2012 John Ray "1892 Torres" SP/MP

This 2012 John Ray "1892 Torres" is a spruce and maple classical guitar made in Granada, Spain (label No. 157), modeled on Antonio de Torres' SE 153 and built to recapture the voice of an antique Torres.

A Replica of the 1892 Torres SE 153

We present here a beautiful, meticulously built replica of a late second-epoch Torres by Granada-based luthier John Ray. It is based on an original Torres, SE 153 from 1892, the last year of Torres' life, which John has personally inspected, photographed and measured. The intention with this guitar has been to make an authentic aesthetic replica and at the same time to get as close to the original sound as possible.

John Ray on the Sound of Antique Guitars

Any slight deviations from the original measurements have been made in an attempt to come as close to the Torres sound as possible. As John has told us, "I believe that in order to approach the sound of antique guitars (good ones of course) we need to take into account the aging that the wood has undergone since the instrument was built. Wood loses some of its mass and becomes drier and lighter after 100+ years. In my opinion the thicknesses must be reduced slightly if we wish to get that sound we are looking for."

An Aged Torres Sound for Tárrega, Granados and Albéniz

The resulting sound is indeed an older, more "aged" sound which most luthiers today find nearly impossible to reproduce. It is perfectly appropriate for playing late 19th-century music, particularly of Tárrega, Granados and Albéniz – and guitarist Javier Riba has recorded an entire album of Albéniz on this same model. Although used, it is in excellent condition with only 1 small crack in the lower part of the back, repaired internally with glue.

John Ray: From Edmonton, Canada, to Granada

John Ray was born in 1965 and grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. After a degree in linguistics in Montréal, his passion for playing the guitar led him in 1989 to Andalucía, the birthplace of the modern Spanish guitar, determined to learn guitar making from the masters there. Teaching English paid the bills while he built his first guitar on his kitchen table – and what he expected to take a year took ten.

Teachers and the Granada Tradition

Many makers in Granada opened their doors to John, including José Ángel Chacón Tenllado, Jonathan Hinves and Antonio Marín Montero, but his key teacher was the late Rolf Eichinger, who took him in in 1999 and helped him establish the fundamentals of his craft. Guitarists such as Javier Riba, Evaristo Valenti and Carles Trepat have helped guide his work, and his repair and restoration of historic instruments – by Torres, Laprevotte, Barbero, Lorca, Pagés, Vicente Arias and Santos Hernández, among others – has given him a close knowledge of the great guitars of the past. Today John builds with well-aged timbers, hot hide glue and very traditional methods.