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maybe someone on this forum can identify this mystery negra from Enrique de Melchor's first solo LP done in 1977. he may have recorded with in for cante previously but i can't tell. this is the only one of his few solo recordings in which he did not use a Conde. he moved with his famous father to Madrid as a boy and lived in Madrid his entire life. i have never been able to solve this guitar mystery.
The guitar is a Manuel Contreras. Later on Enrique used a Conde negra. Btw if someone from France offered to trade Enrique's Conde negra with your guitar, it's a scam. A friend of mine got it.
Here is the headstock of a Contreras guitar for sale at Guitarsalon.com.
It matches precisely the headstock of an instrument I bought from Manuel Contreras Sr. in July, 1991. It looks to me like the headstock of Enrique's guitar in your post.
At first I thought Enrique's guitar might have been a Paulino Bernabe, but Bernabe's headstock is just a little different from Contreras's. The Contreras design has a notch in the center at the top, while Bernabe's has a small protruding knob.
RNJ
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My fathers classical 1962 Ramirez has the manufactory stamp of Contreras which seems to suggest he was the main constructor of that guitar, although previous posts about the subject suggest that's not so simple in retrospect (depending on the period?).
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you guys are amazing. so, there was a Madrid connection, really a Ramirez connection, which i can see now in the head. if you can get a copy of "Recordando a Enrique de Melchor" CD, produced after Enrique's death in 2012, you can hear this fine Contreras negra. unfortunately UMS Spain did not include the entirety of the LP on that CD, a glaring omission was the rondena, oh, the sound of that Contreras in that altered tuning is to die for.
thanks for researching this. someone needs to publish a coffee-table book with photos of all the Spanish Guitar heads known to man, i would buy that book in a heartbeat.
you have a very lucky friend but he can't possibly have Enrique's great hands, brain, experience, and bloodline to make that Conde sing like Enrique did. that's gone forever which is why you have to see the artists whenever you can and appreciate them.
i always try to look forward but a lot of great players have died off, this has been a tough 5 yrs or so for flamenco. the players DRIVE the guitarreros and make them build better instruments. everything gets re-created, in time, but it's going to take a while to find flamenco brilliance like we had in late 20th c.
beautiful head, you can see the Ramirez legacy, just like in the head of a Bernabe, another fine former-Ramirez Madrid guitarrero. that's what i mean, someone needs to publish a PHOTO book about this stuff!
There are many former employees of Ramirez that later became quite famous as independent flamenco guitar makers: Josè Romero, Pedro de Miguel, Manuel Caceres (who worked for Arcangel) etc. Four guitarreros deserve a special place though: Antonio Martinez, Paulino Bernabè, Manuel Contreras and Felix Manzanero: they all contributed to the design of the early Ramirez III guitars ( before 1965 the year of the cedar topped guitars). Contreras became a company as big as Ramirez, Bernabè and Manzanero have been way less productive.
Seems like he used half a dozen different Conde Negras over the years. This one sounds like the one he used on Cuchichi which is a fantastic sounding guitar IMO, at least it sounds like it to me here versus the same falsetas played on other guitars.
The Contreras in that old black and white TV show sounds very classical to me.
quote:
thanks for researching this. someone needs to publish a coffee-table book with photos of all the Spanish Guitar heads known to man, i would buy that book in a heartbeat.
Here is the headstock of a Contreras guitar for sale at Guitarsalon.com.
It matches precisely the headstock of an instrument I bought from Manuel Contreras Sr. in July, 1991. It looks to me like the headstock of Enrique's guitar in your post.
At first I thought Enrique's guitar might have been a Paulino Bernabe, but Bernabe's headstock is just a little different from Contreras's. The Contreras design has a notch in the center at the top, while Bernabe's has a small protruding knob.
RNJ
Looks like a match to me.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px