Flamenco guitar Arcángel Fernández 1957 nº35

This flamenco guitar was built by the master luthier Arcángel Fernández in the year 1957, considered to be one of the best guitar makers in history. His instruments are really hard to get, since Japan collectors bought almost all of them. His guitars are truly admired by guitar makers, collectors and guitarists all around the world.

The different woods in this flamenco guitar are of the top existing quality. The top are made of german spruce has a totally straight and even grain, which is quite accentuated. The back and sides are made of cypress wood, whose beauty and quality are simply magnificent. Arcángel Fernández was extremely selective as regards the choice of the woods for the guitar making. He always seeked for nothing but excellence in acoustics and beauty, which can be appreciated in every single guitar he made all along his career.

This flamenco guitar is a truly special instrument, as it was built shortly after the passing of Marcelo Barbero, its master, and in its construction, one can appreciate the similarity to his guitars. Regarding its sound, we can affirm that we are in the presence of the most spectacular guitar by this master luthier that we have ever seen and had in our lifetime. Arcángel’s guitars have always been characterized by their lyrical tone and sublime acoustic perfection with very crystalline trebles and a very extended sustain. Well, to all these virtues, we must add that robust, aggressive, and timeless flamenco tone of Barbero’s guitars with a separation and clarity that we have rarely seen in strumming and arpeggios.

This guitar has the highly-valued “rebound beating” on the right hand, combined with fantastic softness on the left one, thus accomplishing the “perfect instrument”, should we want to spend hours and hours playing non-stop with a nice feeling of ease.

The conservation condition is excellent. Despite visually appearing to have a quite deteriorated lid, this is merely an aesthetic defect caused by the micro-cracks in the original nitro-cellulose lacquer, which, over the years, created those darker grooves. Replacing the nitro-cellulose lacquer with shellac could have made these marks disappear, but it would have been necessary to reduce the original thickness of the wood, negatively altering its sound. It only has a crack in the soundboard, at the top of the pickguard, which has been perfectly repaired and documented in the attached images.