Louis Panormo was a violin
builder who later made guitars. Panormo violins and bows
are very expensive today. While in London, Fernando Sor
showed Panormo the Spanish guitars he preferred such as
Martinez and Pages. Panormo made guitars under Sor's
direction, to his requirements after the earlier Spanish
instruments, as cited in Sor's method. Panormo labels
stated his guitars were "The only maker in the Spanish
style" - which may have been true, only in London. Thus,
Panormo guitars were more or less copies of older Spanish
designs.
Panormo produced a large quantity of instruments, many of
which still survive. They vary in quality considerably,
with some players suggesting they are fantastic concert
guitars, while others claim the tone is harsh and thin.
Replica instruments typically sound close to a modern
guitar sound, but with some "period" tone. Many modern
luthiers provide fine reproductions of Panormo guitars.
Various members of the Panormo family were involved in
building guitars. Certain experts can tell, based on the
label and construction, which Panormo member made the
guitar. The Louis Panormo instruments are the most
collectable. In addition, the Panromo workshop produced
large numbers of instruments of more simple materials and
construction: ladder braced, with painted necks, smaller
bodies, and one transverse brace: these instruments are not
as valuable to collectors as the Louis Panormo's. They are
known as the 'French Model' in England. However, many of
them sound good (in fact I tried one once), use in some
cases better varnish than the Louis P.'s, and were
customized to order - which is not indicative of a
'factory' instrument. It is literally impossible to know to
what extent Louis or others may have been involved in the
construction, some 175 years later, and there is some
debate among experts on the topic.
Panormo used fan bracing, but he did not invent this
construction technique; it was adopted from earlier Spanish
guitars. Likewise, the distinctive headstock had been used
on French and Spanish guitars for several years; it is a
very strong headstock and a superb design. The bridge
design was also used on earlier guitars, particularly
French guitars from 1800-1820. Panormo's main claim to fame
was not innovation, but rather being an excellent luthier
in the Spanish style, and his affiliation with composer and
virtuoso Fernando Sor for whom he built guitars.
Hermann Hauser
II 1959
After four years of
apprenticeship at the state-run vocational school for
building violins in Mittenwald, Hermann Hauser II started
working in his father´s workshop in 1930. In the course of
the perennial collaboration between father and son, all
instruments were signed by Hermann Hauser I. After more
than 20 years in the job of building guitars, Hermann
Hauser II took over his father´s business in October 1952.
From this moment on, and lasting until 1983, instruments
were signed by Hermann Hauser II. The first guitar signed
by Hermann Hauser II was number 500. His last guitar is
probably number 1050.
Hermann Hauser II especially continued to develop Hermann
Hauser I´s classical instruments and defined specific forms
through intensive relationship with guitar virtuosi. His
guitars were ordered by the same virtuosi that already
played his father´s guitars, and by artists living in
Hermann Hauser II´s present. Based on tradition and the
collaboration with his father, this is how exquisite
advancements and new developments evolved. Just like his
father did, Hermann Hauser II cultivated the personal and
amicable relations to guitarists. Andres Segovia, Julian
Bream, Django Reinhart and many others highly appreciated
the hospitality and the instruments of Hermann Hauser II.
One of his most important instruments was manufactured in
1957. Julian Bream played this instrument from 1959 to
1963, and in the year of 1960, he recorded music of
Albeniz, Scarlatti, Berkley, Rodrigo, Frescobaldi, Ravel
and Rousell with it. You can listen to this guitar on a
record of the edition “The Art of Julian Bream“.
Gregory Byers
1996
Like many
members of the post-war baby boom, I grew up believing
there were no limits to the direction my life might take,
and no compelling reason to constrain my path early on. I
tried different things. I began college at UC Berkeley as
an architecture major, quit school, worked in a
biochemistry lab, returned my draft card and joined the
Vietnam war resistance movement (narrowly avoiding prison
on a technicality after refusing induction into the army),
hitch-hiked through Europe (never got to Spain), went to
pottery school and spent several years as a stoneware
potter. After returning to school in biology, I traveled a
few more twists and turns of the road, and ended up in
graduate school where I earned a PhD in Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. Even
then, I didn't look at my work as a career choice. I saw
graduate school as an interlude from pottery with a chance
to learn how to confront the natural world not just on a
spiritual level, which I felt deeply, but also from a place
of rational inquisitiveness. I was awarded a National
Science Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowship to pursue my
dissertation on the evolution of sex in plants.
In 1979 I took a break from my own work and spent half a
year in Puerto Rico working on hummingbird-flower community
ecology. It was here that I, an old steel-string
folkie/rocker, fell for the nylon string guitar. I met an
ancient luthier named Velasquez (no relation to the one you
may know) whose hillside house was perched on stilts over
an open-air workshop. He was backed up two years with
orders for guitars and cuatros at $200 a piece. I bought a
cheap factory guitar that he had acquired in a trade for
the same $200 I would have spent on his, and left with the
conviction that I would make one myself one day.
A little more than a year later, with my dissertation work
completed but for the final written form, I engaged in the
ultimate displacement activity and built that guitar. Once
completed, I showed it to Tom Patterson, the new
teacher in the guitar department at the U. of A. He
encouraged me to do more. This was early April in 1981, and
a poster on Tom's door advertised the Guitar
81 festival in Toronto, where José
Romanillos would be giving a weeklong workshop at the end
of June. Having read an article about him and another by
him, I knew I had to go. Small problem: my incomplete
dissertation. I didn't want to leave it hanging and I
suspected a big intersection coming up on life's highway.
So I pulled over and re-fuelled: in the space of six weeks
I wrote and defended my dissertation, and since then I have
never looked back.
Romanillos was (is!) wonderful. A deeply spiritual man, he
showed me that lutherie is more than just gluing sticks
together. Inspired by the greatness of both his artistry
and spirit, I found my calling as a luthier. He gave me
reason to think my life's work could touch the creative,
the spiritual, the rational in equal measure. This is what
I had been looking for. In the intervening years my view
hasn't faltered or changed, struggle though it has been at
times. I developed my woodworking skills by building
furniture during the first years, and took time out from
guitar making to design and build the house I live in with
my family. Along the way I also became strongly influenced
by John Gilbert, who was kind enough to offer encouragement
and advice on numerous occasions. Beyond these two, my
biggest influences are the players who have evaluated my
guitars. The most important thing an aspiring builder can
do is go to the best players he/she can find and listen --
truly listen -- to how they sound and what they say. Listen
critically and listen to criticism! I currently construct
about 12 guitars each year, and have built over 200
classical guitars since 1984.
I
have given presentations on various aspects of the craft at
conventions of the Guild of American
Luthiers (1986, 1995, 1998, 2004), at the College of
the Redwoods Woodworking School (1993), and at the
Healdsburg Guitar Festival (1997, 1999). In 1999, I was a
featured speaker at La Guitarra California, in San Luis
Obispo. I was invited to the Joaquín Rodrigo Centenary
Luthiers' Competition in Aranjuez, Spain (November, 2000),
which my wife Susan and I attended. I have published
several articles in American
Lutherie, most notably a mathematical
solution to the problem of intonation in fretted
instruments. This work was done in collaboration with
guitarist Cem Duruöz. We successfully applied a
theoretical approach to the age-old problem of making
fretted instruments play in tune. Experimental testing
based on the model has yielded an improved method for
solving intonation problems, which I apply to all my
guitars. Currently, I'm really excited to do some
experimental work on soundboard design.
Josè Luis
Romanillos & Son “La Rosa” 1999
Jose L. Romanillos Vega was born in Madrid in 1932 where he
learnt the craft of cabinet making from the age of
thirteen. He moved to England in 1956 to work in
psychiatric hospitals in Epsom and North London. He made
his first guitar in London in 1961 and in 1970 he moved to
Semley, Wiltshire, where he began his professional career
as a guitar maker, encouraged by Julian Bream who played
Jose L. Romanillos guitars for many years. In 1987 he
published the biography of Antonio de Torres, the first
book written about the Spanish guitar maker.
He has lectured on the history of the Spanish guitar as
well as given courses in many countries on the development
and construction of the Spanish guitar. Although he has
retired from guitar making, he keeps in close contact with
his son Liam Romanillos, who continues with the family
tradition in Gillingham, Dorset.
He has settled in Guijosa, Spain, where since 2001 he has
organized, with his son Liam, a Course on Spanish guitar
making. He also continues with his research into the
development and the history of the vihuela de mano and the
Spanish guitar.
Robert S. Ruck
2004
Robert Ruck’s need for a
quality instrument for his classical guitar studies
instigated a career that has spanned four decades, produced
over 700 guitars, and established him as one of the world’s
most respected luthiers. In the mid-’60s, after playing a
series of low-end instruments, he had a guitar custom made
by a fine woodworker in his hometown of Miami. The finished
product was less than what Ruck had hoped for, but his
regular visits to the shop while the instrument was under
construction gave him much insight into the basics of
guitar building. Ruck was learning metalwork at the time.
"If you have fundamental woodworking and metalworking
skills, a short tour in a guitar maker’s shop is all you
need to gain a fundamental understanding of guitar
construction," he says, "although you don’t pick up the
techniques and subtleties." A few years later, at the age
of 20, Ruck built his first guitar, which he sold to a
friend, and he has worked exclusively as a luthier ever
since.
Initially Ruck was influenced by the designs of the great
European makers, such as Fléta and Ramírez, and he was
particularly impressed by the sound of Segovia’s Hauser.
"It registered in my mind as the ideal guitar sound," he
recalls. "But I never felt it was acceptable to take
someone else’s design and simply copy it. You have to give
it your own personal stamp." So while his early guitars
were favorably compared to Ramírez instruments in terms of
volume and responsiveness, Ruck’s personal stamp evolved
out of trying to eliminate the shortcomings he felt were
inherent in his designs. Thus began a long (and continuing)
process of experimenting with a wide variety of design
ideas. "Too often, words on paper are treated as fact by
people without hands-on experience," says Ruck. "Something
I’ve tried to teach is to get the thing itself in front of
you and learn about it. All the preconceptions about
building can really just get in the way."
According to Ruck, these preconceptions filter down to
guitar buyers as well. He cites players’ insatiable
appetite for Brazilian rosewood as an example. "They have
this idea that a fine guitar has
to be made out of
Brazilian rosewood," says Ruck. "They get so channeled into
this thinking that they overlook other things that might
serve them better. Would John Williams be any less of a
player if Brazilian rosewood wasn’t available? Would you
enjoy his performances any less? I don’t think so. Some
years ago I just ceased offering Brazilian rosewood, and my
life as a maker is a lot better because of it. I don’t have
to struggle to use the dregs, which is what’s out there
today."
Ruck’s
latest design breakthrough is the addition of two extra
soundholes in the top side of the guitar’s upper bouts. The
idea began with a discovery he made while building his
first instrument. Impatient to hear it, he strung it up
while the top was temporarily fastened to the sides with
tentellones, devices used to clamp the top and back to the
sides during the gluing process and before binding. Despite
the instrument’s poor materials, Ruck recalls, "the sound
was incredible." More than 30 years later, Ruck heard about
similar experiments being carried out by other builders
(see "The Holey Grail," February) and recalled this
incident. He began cutting 20-millimeter, reinforced holes
into either side of the neck heel. "The player hears the
guitar in a richer, more balanced fashion," he says, and
the experience of playing is enhanced. Ruck has built 13
guitars with multiple soundholes and feels that the
popularity of this feature can only grow. He has also
licensed a classical guitar design that incorporates these
"acoustic ports" to Kenny Hill of La Mancha guitars. La
Manchas are produced in a factory in Paracho, Mexico, along
with classical guitars based on the designs of Fléta,
Ramírez, and other famed makers, and they’re sold at lower
prices than hand-built classical guitars. Robert Ruck now
lives in Hansville, Washington and builds his guitars in
nearby Poulsbo. Despite his prolific output of 25 to30
guitars per year and a four- to five-year waiting list, his
construction process is far from an assembly line. "As I
bring more and more experience to the process, I find there
are more details to attend to than ever before," he
explains. "I discover some new relationship that was always
there, but I hadn’t seen it before. It’s a never-ending
source of stimulus."
Jim
Redgate 2006
There
are guitar makers who basically copy and improve old and
famous designs and there are those who introduce new and
innovativebuilding techniques. Jim Redgate classical
guitars appears to fall into the latter category. Both are
legitimate ways of working and both have their classical
guitar playing devotees.Based in Adelaide, Jim Redgate only
builds fifteen or so guitars a year. He has a Bachelor of
Music Performance in Classical Guitar from the Elder
Conservatorium.He's built guitars since 1984 and his skill
as a guitarist means that he has the rare ability to build
each guitar from the perspective of the player. Jim
Redgate's clients include professional guitarists and
guitar collectors from all over the world.Jim Redgate
developed unique design features such as the arched back
with no bracing. This is designed to increase the guitar's
volume and improve the projection of the instrument.There's
also the under soundboard carbon fiber honeycomb lattice
bracing system, a development unique to his classical
guitars. I assume that this gives superior strength and
stability without adding weight although that's not made
clear on Redgate's web site.
Air seasoned wood used in the
building of Jim Redgate guitars is hand picked from Western
Red Cedar, German Spruce, Brazilian Rosewood, Honduras
Mahogany, Spanish Cedar and Ebony.He uses almost
exclusively from Brazilian Rosewood for the back and sides.
The soundboard that he builds can be in Cedar or Spruce.
The lattice braced instruments can be fitted with standard
or elevated fingerboard upon request. Also optional is a
fitted armrest.The beautiful Jim Redgate designed rosette
is hand crafted from native Australian woods. The colours
of the inlay represent the Australian bush. The red Jarrah
symbolises the central Australian desert. The green
represents the leaves of the eucalyptus tree and the straw
colour the dry grass of the bush. Australian Aboriginal
artwork is represented by the outer snake like motif.The
demand for Jim Redgate classical guitars is growing with
guitars being shipped to all corners of the globe. With
only fifteen a year being made it's not going to be easy to
get your hands on one.