2015 Federico Sheppard "Camino Dos Bocas" SP/AR

A 2015 "Camino Dos Bocas" classical guitar by Federico Sheppard, with a spruce top and African rosewood back and sides – a two-soundhole guitar after Francisco Simplicio, marked "59" on its label.

In the videos above, Pavel Steidl plays Losy's Gigue and Courante and Červenka's "Sarabande", Laura Mazón Franqui plays Brouwer's "Hika", Daniel Rodríguez Nazareth's "Odeon", Sondre Høymer Barrios's "Gavota al Estilo Antiguo", and Sven Lundestad's "Late at Night" and Sergio Assad's "Farewell" are played for Elite Guitarist – all on this guitar.

Two Soundholes, after Simplicio

Two soundholes – "dos bocas" – flank the fingerboard, which is slightly longer, with a full 20th fret. The design comes from Francisco Simplicio, who built several in the 1920s and early 1930s, and Federico has always kept a standard Simplicio and a "Dos Bocas" on hand. Although the label says 2015, this guitar stayed in his shop and was used for filming – including Pavel Steidl's performances in the "Spanish Sistine Chapel" – before he touched up the finish and sent it to us.

The Number 59

It belongs to a series built in his 59th year, hence the "59" on the label: Barrios, Esteso, Carulli and many others died at 59. The head carving comes from the famous Templar castle of Ponferrada – on the Camino, of course.

Sound

Built from his stock of long-aged wood, it has the singing, dark and mysterious voice of the early 20th-century Spanish schools.

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.