OldToneZone.com

Delgado Guitars Website: http://www.delgadoguitars.com

It may sound strange, but one of my favorite parts of the Amp Expo was meeting Manuel Delgado, a 3rd generation, old world luthier. The title? That basically means that guitar building has been in his family for a long time, and he doesn’t take shortcuts.

Manuel came to the show armed with some gorgeous finished instruments, and some works-in-progress. I began asking questions, knowing nothing about acoustic lutherie, and even less about ‘old world’ methods. Lucky for me, Manuel had more answers than I had questions.

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First inlays. Not CNC, machine-cut inlays. These are hand chiseled, delicately carved, make-sure-you-don’t-ruin-the-guitar inlays. And not just simple shapes either. Take the symmetric tree-looking design you see here. I saw pictures of that inlay being chiseled and carved, and I began to get a sense of how serious this guy is about what he does.

He must have known that I was enjoying my state of disbelief because he then described how he creates the intricate, detailed patterns around the sound hole of his guitars.  I can’t tell you what I would have said if you had asked me how something like this is made, but I could hardly believe it when I learned it is exactly as complicated as it looks. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny pieces of wood, all glued into place by hand.  No paint tricks, just hours, upon hours of painstakingly detailed work.

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There were more details, but after a while it all started to blend together, mostly because I was still trying to reconcile how anyone would have the patience to build guitars this way.

On Sunday, I caught the very end of a workshop where Manuel was talking about tone woods, building techniques, and other assorted topics related to his craft.  And I also learned the roots of the word capo, and how we’ve all been saying it wrong.

It doesn’t make sense by any business metric to build guitars they way he does.  His production is limited to about 12 per year.  The resulting prices make his instruments only accessible to a certain kind of player or collector. He is well aware that he could build guitars faster, cheaper and sell many more of them, but seems about as interested in that business model as I am in learning to play jazz.

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So why would anyone do it this way?  You’d have to ask him, but I kind of got the impression that it’s a deep, deep love for his craft, and a belief that certain skills should not be forgotten due to automation.

To this end, I asked him before I left if he had ever taken on an apprentice, to teach the skills that he has learned from his father and grandfather.  The answer, of course, was sitting on the other side of the room.

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