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RE: Advise on buying a new Conde 2023
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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 RE: Advise on buying a new Conde 2023 (in reply to Echi)
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quote:
Eventually is really that important to you who is the actual maker of your guitar?
Well, of course. As you know Ramirez III used to let his workers stamp the initials. AT first this did not matter, but in the future it eventually really does. Martinez, Contreras, Valbuena, Manzanero, etc, it matters. Like Segovia and his “santos built” Manuel Ramirez. Of course the guy with the name on the label wants to say nothing gets past his criteria, but we know, in the end, there are different characteristics between those individual builders and it would be good to know that. Anyway, I had a discussion with Crespo off line about this situation and got clarification.
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CD's and transcriptions available here:
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 10 2023 18:04:46
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Chanpanpap
Posts: 46
Joined: Jan. 31 2023
From: Miami
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RE: Advise on buying a new Conde 2023 (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
hat implies Santos competes with Manuel Ramirez, and Manzanero competes with Ramirez III? Sorry, I mean in the future when competition is over and we are dealing with vintage used instruments. I mean, this gentleman can now claim his own guitars as relevant as the Felipe V Condes of that era, just like these other guys did after not working for Ramirez. That is not “competition” any more, the era is over. Ramirez III clearly listed every body that worked for him since 60’s and 70’s in his book of 1990’s, with the clear implication that if you want a good Ramirez level guitar from the 70’s, those are your guys to look for today (90s) for new models. 20 years has passed for Conde and I think the market should know who build what guitar.
So to be clear, Atochas are good but not as good as a Felipe or MC, btw felipe conde crespo claims hes actually making them 100%, at least assembly. I like that but still, not feeling confident on breaking the bank for it... thats almost 3.900eur for first deposit, thats a full atocha
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Date Mar. 10 2023 19:40:05
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Advise on buying a new Conde 2023 (in reply to Ricardo)
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From the mid-1960s to the early 1990s I traveled regulary to Europe on business. Fairly often I would stop off in Madrid and buy a couple of cedar/rosewood 1a classicals from Jose Ramirez III. He always kept at least 5 or 6 instruments in stock to choose from. I could sell them in the USA for enough to pay for a round trip ticket from Texas to Spain. Ramirez knew what I was doing, and didn't object to my micro-competition with his U.S. distributor Jim Sherry, with whom he had an occasionally stormy relationship.
During the time that the luthier's initials were stamped on the heel of the neck, my conclusion was that there was about as much variation in the output from one luthier as there was across the whole group. The variability increased slightly when Ramirez commissioned more oficiales in the 1970s, but there weren't any bad guitars--if I excepted those with action that was just too high for my taste.
Ramirez publicly described the process. Apprentices made parts to supply the journeyman luthiers. Tops were all thicknessed to the same dimension by the apprentices, but the journeyman luthiers were expected to do the final thicknessing, taking off somewhere around a half millimeter from the prepared top, the exact amount depending upon the luthier's judgment of the character of the piece of wood.
Later, when I visited Contreras padre, Bernabe padre and Manzanero padre, they all spoke with considerable emphaisis about Ramirez's rigid requirement that they stick absolutely precisely to his design. My idea is that this accounts for the similarity of all the instruments that came out of Jose III's workshop.
By the early '90s the instruments of the three Ramirez alumni displayed individualized character. Each luthier had by then diverged in his own way from Ramirez's design. I don't feel that I played enough instruments from any of the three to get an idea of how much they might vary. But just about every luthier I have talked to seriously has said that they don't all turn out the same.
Both Jose and Liam Romanillos have said the main determinant of a guitar's quality is the wood for the top. I think in their case their skill as luthiers enters strongly into the equation. Maybe they are indicating that the variation in their uniformly brilliant output is due to the wood.
RNJ
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Date Mar. 18 2023 4:16:34
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. Of course there are other things, Im almost settling for a Atocha because Im a decent player not pro, just a huge fan of the saga, 
you could buy a better guitar for the amount of your deposit.
