Excellent guitar from Cadiz made by Juan Perfumo in 1846 - he was a celebrated guitar maker and this guitar sounds fantastic!
Interestingly, this guitar was used as the basis for the entry of the guitar maker Juan Perfumo in Jose Romanillos' famous book "The Vihuela de Mano and The Spanish Guitar" (see picture).
Juan Perfumo was one of the most influential Andalusian guitar makers in the generation before Torres. Torres based his work on precisely this style of typical Cadiz guitar design (Fernando Sor also favoured this type of guitar). Perfumo opened his workshop in 1839 and was active until 1860. Although he enjoyed an international reputation and his guitars have been found in such remote places as Argentina, Finland, England and Japan, only about twelve of his instruments are known today, making this guitar a very rare example.
This guitar is built as light as a feather and is perfectly worked out in every detail. It has wonderful decorations. It is a great example of a high quality guitar an is simply exquisite for its quality of sound. The notes are rich in overtones and still it retains an almost unbelievable degree of separation and clarity between voices. Due to its ultra-lightweight build, the attack is immediate, with an ample amount of tonal modulation and dynamic range. This guitar also boasts enormous power, which will immediately put to rest any rumor that old guitars don’t have much sound!
It has been professionally restored – several cracks throughout the body have been expertly repaired
Truely an impressive masterpiece. It has a spruce top and rosewood back and sides. The scale length is 620 mm and the nut width 46 mm.
