improve the conservation of our wooden musical instruments heritage by increasing interaction and synergy between wood scientists and other professionals (including instrument makers) applying wood scientists, curators, organologists and makers towards the study, conservation and restoration of wooden instrument collections of artistic and historic interest, and to offer a novel and reliable, independent and global knowledge on these collections”, from the webpage of WoodMusICK. 

Besides being asked to lend our expertise to the rest of the researchers we were asked to make proposals for directions that work should take in achieving the main objective.  I proposed that we develop a restoration protocol for the guitar because for other instruments such a protocol already in place (to varying degrees) and that the training and formation of instrument-makers and restorers be developed at the European level.  This is basically because in this country many of the initiatives which have been proposed or put into practice are seriously flawed.IMG_9193

The other thing that we were asked to do was of course present the work that we had done previously.  I spoke briefly about my work with historical guitars and the three years I have spent working on the book about the Granada guitar-makers.  The Granada provincial government put together a draft of the book so that I had something to show for our efforts.

Highlights for me of the two days were the presentations by Paul Poletti, Claudia Fritz and Renato Meucci as well as a visit with Bruno and Catherine Marlat.  Mr. Poletti is a specialist in keyboard instruments in Barcelona at ESMUC and talked about reverse engineering historical instruments.   Ms. Fritz presented her latest research with historical vs. new violins which takes off from her polemic study of last year.  Renato Meucci presented a very well-developed charge that we are dating, identifying and valuing old violins based on the opinions of a small group of people (appraisers/dealers) who have a vested interest in over-valuing or under-valuing (depending on the case) these instruments and suggested the use of more scientific methods.

Musical Education

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My wife grew up in a little mountain village (Castril, Spain) which at the time was four hours by bus from a small provincial capital (Granada).  Obviously things are different today but it still takes us two hours to get by car out to see her family when we visit. The nearest conservatory is halfway between Castril and Granada so it is a real sacrifice to get your child started with music.  The weekend of February 28 we went to the the Carnival celebrations and the evening was kicked off by the town’s new marching band, some of the members of which are under 10 years old.  A group of the youngest players played some solos in unison as part of some of the more upbeat pieces and the parents listened enthralled.  I had never realized the power to educate (in so many ways) that a band has.  (With a good director) you are teaching the children respect, working together, listening to the other instruments, responsibility in caring for their instruments and of course having others are depend on them can be very motivating.  My niece and nephew here are in the band and what they have learned to play in a very short time is very impressive.  I have always preferred the guitar or bowed instruments and if I had given much thought to what I might “offer” to my 6-year-old I had always thought in terms of those instruments.  Well now I am thinking about a wind instrument in a marching band because of what I see these kids learning and enjoying through the town band.

Paco de Lucia

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The news of Paco de Lucia’s death caught me driving to the airport on my way to a conference http://woodmusick.org/ in Paris and I just got back.  I was not a flamenco aficionado by any means as I learned to play the guitar but I am not sure that any flamenco at all was being listened too in my neck of the woods.  When I moved to Spain in 1989 wanting to become a guitar-maker flamenco was present everywhere in the culture here and became a part of my life.  I took some lessons, built my first guitar out of cypress and began listening to Paco de Lucía.  I had one cassette on which he accompanied a singer whose name I can’t remember and I was completely hooked.   I am sorry to see Paco go so soon.