One of the most talked-about Torres guitars is the guitar which Llobet owned and played for a part of his career.  This guitar has been recorded and copied, examined and published and, quite recently, played in concert.  It was difficult to examine because of the tornavoz but we did get some very good information.  This badly shot video shows some of the tools we used to take measurements of the different guitars at the Barcelona museum.

(I need to learn to choose between handheld shots or tripod shots but never drag the tripod around the way I did here)  Most of the wooden tools were made by my neighbour Thomas Holt (also a guitar maker).

One of the pictures show a method for reading the original dome of the top.  The straightedge is placed on the edge of the guitar in an attempt to follow the angle which the lining was planed at, or the peones (individual blocks) in other cases,were glued at.  A measurement is taken at the other side and that straightedge will be tangent to the curve that the guitar was originally made with.  The information in that angle with respect to the theoretical plane of the top is enough to give us the curve. This is something that Rolf Eichinger used to do when examining historical instruments.  Here is Javier Riba´s first contact with this instrument.  Soundclip