foto: Marcus Toscano

La tasación de violines es un oficio muy establecido y las compañías de seguros utilizan estas tasaciones para fijar el valor de un instrumento asegurado. En el mundo de la guitarra los valores son mucho más bajos y los tasadores no podemos cobrar tanto como cobran los que tasan violines. Sin embargo es un trabajo muy interesante y ultimamente he tenido la suerte de hacer tasaciones de guitarras muy buenas. Obviamente para hacer un trabajo así es conveniente conocer muy bien el trabajo del constructor en cuestión. Extiendo certificados de autenticidad además de tasaciones. Es imprescindible ver la guitarra en cuestión para poder dar mi opinión. Ultimamente he trabajado con la casa de tasaciones Taxo, empresa del Grupo Tinsa. Si tiene interés en mis servicios pueden contactar a través de Taxo o conmigo directamente.

Violins appraisers have been around for ages and their appraisals are used by insurance companies to establish the insured value of instruments. For various reasons vintage guitars do not command the sort of prices that violins do so the market for guitar appraisers is not so big and the fees charged are not so high. However, it is a very interesting job and lately I have appraised some very interesting guitars. I offer certificates of authenticity as well as declarations of value although I limit my work to the historic guitar-makers that I am most familiar with. In any case, I cannot offer either service without first examining the guitar in person. Recently I did some work for Taxo, is a company which is part of Tinsa Group. If you have a guitar you would like to value or authenticate you can contact me directly or go through Taxo.

Vinauro es una tienda de vino y galeria de arte en Granada. También hacen catas, exposiciones y talleres. El día 4 de enero van a ampliar su oferta con un velada de guitarra a cargo de Marcus Toscano. Marcus además de guitarrista es estudioso de la historia de la guitarra española.

I am a guitar-maker and although we do shape wood in a variety of ways I am not a sculptor. I have a good aesthetic sense and I can make wood obey my commands but I have only ever called myself an artisan. I don’t have that artistic sense necessary for creating images; not to mention I lack the specific skills to carve one of the most difficult woods. This image was created by Juan Antonio Carmona who works in the nearby village of Santa Fe.

Simplicio used modernist images or in some cases things that looked like they were inspired in Latin american mythology. Here the client asked for a specific image and I think we managed to fill the bill.

It is not uncommon to find guitars that show a dot of glue placed over the tip of the fan braces. This is more, almost a strap which must be designed to hold the brace end down with hide glue applied after the brace is shaped. This is another feature which I would not be willing to adopt on my own guitars but am happy to experiment with on this copy.

This ebony strip was used by García and Simplicio followed suit. It is not something that I would like to adopt for my personal models but I like my copies to be as authentic as possible. I have a few more photos of the very specific characteristics of Simplicio guitars and will upload them to future posts. I can’t believe how much time the little things are taking on this model, so many things are different.