Item 07
Price: $160,000
Appraised Value 2016: $150,000
Appraised Value 2021: $200,000
This guitar is a simple instrument but constructed with skill and care, resulting in a good sounding and good playing guitar. Torres used adequate methods, materials and effort to produce superior results, even inexpensive instruments. Torres’ masterful proportions of the head, neck and plantilla are especially harmonious and pleasing in this unadorned guitar.
The soundboard is constructed from three matched pieces of wavy-grained spruce joined so that none are book-matched. The rosette is a simple one of alternating black and natural rings with a time-faded central green accent ring. The bridge is rosewood. Harmonic bars and crossbars are straight and rest on side braces. The seams in the back are reinforced with music paper and both the top and back linings are kerfed. Back and sides are unmatched cypress with curved grain and some small knots. The three-piece back, three-piece soundboard, shallow depth of the sides and the knots are indications that Torres built this guitar with wood remnants. Neck and head are Spanish cedar and the head is faced with walnut and fitted with ebony tuning pegs. The fingerboard is walnut and is fitted with 18 original T-shaped brass frets. The full-size neck and head of dense, sturdy Spanish cedar seems to promote efficient use of string energy contributing to fine tone, good sustain and easy playability.
This guitar numbered “Guitarra núm. 54 – 2.a época,” is in very good condition. It still has its original French polish of shellac finish, its soundboard is undamaged and the inside of the body with its label is almost as-new. The guitar is still with a vintage, probably original, case which probably indicates that the case was always used. It was owned by the renowned player, composer and music publisher Daniel Fortea. Fortea, who was born in 1878, and would have been about six years old when this smallish instrument was first for sale, so this possibly was a childhood guitar of his.
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