1887 Antonio de Torres SP/MH

Built the year before Francisco Tarrega's favorite Torres guitar (SE 114), this guitar (SE 105) is one of the great masterpieces of Torres' output for its quality of sound, condition and historical importance. It’s a medium-sized guitar, braced with 5 fans and a 635mm scale so very comfortable and easy to play – it was also re-fretted recently - the fresh setup makes it play with maximum ease. It has an amazing, full sound, very rich with great texture in every note, but also very clear. It has a sensitive dynamic range and color palette, so it’s incredibly easy to separate melody lines from accompaniment and bass parts - the guitar is simply very friendly to the hands and almost plays by itself. When evaluating the sound of a guitar like this, it's difficult to tell where the genius of Torres ends; and the accumulated years of being played by great artists begins. This instrument is truly a marvel of guitar making history.

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 are today regarded as the foundational basis of the modern guitar. Most or nearly all, of Torres’ structural and tonal improvements are still in use by all the top builders of the current generation. The impact these instruments made on successive generations of guitar makers is no less impressive – still to this day, the overwhelming influence of Torres and his work remains more pervasive in the guitar making community than ever before, thanks largely to the research efforts and masterclass training courses that have been Jose Romanillos’ focus over the past several decades. In Torres’ own day, the leading players such as Julian Arcas and Francisco Tarrega were already performing on his masterpieces, and successive generations of players over the 20th century continued to play them. Although increasing values on Torres over the past many decades has resulted in their placement largely within sphere of collectors, they are still highly desirable for many top concert players and occasionally make their way into the recording studio. Pepe Romero, Wulfin Lieske and Marc Teicholz, among others, have brought them to life in recorded sound and we all hope this trend continues in the future, especially as more Torres instruments come to the public’s attention.