Building guitars is greatly satisfying and can be the perfect job or the perfect hobby. It is, however, rare that a maker is happy to churn out exactly the same thing time after time. Some expand into bowed instruments, others into period instruments and some just experiment and improve within the very constrained and limited classical guitar aesthetic. Since my beginnings I have been interested in the 19th century and how we got to the guitar we make today. My first copy was Antonio de Lorca and since then I have come across a number of instruments which have been so great or so unusual that I just had to make copies: Torres, Vicente Arias, Santos Hernández, Marcelo Barbero and Rolf Eichinger . The success of some of these copies, especially the Torres and the Santos, has brought me a reputation for this sort of work.

The current owners of La Invencible made by Antonio de Torres have asked me to make a new model which will be a copy of this great guitar. Please visit the website they have created in order to share this marvel of Torres’ work. Last month I travelled to Barcelona to photograph and measure every detail of this instrument. Aside from belonging to Federico Cano and being one of the higher quality instruments it is a fantastic-sounding guitar. I took photos and videos of the inside and outside and can safely say that the top is original, contrary to what a few jealous guitar-sellers have maintained. One of the defining features of this guitar is the open transverse bar below the soundhole. This allows some of the fan braces to extend up alongside the soundhole. Other relevant features include the minimal thicknesses of the top and sides and the typical seven strut configuración with two extra struts in a V on the outside of the fan.  Thank you so much Jordi and Carlos for the opportunity to study this wonderful guitar.