Richard Brune "Simplicio", 2022

A Simplicio in Cuban mahogany is a rare thing; a new one is rarer still. This is № 812 from the workshop of Richard Bruné, his bench copy of a 1925 Francisco Simplicio, completed in 2022 with a European spruce top, Cuban mahogany back and sides, a wooden tornavoz, and one of the most elaborate rosettes we have seen on a guitar built in this century.

Few living makers know the great Spanish guitars from the inside the way Bruné does. He restored the 1927 Simplicio that belonged to Agustín Barrios and documented the work for the Guild of American Luthiers, he keeps an Enrique García (Simplicio's teacher) and two Torres guitars in his own collection, and he drafted the technical drawings of Segovia's 1937 Hauser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When a maker with that history sits down to build a Simplicio, the result is not an homage worked up from photographs. It is a copy taken from the bench, by someone who has had the originals apart.

The choice of wood is the heart of this guitar. Simplicio built a number of his guitars in the late 1920s with mahogany back and sides, and the mahogany of his day was the dense, fine pored Cuban wood, not the Honduran stock that later took its name. That wood is essentially gone. Cuba stopped exporting it in 1946, the species has sat on CITES Appendix II since 1992, and what remains is old stock in the hands of a few makers who put it away decades ago. Bruné had a set, and he spent it here. Cuban mahogany is heavier and tighter grained than the Honduran mahogany most players know, and its reputation among builders is for a voice that keeps the clarity and quick response of mahogany while adding some of the depth and color of rosewood.

Then there is the tornavoz: a cylinder fitted inside the soundhole and extending down into the body, in the tradition of Torres, García, Simplicio, and the early Hauser guitars. It lowers the main air resonance of the box, deepens and rounds the bass, and gives the whole instrument that unmistakable old world character that players chase in the original Barcelona guitars. Simplicio often made his in wood rather than brass, and Bruné has followed him here with a wooden tornavoz, visible through the soundhole

The scale is 648 mm (25.5 inches), the Torres measurement that Simplicio used on his guitars before about 1927, paired with a 51 mm nut. Together with the compact Simplicio body, the result is a concert instrument that sits in the lap and under the hands more easily than almost any modern guitar.

Everything about this design points in one direction: the compact Simplicio body, the shorter Torres scale, the dense mahogany, and above all the tornavoz. The combination produces a sound that is darker and rounder than a modern spruce and rosewood concert guitar, with a bass that seems to come from somewhere deeper inside the box than the size of the instrument would suggest. The tornavoz pulls the air resonance down and gives the low strings a weight and bloom that lingers after the note.

Above that foundation, the spruce top and the mahogany keep things clear. Cuban mahogany does not blur the way a softer wood can; the trebles stay articulate and sweet, with a slightly reedy, vocal quality in the upper positions that is very much in character for the Barcelona guitars this one is modeled on. Chords separate cleanly, and the attack is quick, so the guitar never feels slow or thick in the hand despite the darkness of the overall tone.

This is a guitar for players who love the sound of the early twentieth century Spanish instruments and want it without the fragility, the hairline cracks, and the patched finish that usually come with the originals. It rewards a light touch, and it has the kind of intimacy that makes a player want to sit with it for an hour rather than put it down.

In the hands, the 648 mm scale and 51 mm nut make a real difference. Stretches that are a reach on a 650 or 655 mm guitar fall naturally here, and the narrower nut suits players who prefer a slightly closer string spacing. The body is smaller and lighter than a modern concert guitar, and the neck has a comfortable traditional profile.

The label reads R.E. Bruné, luthier, № 812, Año 2022, with Evanston struck through by hand and Wauconda written in beneath it, a small record of the Bruné workshop's move from the Evanston building it occupied for nearly fifty years to its current home northwest of Chicago, where Richard works alongside his son Marshall.

The rosette is the showpiece. Simplicio was a trained cabinetmaker before he ever built a guitar, and his rosettes and purflings are among the most ornate in the Spanish tradition. Bruné's version is built from concentric rings of mosaic in red, green, gold, and black around a wide central band of diamond tiles, bordered by fine black and white lines. The same mosaic reappears on the tie block of the rosewood bridge, and the multi line purfling runs around the top, the back, and down the center seam of the back.

The back is a two piece set of Cuban mahogany with the warm, mottled chatoyance the wood is known for, and the sides match. The headstock carries the three lobed crest of the Torres and Barcelona schools under a rosewood headplate, fitted with Rodgers tuning machines with engraved plates and mother of pearl buttons. Ebony fingerboard, bone nut and saddle, and a traditional Spanish heel complete the picture.

Specifications

Number: 812
Model: Simplicio, based on a 1925 Francisco Simplicio
Top: European spruce
Back & Sides: Cuban mahogany
Tornavoz: Wood
Fingerboard: Ebony
Bridge: Rosewood with mosaic tie block
Condition: Excellent, no cracks or repairs

Richard E. Bruné built his first guitar in 1966 in Dayton, Ohio, using wood salvaged from his parents' dining room table because he could not afford a good instrument, and that guitar still hangs in his shop. He spent the late 1960s in Mexico City playing flamenco professionally and studying anthropology, moved to Chicago in 1972, and in 1973 set up the Evanston workshop that became one of the most important addresses in the American classical guitar world. He is entirely self taught, and over the decades he has also built harpsichords, lutes, baroque guitars, and ouds.

Bruné was a founding member and the first elected president of the Guild of American Luthiers, and he has written for the Guild and for Vintage Guitar Magazine since the early 1970s. His published work includes the restoration of Agustín Barrios's Simplicio, an 1884 Torres eleven string, Segovia's 1937 Hauser and 1912 Manuel Ramírez, Sabicas's 1951 Marcelo Barbero, and a three part series on French polish. Andrés Segovia owned two Bruné guitars, the second of them a 1986 Artist model patterned on his own 1937 Hauser. Julian Bream, Sabicas, the Romeros, Paco Peña, and David Starobin are among the players who have passed through the shop, and Bruné's restoration bench has held Bream's David Rubio lute, Charlie Byrd's guitar, and Marie Antoinette's guitar.

Today the shop operates in Wauconda, Illinois, where Richard builds and restores alongside his son Marshall, a trained violin maker who grew up beside his father's bench. The wait for a new Bruné guitar is over five years.

Francisco Simplicio (1874 to 1932) was a Barcelona cabinetmaker who spent eighteen years at the decorative arts firm Masriera y Vidal before joining the workshop of Enrique García around 1918. García, who had trained in the Ramírez shop in Madrid and founded what became the Barcelona school of guitar making, died in October 1922, and Simplicio took over his premises, his tools, and his templates, calling himself on his labels the only disciple and student of Enrique García. He built roughly 336 guitars under his own name between 1922 and his death in January 1932, with the help of his son Miguel and daughter Josefa, and won the Grand Prize at the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition.

Simplicio's guitars were played by Agustín Barrios, Matilde Cuervas, and later Daniel Friederich, and they are prized today for a sound that is often described as the most distinctive of any of the great twentieth century makers. Bruné, who has written about Simplicio at length, calls him one of the most important Spanish makers of the first half of the century. The guitars from before 1927 are built on a slightly smaller body with the 647 mm Torres scale, which is the model Bruné has followed here.

Excellent. The guitar has been carefully kept since it left the workshop and presents as nearly new, with no cracks and no repairs.