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Richard Jernigan -> RE: The middle joint in picado (Apr. 2 2017 21:47:35)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ToddK
For some reason i thought Requinto was a mexican thing.
Apparently they're made in Spain.
What other types of music do you play on these?
I'm pretty sure this guy used to play Brazilian music and Latin jazz on requinto, though he seems to be doing guitar and ukulele these days:
http://www.jefflinsky.com
My first hearing of the requinto was as a child in south Texas and northern Mexico. Los Tres Reyes' instruments were made by the noted Mexico City guitarrero Juan Pimentel Ramirez. There are now two businesses run by Juan's descendants, one of them at the last address where Juan Sr. had his shop for many years.
http://www.guitarraspimentel.net
Juan Sr. and Gilberto Puente collaborated on a re-design of the requinto. The result was a deeper body, with a cutaway.
Some time in the late 1950s my guitar buddy Pat H. and I were playing medium price Paracho guitars (around $100 at the time) in the big music store on the ground floor of the old Convento de las Vizcaínas in Mexico City. A salesman approached and gave us one of Pimentel's business cards. We took a cab to the address in the Colonia de los Doctores, a poor but decent and safe neighborhood.
There were no strung up guitars at the shop, but tapping on the bridge of one or two convinced us we wanted to play them. We also met Richard Schneider, who was working as an apprentice to Pimentel at the time. He told us, at some length, about his plans to revolutionize the classical guitar.
Pimentel was a taciturn individual, but he occasionally rolled his eyes as Schneider laid out his plan for world domination. Pimentel told us to come back in the evening, when there would be some guitars strung up to play.
When we got back around sundown, there was a crowd on the sidewalk, looking in through the open door and the big unglazed window that opened onto Pimentel's workbench. Craning our necks, we got a look inside. In the crowded front room of the shop there were three guys in suits. Pimentel was working on a guitar setup for one of them. Eventually the penny dropped. I said to Pat, "Those guys are Los Tres Reyes."
Picking out a kid in the crowd, I gave him a five peso piece to work his way into the shop and ask the guys to play for us. He did, and when the setup work was finished, the other two took out their instruments. They played and sang four or five numbers for the assembled crowd, to loud cheers and applause.
After Los Tres Reyes left, we played some of the strung up guitars. It was the beginning of a 25-year relationship. Juan Pimentel was a great artisan, a modest and scrupulously honest man, who started out sweeping the floor in a guitar making shop. He rose to the highest level of his craft, and left sons trained in the art.
I still miss him.
RNJ
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