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Hi Peter, 'Media Luna' is the name for the half moon headstock on a top range Conde, you know the one with a half circle, cut out? I believe that the A26 has this but you should make sure the guitar is from Felipe V shop and not the Gravina address, I understand that they both make Esteso Condes but Felipe V has the best reputation. Cheers Jim.
Thanks Jim, yes it is from the felipe V shop, So, if I understand correct, there are more models, with the media luna headstock. well, new thing to check out, thanks again, Peter.
I only learned recently (from this forum) that you can tell who the luthier is by the design of the headstock. (O.K. so I'm a little slow). Now that I can recognize a Conde by the "media luna" I'm starting to see them everywhere. Just this week I've seen 3 students of El Carbonero with Condes. I get the Encuentro video with Moraito and there's a Conde. I go to a Flamenco recital and I see another Conde. My question is this: how many media luna Condes are there floating around? It seems to me that there are simply too many in existance for them all to be supposedly very high quality guitars. I'd like to hear some opinions on this. Thanks, Phil
Gerundino, all the Conde concert or professional models have the "Media Luna" head crest. For example the models A26, A25, A25R, AF25R and Felipe V model. There are also two professional model that are considered concert models that do not have the media luna like the A27 and A28 but have the head design of the original Domingo Esteso which is really the founder of the company that is now Conde Hermanos.
The student models, A24, EF4, EF5 and EF5N do not have to media luna head design.
You can see closeups of these designs on my website www.lafalseta.com just click on guitars and then Conde Hermanos then Flamenco models or you can simple go to www.condehermanos.com
Hi Phil, It's a fascinating topic and you're right about the quantity of 'top end' Condes, The name seems to have the selling power to make everyone want one, great marketing, but they'll not all be top end guitars. Try looking out for Reyes, Gerundino or Ramirez flamenco, fewer and further between. Cheers Jim.
My teacher Miguel Angel Cortes in Sevilla, who is an in-demand accompaniast, confirmed what I had heard about the Condes and other top-level guitars--yes, they are great, that is some great ones come out of the shop, but the good ones are reserved for friends and famous musicians! This isn't really that surprising, I mean, if Simon made a great guitar I would expect him to reserve it for me, right? What it really means, I think, is that the quality of the Condes is uneven, inconsistent. What I might call unprofessional, I guess.
I mean, if Simon made a great guitar I would expect him to reserve it for me, right?
Hey, you still have a great guitar in your basement, just needs to be glued together right?
Now, what I heard from a pro is that by choice, top recording artists would probably use lots of different guitars (mostly from Granada) but Conde is the most convenient when in Madrid for recording, for set-up, repairs etc.
I don't know Simon.... why are we all so obsessed about guitars. Until a few months ago I was, too, but lately I've started to get obsessed about my playing! My friend Miguel Rodriguez can make a $100 guitar sound as good as gold! I bet I could make a Simon A26 sound like plywood. But seriously, I'm wondering if the Conde for the flamenco is like the Fender Stratocaster for the bluesman--more a tradition than necessary!
It's a tool and I would get the best you can afford, but no more. It will be a long time before I can play better than my £450 Bernal or even my own botch job.
I was out at a Tablao show last night where a friend of mine was performing. He and I got talking about Conde's from the Felipe V shop. He is the best performing guitarist in our area and a real "gear head" when it comes to guitars. He has three Condes (2 A-26s and an AF-25) and no other flamenco guitars. He said he was in Gerardo Nunez's workshop this summer (in San Lucar), and he realized why everyone plays Conde's, and it has nothing to do with Paco de Lucia or Tomatito or anyone else performing with them. He says it's because the Conde sound and playability is so consistent from guitar to guitar, and that most performing flamenco guitarists can get the Conde to snap witha quick decay on each note, and that really sounds "FLAMENCO" There is no darkness and harmonic overtones that follow the notes after you play them.
I went "WOW!" I really hadn't thought about it at that level, but I went home and played my Conde against my Gerundino, my Bellido, and my new Valbuena, and you know what? He has a real point! The Conde does have a rapid spike in dynamics when you hit it with a ras or a picado, and it really does decay fast. And, I have to admit, when I was thinking about it, it really does sound "FLAMENCO"
Anyway, he convinced me that the Conde has a unique quality in this regard, and that some of the Ricardo Sanchis guitars come very close, even saying they are probably made in the same factory, but that Conde must have a patented something going on in the design because the Sanchis (Carpio) guitars are lacking just a little in the sonority qualitites that the Condes have.
Anyway, I could go on and on about this. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know!
Brand hype and trend following are of countless and often times weirdest examples ( insanely expensive plastic bags of aristocratic brand name anyone, or designer parfumes that simply smell after vanilla, etc.pp.), but Felipe V MLs seem to back up the reputation.
Eventhough my experience is not valid to judge consistency of manufactory the one Media Luna I came across and another guitar decades before that was very likely a Conde Hermanos too, both left me craving while I had no clue about the brand name.
I remember them as very light, responsive builds with great separation. And the first one was beyond words. Kind of a sounding travel machine that would beam you to Spain. -
Just trying to express that these guitars seem to me of the few examples where famous image actually fits the quality of the product, - despite of overpricing that remains a fact in this case too. ( Which is again why I hope that productions like Tom´s coming colaboration may over time give Conde V a run for the money / reason to bring their pricing to reasonable.)
But how seamless it was. The Conde conundrum, plus an online forum, demonstrates a fundamental truth about time, and orange, breathy, built by robots, guitars.
I just got me a 'real' Conde; a Ricardo Sanchis Carpio.
I wanted a 'good' guitar cause I already have a great one. So, how does one increase the possibility of getting a 'good' Conde? By buying one built by Mr. Conde, of course. The bass may be more pronounced, the middle less so, I don't know, but it's a little Tardis that'll give you a real one at a real price.
The great builders are not better than the luthiers here. Our senses and our memories become fogged by status and mad prices.
Modern builders are kick-a s s but the market for originals is so tiny.
Man, I'm scared to ask this Estebaby, and feel free to ignore me, but you are so full of ideas and passion, couldn't you take Senior Conde as a master (for just a while) and truly express what this guy's design is about?
I mean, would it be possible (I'm only asking about the possibility, your business is yours) for you to join the gap between the original and the present day?
I'm not suggesting by any means that your guitars are inferior to any Conde anywhere.
But do you think people would 'know' if you (reproduced) the best Conde over and over?
Would a reduction then be possible using computer-aided assembly? My luthier guitar has a fabulous neck design that the guy can knock out very easily, after a serious cash and skullwork investment, (it's seven pieces: three ebony strips, but it's the feel of it that I love.)
Good guitars are enough for flamenco, I think. But in classical guitar luthery they seem to think nothing of making replicas, and nobody seems to think of those guitars as copies. And they have a lot of people charging into the 'new technologies', so they play it both ways, but few, if any, attempt the 'dynasty' and instead they covet and nurture long waiting lists.
It's all about the feel. You guys can reduce or categorize that 'feel' further, into pulsation or action or whatever but we all know, as players, that it's the feel of a flamenco that makes it flamenco.
But the feel includes all the crazy calculations you luthiers have to make (many so complex that only your 'feel' will do). (And feel includes aspects of the sound, as it is a whole system, but it's the response, the potential, the ease of a flamenco that is the real differentiator.)
I ask these things because many years ago a guitar student of mine, a guy from a very rough background in East London, revealed to me that he was an artist. He could draw things on a blackboard dusted with chalk with his fingers. And I mean he used both hands, multiple fingers, two or three at a time and an effing masterpiece would emerge. He had, in my opinion and I'm no expert but I know I'm right; perfect perspective.
I got all teachery and suggested art school. He gave me a look and opened a photo album. He had copied all the great masters. He showed me a 'Turner' and said. "I think it's better than the original." And it was said with complete innocence; he was not being arrogant. Then he said "I did it before I saw the original. I got the colour wrong." (And I remember clearly he used the singular 'colour'.)
It seems that getting these things (flamenco guitars) sold is hard unless you build a Conde.
If Conde can't build Condes why don't you? You're right about their misrepresentation in the market so why not put things right?
I do not believe flamencos are conservative. If you give them the thing that started the dynasty they would 'feel' it. Or are we really all just a herd, influenced by price and accumulated kudos?
Just a very very very good flamenco guitar?
If it were just you and him? (As expressed by all the luthier voodoo you can infer from the end product?)
Then your grandkids could go around crushing the opposition with each orangier model?
Yes. In real life people would say "it's only a copy", I expect.
But maybe not. Consistency is everything.
The Conde company(ies) seem to me to have pushed too hard. They are creating a massive reality gap with their prices.
Does Conde orange mean it is the guitar of choice to play on Halloween?
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
My daughter would love that sofa. (She's six.) I'll give you fitty, or is it a 'work of art', perchance?
I think you're too ambitious. Why not start with something like a Starburst, or a lolly? Start watching the Dutch football team. Maybe a little music from the Scottish band, Orange Juice?
Or get to Belfast for your holidays and see actual Orange Men.
This is not like all that quantum hokum on the other thread. This is proper science. The evidence is overwhelming.
When I lived Stateside, a few years ago, some kid was on teevee because he drank too much Sunny Delight and went Orange.
This is your true path. No more scurrying about in the dark looking for clues in old threads. Think luminescence. Condes 'glow'... And they are also Orange.
We should get our resident Barrister (not a million miles, geographically, from Belfast) to sentence you (he's been promoted here) to build one. Built-in sofa would do for me to practise on.
You know the transcript of the NASA Mission Control to Astronauts lunar landings makes for fine poetry.
But as a poet you should know nothing rhymes with Orange, except Forange, which is not a word. As in so and so's forange cock, yes it's small, but I hear foranges is about average. While tenanges is the size of it in porn, most of us are stuck with between foranges and sixanges.
A poem, by Estebanana
The sea was red and the sky was grey, 'But I ran to her on the dock. The colors melded, and the guitar rang chimey, The eels were slippery and the deck slimy. despite my short comings I was soon mumbling, The sea calmed and waves ceased tumbling, as I bagged a silk sock right over my cock, to my delight, and her surprise, my forananges slipped right under her frock,
No, it's from an ad for the Orange mobile network.
Nice poem. Orange can be rhymed internally though: Was it the Orange or ingenuity that inspired Faustino and his brood? Este has but foringes in his shorts but unhinged and oranged he remained.