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Ricardo -> RE: Maria Conde (Jun. 6 2019 13:29:34)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Echi
My 2 cents: both Mariano and Felipe downsized after the split of the Conde Hermanos shop in calle Felipe V and both the new shops are active.
The 2 new shops currently have the same set up: an official employee (in both case very good makers, people trained in Ramirez already working with the Conde brothers) plus the kids (Mariano Jr. trained in Mariano’s shop and Felipe and Maria in Felipe’s).
The parents run the business and the kid learn the job.
The 2 brothers keep the habit to outsource the A26 series guitars to the same luthiers who were them at the time of the shop in calle Felipe V and therefore the instruments are equivalent.
Probably it happened to Ricardo to try a bad Mariano’s as to me a bad Felipe’s but there is no reason why a guitar made in one of the 2 shops should play better: same quality, same plan, same people.
The employees in the shop make in both cases the premium models on behalf of Mariano Sr. or Felipe Sr.
The kids hare learning and effectively building but just few guitars per year (I have been told Maria does very few as she is studying).
The guy working in the shop of Mariano is as good as the other one in Felipe’s but Mariano sometimes uses the poor rosettes hand made by Mariano Jr. and some odd features while Felipe works more on the myth of the brand, by doing reissue models.
Mariano is just not as good with marketing as Felipe (who kept the main contacts of the old shop).
At the beginning, Mariano endorsed many good artists (Rafael Riqueni, Paco Cepero, Jesus Guerrero) but after a year or so, the main online shops pushed up the guitars made by Felipe and stopped selling those of Mariano.
Given the ratio price/quality, I’d rather go for an old Felipe V or an Atocha.
I honestly think they are better guitars.
Sorry but my own personal experience tells me I have to disagree on all points except the marketing one. I got to compare guitars back to back one day apart in 2014. I played maybe a dozen guitars in Marianos shop...all new ones were surprisingly not high quality. He had better guitars in the “repairs” section, many old felipe V’s with damage. Most of those were just fine. The main problem with the half dozen or so new instruments in his shop were a very uncharacteristic heavy finish. They LOOKED great, but the sound was not what I am used to. There were no workers, only Mariano himself, sanding a Koa back guitarbox with no neck for the entire hour or more I was there. He showed us the basement area where he said his son worked....guitars at various stages leaning here or there, nothing actually being worked on except that darn Koa box that I thought he was gonna make a hole through if I stayed any longer. My american friend not used to the whole siesta thing asked “where are all the workers, on siesta???” [:D]. He had like hundred necks hanging from the ceiling and tons of wood stockpiled on the wall. It was a very large space, more like a Home Depot store feel than my friends Luthier workshops. In a glass case was a finished negra with NO LABEL!! A hand written sign in spanish taped to the wall read “if you think we don’t build guitars, come watch!”. If I had money I would have bought the discounted repaired guitar for sure.
Felipe and son the day before was a total different experience. I had already played the Felipe model blancas a couple of my students had and the one he brought to sanlucar in 2013. They were all good normal condes like I am used to. This time, last day in sanlucar at Gerardo’s class, the surprise guitar was Felipe jr, a cedar top negra. It was orders of magnitude better than every guitar in the class room (talking about condes, Reyes, Ruck, Ethan’s guitar, Felipe Conde sr, Marvi maybe?, tons of others) we were litterally passing em around the classroom one by one after hearing Gerardo use each one with the microphone first. I was impressed by Ethans’s guitar, however it was painfully obvious to me that Felipe jr guitar there was the superior thing. I talked to him about the details, he speaks perfect English as well. Very nice guy. If he was lying and didn’t build the thing, my hat off to whoever did. I asked him in 2018 at NAMM how his sisters guitars were and he said “they are ok...”[:D]
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