1996 has marked the beginning of a new guitar building company. I've been directing the construction of classical guitars in Paracho, Michoacan, Mexico. the guitars are being marketed under the trademark La Mancha, and distributed by Jerry Roberts of Nashville, Tennenssee. Gil Carnal, a talented guitar maker born in Switzerland, and now living in California, is a valuable partner in the project, as is Carlos Monroy, a Mexican businessman acting as host of our business in Mexico. As of this writing the business is only eight months old, but to my mind the progress we've made so far is pretty surprising and gratifying.

The concept is simple. We are working in Mexico, building hand-made guitars of the highest quality at very reasonable prices, for sale in the United States and Europe. We are using as models various significant instruments from the history of guitar making, taking advantage of the variations that are found in the likes of Hauser, Ramirez, Panormo, Torres, Friederick, and so on. This is a deliberate plan. We focus on a particular style of guitar and learn as much as we can from its design. We can switch from one to another and get the contrasts we are looking for and satisfy the needs that the player/buyer might expect from an instrument. It simplifies the marketing task, since most buyers are already aware of the characteristics of the famous builders of history.

We aren't making exact copies, but we are building on the significant design elements in each model - the shape and depth of the body, the bracing patterns, the approximate thicknesses of the pieces, and so on. With the important elements of string length, neck dimensions, and the woods used, we are making careful decisions based on the needs and desires of contemporary players and the realistic availability of materials. With decorative elements such as purflings, rosettes, headstock designs, and finish colors, we look for the right balance between style and practicality.

Probably any guitar builder will tell you that it is impossible to duplicate someone else's work. In fact, it's probably impossible to exactly duplicate even your own work. We know that we are not producing replicas, but rather "tributes" to the maestros who made the originals that serve as take-off points for our various models. This works out great, actually. We have some really talanted and accomplished people working together on this project, and each contributes his own skill and enthusiasm. The total is clearly greater than the sum of the parts, and everyone involved is affecting the resulting instruments with his own unique contributions.

The reason we've set up shop in Paracho is that it is the one place in the world where you can find many, many workers already skilled in guitar building. I began working on the idea of a special guitar building shop in late 1995, and we started making sawdust in the middle of April 1996. I arranged to rent a small workshop and contracted with two Patracha builders, one really skilled and the other more of a helper. So with these two guys, an empty room of about 250 square feet, and the tools and materials I had brought from the States, we started to work. We made benches, jigs, workboards, etc., and we learned to work together. We chose a Jose Ramirez guitar as our first model, mainly because it was relatively easy to get hold of some samples. Jerry Roberts provided the soundboard from a 1965 Ramirezand, a 1983 Ramirez that needed the back removed for repair, and we took off from there. My production concept was to incorporate various styles of working, including the hand-made methods of Paracho, the division of labor found in some production lines, and my own particular ways of doing things as a solitary luthier. When I look at the way things are running now, this is more or less what has come about. There has been a lot of give and take between me and the workers, as you can well imagine. At first these workers really made fun of me and my peculiar ways of doing things, and I guess I was rather stubborn about my own methods for producing more consistent and precise results. But gradually we've taken on each other's ideas. I've learned clumsily to use their cuchillo , and they are using my favorite tools in their shops at home. In the long and short of it, the processes and designs are pretty much determined by me, Gil, and Jerry, but the actual techniques of working are very much the traditional methods of Paracho. This mean working with knives, hand planes, scrapers, small saws, twine, wedges and an incredible amount of ingenuity. We do take advantage of some thicknessing sanders, a little bit of router and a smattering of table saw, but the majority of the work is done by hand, in the purest sense of the word.

The fact that the work is done with such basic tools makes it relatively easy to switch from one model to another - all you have to do is draw and cut on a different line. Easy. We started with the Ramirez-style "Madrid" model and moved into the Hauser-style "Munich" model. Now we are producing a small batch of parlor guitars based on an 1823 Panormo, our "Old London Model. We will continue to develop others as the need and opportunity arise. As we build each of these models we inevitably bring our own habits and preferences along, but we also learn a lot from the changes.

In this lies the true uniqueness of our business. We are making the most handmade guitars in the world. While other guitar manufacturing companies are moving toward higher-and-higher-tech operations - machines that out-do humans - we are employing people doing what they enjoy and already know how to do. In something as personal and sensual as a musical instrument there is an ineffable "something" that is passed from the hands of the builder to the hands of the player, and in that "something" lies much of the spirit of the instrument.

Right now we are employing four full-time builders, working 6 days a week, working together as a team. We try to produce about one guitar per man per week. When we are ready to produce more guitars we simply find more luthiers. This is an appropriate and humane way to do business in Mexico. There is a natural division of labor that happens, but each builder is capable of doing most of the operations, so they can trade jobs and responsibilities according to need. This way each person has a similar pride in the results. These guys are extraordinary with the tools, and they have a deep understanding of the wood and the instrument. They are true masters in their own right. They've been around guitar building since they were babies. They work hard and with great humor, and when they leave work they go home to their own shops and work some more. In the USA guitar building is a kind of Bohemian lifestyle choice. But for these men in Paracho, it's something they are born into, that they learned and inherited from the generations before them.

Jerry is handling the marketing of these guitars in the United States, and he has steady input on the models and designs. Gil and I share supervision of the guitar-building operations in Mexico. That is, we commute. We alternate shifts on-site in Paracho, each staying for about six weeks at a time, usually overlapping a few days either in Mexico or California. Now we have a house in Paracho, we've increased th size of our workshop and we have built our own finishing shop, something we've needed badly since the beginning.

So these guitars keep getting better and better. As a guitarist, I get to play all of the instruments and get familiar with the results coming out of the various models. So many times I'm amazed by the quality and beauty of the guitars we're producing. Most of the credit for this finally belongs to the individual guitar builders, our employees. They are doing more than anybody else to change the image of what guitar building in Mexico is all about.

What we are doing is something that hasn't been attempted in Mexico before. We are building first-class guitars for export and attempting to solve chronic regional problems in the process. We are living and working there to make it happen. It hasn't been easy. It's a very different world and a very extreme climate. (The elevation is about 7,300 feet.) We are controlling humidity in our workshop. We are refining the precision of the work. We are using the best materials available and figuring out how to import them. We carry in wood, tools, books, humidity guages, dehumidifiers, and all kinds of things that simply are not available in Mexico. We are trying to figure out how to ship things out, and whats's more difficult, how to ship things in, reliably and affordably. We are trying to be fair with wages, prices and business practices and still come out with a successful and enduring company. And we are doing this in a culture and language very different from home. It's an amazing challenge, and hopefully one that has something for everybody.

Stay tuned. The story is far from over.

Kenny Hill
12/1/96