Jose Rubio Ex. Julian Bream, 1965

Guitars built for Julian Bream do not come to market, and this one arrived with a dedication in the maker's hand beneath the soundboard and a voice that tells you exactly what Bream heard in it.

This is Rubio No. 43, built in New York in July of 1965 and inscribed to "el gran maestro Julian Bream." A simple inspection mirror reveals it. Only a small handful of Rubios carry that dedication, and they were all built inside a few months in 1965, when a self taught English flamenco player working out of a Greenwich Village shop suddenly found himself building for the most important guitarist in the world.

Not many people can say they have played one of Bream's guitars, and the privilege of it is not lost on us. What is better than playing a Bream guitar, though, is discovering that the guitar itself is more beautiful than the idea of it. That is the part nobody is prepared for.

Bream had lost his beloved Robert Bouchet to a theft and spent years looking for something that could stand in its place. He found Rubio, and from the mid 1960s onward Rubio guitars carried Bream through concerts and recording sessions. The record sleeves of that era credit simply "Guitar: David Rubio, 1965." Bream is documented as having played this guitar from 1965 into the 1970s. We cannot say with certainty which sessions it sat in, and we will not pretend otherwise, but it is very likely that this instrument is somewhere on the records that changed what people thought the classical guitar could do.

This guitar has been played, seriously and for a long time, and it carries a few repaired cracks that come with that life. It is also one of the dreamiest sounding guitars we have ever heard. Everyone who has encountered it has been enchanted by it, without exception.

Sound & Character

From the first chord, this guitar separates itself from every other Rubio we have played. Is it because Bream played it? Because it was built for him? Because it comes from the golden era of Rubio's work in the 1960s? It is hard to say. What is easy to say is that the sound is otherworldly: rich and deep in the basses, chiming and bright in the trebles, and alive in a way that is difficult to put into words.

The trebles are the first thing that gets you. They are lyrical, sweet, and enormously colorful, so that even a simple melody comes out full of shading and nuance. Sitting with this guitar, you understand a piece of the "why" behind Bream's playing, the reason he went hunting for colors the way he did. Why chase beautiful colors if your guitar will not give them to you? This one gives them up freely, and it keeps offering more the longer you look. Play high on the fingerboard, around the seventh or ninth fret, with the right hand up near the fourteenth and fifteenth, and the notes come out in round, glowing bubbles of sound. Outside of the finest Hauser I and Hauser II instruments, we would be hard pressed to name a guitar with a palette like it.

That palette holds up at the extremes. Take the right hand as far as it will go in either direction, well over the fingerboard or right up against the bridge, and every sound the guitar gives back is usable, a color that belongs in the music rather than a novelty. It is no surprise that the repertoire written for Bream sits so naturally on it.

Underneath, the basses are rich and full of character, and they are surprisingly even and bold for an instrument of this age and lightness. This is where the Bouchet influence comes through most clearly: the voice is open, the bass notes gather together with real power and a grounded, chunky quality, and the response is hot and immediate. The main air resonance sits between F# and G, low enough to account for the foundation you feel under everything you play, but it never thickens or clouds what is happening above it. The transition through the third and fourth strings is seamless, which is where a lot of old guitars give themselves away and this one does not.

The guitar is also full of sympathetic vibration. Every note sets off a halo of overtones around it, so that even a single line arrives with a small symphony of sound behind it. In the lower positions the voice is remarkably open and even, from the open strings right up through the seventh fret, and the aged spruce top is so responsive you can hear it vibrating while you speak over it.

What makes it remarkable to actually perform on is how little it asks of you. You can play this guitar with a delicate touch and it will support you the whole way, filling in the sound without requiring you to dig or force. That is a rare quality, and it is exactly the quality a player like Bream would have needed. It rewards nuance rather than effort.

Playability

The neck is rather D shaped, with a little shoulder to it, but it is not thick, and it sits comfortably in the hand. The action is very low, set at 3.75mm on the bass side and 3mm on the treble side at the twelfth fret. Combined with a 650mm scale and a 53mm nut, the guitar sits under the hand with almost no resistance. It plays like a dream, and it produces the specific problem that the best instruments produce, which is that you sit down with it and then look up an hour later having accomplished nothing you intended.

The frets are low and flat. They are not heavily worn or divoted, and the guitar is already easy to play as it stands, though our own preference would be a fresh fret job with taller frets to make it easier still.

The spruce top has the color and the settled look of sixty years of playing, and it is paired with a dark, aged set of Brazilian rosewood back and sides of the quality Rubio was buying in New York in the mid 1960s, with some lovely figuring running down the center strip. Around the soundhole is Rubio's signature tiled rosette.

Underneath the top is a five fan bracing pattern with a clear debt to Robert Bouchet, who built only with spruce, and the harmonic bars are cut with two large apertures. That is the design thinking of a maker who had studied the French school closely and was building for a player who knew it intimately. It is a light, responsive layout, and it explains a great deal about why this guitar answers so readily to a delicate right hand.

The label reads No. 43, Jose Rubio, with his signature and the date 28 July 1965, and the same information is repeated beneath the soundboard alongside the dedication to Bream. The headstock is the classic Rubio shape, set at a pronounced break angle of the kind found on Rubio's guitars and, more extreme still, on the instruments of Santos Hernández.

The original tuners were not up to the standard of the instrument and have been replaced with a set of Scheller machines, made in Germany and among the finest tuning machines available at any price, with high precision gearing and ball bearing action. They are a considerable upgrade in function and they turn beautifully, which matters on a guitar that is going to be played rather than displayed.

Specifications

Year: 1965 (New York period)

Number: 43

Label: No. 43, Jose Rubio, signed, dated 28 July 1965

Back & Sides: Brazilian Rosewood

Construction: Traditional, five fan bracing, Bouchet influenced, harmonic bars with two large apertures

Rosette: Rubio tiled rosette

Neck: D shaped, slight shoulder, not thick

Action: 3.75mm bass / 3mm treble at the 12th fret

Frets: Low and flat

Air Resonance: Between F# and G

Dedication: Interior dedication to "el gran maestro Julian Bream," New York, July 1965, visible with an inspection mirror

Repairs: One repaired crack in the top, two repaired cracks in the back

Condition: Very good considering age. Played, with three repaired cracks. Excellent structurally

David Rubio was born David Joseph Spinks in London on 17 September 1934. He began studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, and left it behind for Spain, where he worked as a professional flamenco guitarist accompanying singers and dancers. It was there that he picked up the name Rubio, a reference to his red beard, and some of his earliest labels read Jose Rubio from those Spanish years, as this one does.

In the early 1960s he came to New York as accompanist for the Rafael de Cordoba flamenco dance company and stayed, playing in hotels and cafes and setting up a workshop in Greenwich Village. He taught himself to build almost entirely from memory. As he put it, he had spent years in Spain sitting around in the back of guitar makers' shops watching them work, and he had a photographic memory. He also spent time with the luthier Miguel Company, but the essential fact of Rubio's early work is that a man with no formal training built world class concert guitars out of what he had absorbed by watching.

The turn came when Julian Bream brought an instrument into the shop for repair and was struck by the quality of the flamenco guitars Rubio had on the bench. Bream became his champion, and within a few years Rubio had returned to England, first to a workshop on Bream's estate in Dorset, then to his own shop in Duns Tew near Oxford, and finally to Cambridge in 1979, where he worked until his death.

Over a forty year career he made more than a thousand instruments, and his curiosity ran far past the guitar to lutes, harpsichords, theorbos, vihuelas, citterns, violins, violas, and cellos. He worked with Cambridge scientist Ralph Raphael on the surface treatments used by the Cremonese makers, research published in Nature. In his last decade he designed the Brahms guitar for Paul Galbraith. He died in Cambridge on 21 October 2000 at the age of 66, having effectively founded the modern English school of lutherie.

The Dedication

Under the soundboard, out of sight and reachable only with an inspection mirror, Rubio wrote out a dedication in his own hand naming Julian Bream as the guitar's recipient, along with the guitar number, the city, and the month and year of its making. It was never meant to be seen by an owner. It was a private note from a maker to the player he was building for, hidden in the one place that would last as long as the instrument. Only a few Rubio guitars carry it.

Historical Context

In November of 1962, shortly after a recording session, Bream's Robert Bouchet was stolen out of his car. He considered it the finest guitar he had ever owned, and he said so for the rest of his life. He acquired another Bouchet in 1964 and it never fully replaced what he had lost. That search is the reason the Rubio story exists at all.

The New York guitars of 1965 are the heart of the Rubio legend. No. 30 was completed in April of that year and dedicated to Bream, and it now lives in the Harris Guitar Collection at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. No. 40 followed. No. 43, this guitar, was finished in July. Rubio was building at a serious pace and building specifically for the ear of a player who had access to essentially every great guitar in the world and had chosen his.

From 1965 into the late 1960s, Bream performed and recorded on Rubio instruments through the most consequential stretch of his discography, the period that produced 20th Century Guitar and Britten's Nocturnal, a record that permanently changed the repertoire. The album credits from those years name the maker and the year, not the guitar number. Bream is documented as having kept this instrument in use from 1965 into the 1970s, and it then disappeared into a private collection for roughly fifty years before resurfacing.

Instruments like this do not really come to market. A guitar built for Bream, dedicated to him by hand where nobody would see it, from the exact months that made Rubio's name, is not a category with regular supply.

This guitar has been played, a lot, and it does not hide it. Over sixty years it has clearly been a working instrument, as a guitar like this deserves to be. The top shows many marks and wear to the polish, and there is a repaired crack in the top running from beside the bridge down toward the lower edge. The back carries two repaired cracks. All are repaired and stable.

With that said, the instrument is in excellent structural condition. It is solid, it holds its setup, and it plays easily with a very low action. The frets are low and flat, and a refret with taller wire is something a new owner may wish to consider. The tuners are not original and have been replaced with Scheller machines. We would rather be direct about a guitar of this significance than oversell it: this is a sixty year old concert instrument with an honest playing history, and it sounds like nothing else we have had.