2010 Federico Sheppard "Morant - ex Barrios" SP/CSAR

A 2010 "Morant – ex Barrios" classical guitar by Federico Sheppard, with a spruce top and CSA rosewood back and sides – a replica of the "Morant" guitar Agustín Barrios played from 1936 to 1944.

In the videos above, Manuel Espinás plays Barrios's "La Catedral" and "Vals de la Primavera" on this guitar.

The "Juan Morant" of Barrios

Barrios bought the original in Madrid, at the Esteso workshop at Gravina 7, together with a 1934 Esteso, and kept both to the end of his life. Labeled "Juan Morant, San Vicente 56, Valencia", it was made by Ricardo Sanchis Nácher, a longtime associate of Esteso – a modest but ornate guitar that appears in many photos of Barrios in the Caribbean and El Salvador. The best preserved of his guitars, still with its original low action, it is in the Guzmán Museum in San Salvador, sold to the museum by Barrios's widow in October 1944.

Made for Brussels

These Barrios replicas were first made for an exhibition at the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels, for the concerts marking the 75th anniversary of the only formal concert Barrios gave in Europe, on November 7, 1934. This guitar is pre-owned: the previous owner installed a K&K Pure Classic pickup, and otherwise it is original and excellent, with only very mild playing wear and no damage or repairs.

Federico Sheppard: Luthier and Barrios Scholar

Federico Sheppard was born in Mexico City in 1955 and grew up in Pittsburgh. A geologist and later a sports-medicine chiropractor, he has built guitars since the late 1970s, and today he divides his time between Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Carrión de los Condes in northern Spain, where his workshop occupies a thousand-year-old church that is also a guitar school and concert hall; there he founded the Asociación Caminoartes. He writes and lectures for the Guild of American Luthiers, and one of his guitars appears in Sheldon Urlik's "A Collection of Fine Spanish Guitars".

The Guitars of Barrios and the Camino

Since 2005 Federico has studied the life and guitars of Agustín Barrios Mangoré. He has seen and measured the six main concert guitars Barrios played – two Simplicios, a "Morant", a José Ramírez I, a Sanfeliu and an Esteso – and builds replicas of them, inside and out. His "Camino" guitars draw on the art and pilgrim culture of the Camino de Santiago, which runs past his Spanish workshop.