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José Ramírez III (1922 - 1995)...(Pag 1)

José Ramírez Martínez was born in May 1922. He joined the family workshop at the age of 18. His apprenticeship took place with no privileges but very soon he was admitted as a journeyman and he quickly began to experiment developing the guitar as a concert instrument. Because of the lack of material, and the fact that his investigations were not very profitable, his father and he would constantly argue about his father selling his experiments without keeping track of his work.

In 1954 his brother Alfredo died. He was in charge of the administrative work and was Jose’s best supporter, for he was convinced that Jose’s experiments would achieve their objective.

Three years later his father died and José took over the running of the business with the help of his wife, Angelita. He had to give up his bench in the workshop and devote himself to full time management and supervision of his journeymen. He would work out his designs on paper and assign his journeymen to carry out the experiments he devised. Many of his investigations bore interesting fruit; like the discovery of red cedar for the harmonic top in 1965. This discovery was later adopted by practically all guitar manufacturers in the world, although at the beginning it was highly criticized because of its innovative nature.

He also tried different varnishes, and since his guitars were lacquered with alcohol based shellac like furniture, he felt they needed a more consistent rich varnish that not only protected the wood but would bring a better sound out of the instrument. Finally he got the owner of a laboratory; which sympathized with his restless pursuit, to mix an elaborate urea based varnish that gave an excellent result.

We had used this urea based varnish for many years but regrettably, some years ago, the laboratory changed their formula; affecting the quality and we had to stop using it. José Ramírez III made several experimentations with the string length; arriving at a particular scale that gave the best result for sound and projection without being too long. This 664 mm scale is the one being used today, but there was also a demand for a shorter scale that forced him to design a guitar with a 650mm scale. This happened in 1986, and for that reason the model was named C86; referring to the year of its creation. Later on his son José Enrique modified the design; keeping the 650mm scale but changing the name of the pattern.

In 1983 Jose designed the “camara” guitar, with the intention of eliminating the “wolf notes.” It gave some positive results; for instance the clarity of its sound was excellent for studio recordings. This model adds an interior finish of Jacaranda or Caviuna located near the middle of the sides. The new guitar models were built with double sides of cypress in the interior. Later on they would change and use sycamore - and then they began to build them with half double internal sides. That remained until 1991. The double sides of cypress are glued to the Rosewood. Don't get confused and think this is plywood, since Jacaranda, caviuna and cypress are all solid woods. It was one of José's Ramírez III acoustic experiments, and because of its excellent results, we still it use it today in our traditional guitars. In fact, some other guitar makers are using our technique at the moment. For all of his experiments and investigations, it is impossible to not give honorable mention to the 10 string guitar. This instrument was designed by Jose at the beginning of age 60. He started by performing some tests based on the “viola d'amore”, but didn’t get satisfactory results, so he looked for the cooperation of Narciso Yepes who was very helpful in the development of this instrument.

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