1867 Antonio de Torres "FE 24" SP/MP

This 1867 Antonio de Torres is a spruce and bird's-eye maple classical guitar built in Seville, FE 24 in the Romanillos catalog – a premium first-epoch Torres with a tornavoz, ex Roberto Ramaugé and the Sheldon Urlik collection.

In the video above, Alan Mearns plays his arrangement of Isaac Albéniz's "Asturias (Leyenda)" on this guitar.

A First-Epoch Torres from Seville, ex Ramaugé and Urlik

This instrument was built in 1867, towards the end of the so-called "first epoch" while Torres was still working in Seville – its label gives his address there, "Calle de la Cerrajería, número 32". Numbered by José Romanillos as FE 24, this guitar was once owned by Roberto Ramaugé of Buenos Aires, who had been a student of several famous guitarists including Domingo Prat, Miguel Llobet and Andrés Segovia. It was also formerly housed in the Sheldon Urlik collection and featured on pages 2–5 of the 2nd edition of his book.

Bird's-Eye Maple, Checkerboard and Meander

Torres clearly built this guitar as one of his more "premium instruments" – it is highly decorated and uses choice materials, including a four-piece back of bird's-eye maple with black fillet strips in the seams. The soundboard is made from two unmatched pieces of spruce joined under the third string. The bridge is made of rosewood and has, in each wing, a decorative checkerboard square matching those in the rosette. Neck and head are made from Cuban cedar, and the headstock veneer is African ebony, inlaid with a "meander pattern" in the central strip. It is a full-sized instrument, completely "modern" by today's standards in terms of measurements and proportions – which, incredibly, remain the blueprint for all guitar makers ever since, with little to no modification from this basic design to the present day.

Restoration by Alan Perlman

This instrument is currently in excellent, concert-ready condition thanks to a careful and well-executed restoration job done several years ago by luthier Alan Perlman, who removed the back to properly access the underside of the top, back and sides (the tornavoz makes working through the soundhole almost impossible). While doing so he also replaced one of the sides with a piece that beautifully complements the original materials. The tuning machines were replaced with a set made by Rodgers of England for functionality; however, the original tuning machines remain with the guitar.

The Torres Sound and the Tornavoz

The sound is squarely that of the old world... and that which has haunted luthiers ever since in their quest to tap into the "Torres sound". It has a velvety texture, rich in concentrated overtones yet retaining great clarity at the core of every note. The body resonance is very deep, partly due to a device Torres used with some regularity – especially in the first epoch (including most famously in such guitars as "La Leona", FE 08, FE 13 ex Llobet, FE 17 ex Tárrega and others) – called a "tornavoz": a conical tube attached to the soundhole, which in this guitar adds a sonic boom to the bottom end and gives the trebles a brilliant, sparkling clarity. All in, this is a wonderful instrument, constructed with a level of artistry and craftsmanship that Torres reserved for his very best and most expensive works.

More on Antonio de Torres

For more on the life of Antonio de Torres, be sure to read his biography and this excerpt about the Torres sound from José Luis Romanillos's book "Antonio de Torres". We also have an interview between Pepe Romero and Kenny Hill about the master luthier. Also see Orfeo Magazine #9 – The 200th Anniversary of Antonio de Torres.

Antonio de Torres: The Stradivari of the Guitar

The name of Antonio de Torres (1817–1892) is to guitarists what the name of Antonio Stradivari is to violinists. Taken as a whole, the corpus of instruments made by this legendary maker's hand is today regarded as the foundational basis of the modern guitar. The impact that these guitars made on successive generations of luthiers is impossible to exaggerate – still to this day, most or nearly all of Torres' structural and tonal improvements are in use by all top contemporary builders.

The First and Second Epochs: Seville and Almería

Torres built his first great guitars in Seville, from the 1850s to about 1870 – his "first epoch", when his labels read "Calle de la Cerrajería, número 32". After some years away from the bench he took up guitar making again in his native Almería in 1875, and from then until his death in 1892 his labels say "Segunda Época", usually with the guitar's number written in by hand. In his biography of the maker, José Luis Romanillos catalogued the surviving instruments by these two periods, which is why Torres guitars are known today by numbers such as "FE 17" (first epoch) or "SE 114" (second epoch).

Played by Tárrega – and by Today's Artists

In Torres' own day, the leading players such as Julián Arcas and Francisco Tárrega were already performing on his masterpieces, and successive generations of players over the 20th century continued to play them. Although increasing values over the past several decades have placed them largely within the sphere of collectors, they are still highly desirable to leading professional players and occasionally make their way into the recording studio or even the concert stage. Pepe Romero, Stefano Grondona, Wulfin Lieske and Marc Teicholz, among others, have brought them to life in recorded and live sound, and we all hope this trend continues in the future, especially as more Torres instruments come to the public's attention.