Once again the idea for a post comes from one of the guitar forums: someone asking if a particular guitar is overpriced. Pricing is a very delicate issue for a guitar-maker or, if you consider us to be artists, for any artist at all. You can price yourself out of the market and then have to reduce your prices which can leave you looking very bad. On the other hand you can price too low and lose out on the clients who are looking for “the best guitar money can buy”. The truth is that these people are not usually serious musicians but rather dabblers of one sort or another. But like it or not, a very large number of customers for fine guitars are precisely the collector, the retiree who wants to start playing again, the frustrated guitarist who years ago became a doctor or a lawyer, and of course the wannabe guitarist who believes that if he can just find the right instrument he will be the next David Russell. The guitar appeals to a huge number of people and if you don’t need one as a tool of your trade but have the money that the average guitar-maker asks you may well find yourself in a position to afford a much more expensive one. I am not criticizing these people, after all there is no way that so many guitar-makers could survive if it weren’t for the amateurs buying fine guitars.

Mostly prices go up as the market allows which either means that clients are realizing that these guitars are great or someone (the maker or a dealer) is doing a fantastic marketing job. I think a majority of makers are all for raising their prices because they are almost always too low considering the amount of time invested and the years that it takes to get to a high level of craftsmanship and consistency. I know one exception and he happens to be the best-known maker in Granada. He holds the philosophy that guitarists should always be able to afford his guitars and so he has kept his prices relatively low to this day. Of course that means that most of us in Granada have to keep our prices quite low too as very few dare to charge more than the “godfather” of all of us.

So you keep raising your prices as much as you think you have a right to until one day, pricing is no longer an issue. Your waiting list is years long and the dealers are raising the prices with every guitar they buy from you. Then you discover that the fruits of your blood, sweat and tears are being bought and resold immediately by people who don’t even know how to play the guitar. You may not be the type to try to squeeze the highest possible price out of the client but knowing that an “investor” will buy the guitar and charge the client a much higher price for doing nothing is galling to say the least. So you raise your prices and thereby keep away the unscrupulous buyers and at the same time reduce your waiting list. I say this because while having a long list feels good and can provide some job security, it is much more inspiring to actually make guitarists happy in the short term. Guitarists, especially dedicated amateurs, profesionals, students and teachers are also looking for a more immediate satisfaction. They are rightly disappointed by a long wait time. For us it is immensely satifying to talk to the guitarist, have the guitarist play, find out what he or she is looking for, show the wood that you might use and then get to the guitar within a reasonable time (less than a year). Somehow with a longer wait time you lose the connection with these people. I have also known people to lose the connection with the builder and cancel the order.

Obviously clients shouldn’t be equating higher prices with higher quality but it is inevitable that the makers who have worked for years and found favour with professional guitarists will have progressively higher prices so you will have to pay for that “guarantee” that comes with their reputations. And it goes without saying that a sought-after maker will become that much more so when he stops working.

I am very pleased to see that the new Orfeo focusses on Granada and the most relevant makers here. We all try to get ourselves noticed and would love to be in the magazine but no one can deny the pervasive influence of Manuel Bellido and Antonio Marín, the mastery of Rafael Moreno’s work and the success of Paco Santiago. I can only congratulate the author for choosing his subjects with excellent criteria. These men have taught or influenced everyone working here today with only a few exceptions. As the younger makers come into their own the influence might be indirect and these makers might be called the teachers of our teachers. Rolf Eichinger, Jesús Bellido, René Barslaag, Juan Miguel Carmona and José López Bellido are just a few of those who have continued the tradition of informal (or even formal) teaching which Marín and Bellido perfected.

I became a guitar-maker partly because I was good with my hands and a bit of a loner but like almost every maker, I was in love with the guitar. That is what really decides it for you. Again, I am perhaps in the majority in that I began to play and then got interested in building. In my case I became aware very quickly that I would never become anything as a player but just couldn’t stay away from the guitar. So, what else can you do if you play but will never be great? Well, if you love the guitar, want to be involved in your community and have a talent for organising, you could start a guitar festival or get involved in one that is already functioning. Let me explain where this thought comes from:

Classifieds: (REAL) Guitar Administrators Wanted

I read this post recently even though it was published some time ago and it really struck a chord. I know a few guitarists who organize festivals in order to get more concerts for themselves by offering other festival directors concerts in turn. As Alvaro Mendizabal hints in the post this only serves to increase the mediocrity of these affairs and guitar concerts in general. I will reccommend that you read the above post in Classical Guitar Review as he makes the case very convincingly. I can also leave you with two very successful festivals organized by guitarists who are very clear where their talents lie.

Guitar Festival in Petrer, Spain

Tampere Guitar Festival in Finland

This story starts with the discovery by Javier Riba of a Vicente Arias guitar in Granada and his subsequent visit to my workshop for my impressions of the guitar. My examination of the guitar and subsequent refret of the guitar led to two things, a copy of the guitar made by myself and an article in the Spanish Guitar Society’s (SEG) journal “Roseta” authored by Javier Riba and myself. This is one of the many reasons Leopoldo Neri asked me to collaborate on this year’s monographic issue on Segovia for Roseta. Here is the table of contents so that you can see just how interesting this issue is. Sorry, only available in Spanish. In september of 2014 and thanks to the information of Julio Gimeno, I decided on the 1924 Santos in the collection of the Biblioteca Musical “Victor Espinós” in Madrid. This guitar was donated by Segovia to the library in 1932. I was able to learn a little about Santos, Segovia’s true opinion of him and a lot about this particular guitar. Just to give the article a bit more substance I decided to draw a full-size plan and include it in the article. One full day with my specialty tools turned out not to be enough and i had to go back to Madrid at a later date to fill in a few blanks which came up after I started building my first copy. There is nothing like an acid test to tell you what you are missing. As with anything worthy, this issue took a long time to put together but it is finally here. The magazine itself has a copy of the plan at page size just for illustration but not nearly so useful as the full-size ones.

The plan I drew is the property of the SEG so I only have permission to send it to readers of this issue. Once you have your issue of Roseta you can write to me and I will send you the file which will allow you to print the plans. johnguitar(at)johnguitar.com The file was designed to be printed “as is” with no adjustments necessary although it never hurts to use a ruler to check the x and y lines on each page. My co-author Elena González made the final drawing using drafting software.

Copies can be ordered from the Reno bookshop in Madrid or you can become a member of the SEG and receive the issues as they come out in return for your membership fee. This is a double issue so the price is higher than usual. I have already made a copy of this guitar and I can say that the thicknesses and measurements of this guitar work very well. I am working on the fourth copy now and I think I will be making this model for many years to come.