Romero Collection - 1886 Torres

Here’s the final guitar that will be featured in our upcoming event with Scott Tennant and Pepe Romero Jr. featuring guitars from the Romero collection that have inspired Pepe Jr. – an 1886 cypress and spruce guitar by Antonio de Torres. Pepe says “My father bought this Torres on my grandfathers advice 2 days before he passed away in 1996. The guitar has haunting basses and trebles that sing like only a guitar of over 120 years can do. It is as beautiful a sound as I’ve heard and packs plenty of power. It is an honor to be able to have a guitar like this to play and to hear. Torres deserves every bit of credit that he has earned, what a master!”

One of the amazing details about this guitar is that it has repairs made with discarded music from Celedonio Romero. Apparently Celedonio would often practice in Santos Hernandez’ workshop, so that Santos’ trash can was filled with discarded music – arrangements Celedonio would have been working on – and when Santos needed some paper for a repair he would grab it from the trash can. In this case, some of that music made its way into the guitar, as you can see in the photos. I don’t imagine that either Celedonio or Santos was unaware of the beauty of doing a repair in this way.