{"id":2054,"date":"2015-06-16T13:26:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T20:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=2054"},"modified":"2020-11-16T11:23:07","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T19:23:07","slug":"new-mexico-luthiers-pimentel-sons-still-build-guitars-the-old-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/new-mexico-luthiers-pimentel-sons-still-build-guitars-the-old-way\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico Luthiers Pimentel & Sons Still Build Guitars \u2018the Old Way\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is there any state in the United States besides New Mexico that has a \u201cstate guitar\u201d\u2014along with its state flower (yucca), state bird (roadrunner), state animal (black bear), and all the other inspired and obscure official designations that legislators have come up with through the years? It was in 2009 that Governor Bill Richardson signed the authorization to make Pimentel & Sons Guitarmakers<\/strong>\u2019 \u201cNew Mexico Sunrise\u201d acoustic guitar a state symbol\u2014two years later the New Mexico Museum of Art acquired one of the beautiful instruments for its collection.<\/p>\n

Pimentel & Sons has an international reputation by this point, but it is truly a beloved institution in New Mexico, where the familia<\/em> of Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Pimentel has been crafting fine custom instruments for more than six decades, since 1963 in Albuquerque. Lorenzo died in 2010 at the age of 82, but by then several of his progeny had been long entrenched in the business: of his 12 children\u2014nine boys and three girls\u2014sons Rick, Robert, and Victor all are master guitar makers (brother Agustin, also a luthier, died in 2014), and two of their other brothers, Hector and Gustavo, are professional guitarists. Their mother, Josefina, has been involved in the company since its creation and has been a strong guiding presence throughout. Lorenzo\u2019s own career building instruments goes back to his teenage years in the 1940s in Ciudad Juar\u00e9z, Mexico, where he learned the craft from his half-brothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father, Lorenzo, started making guitars in Mexico and then in 1951 moved to El Paso, [Texas], where he worked at a bakery and also made guitars on the side,\u201d says Robert Pimentel, whose specialty in the company is, like his father\u2019s, making classical and flamenco guitars. \u201cThen they moved to Carlsbad, [New Mexico], which is where I was born, in 1953, and then to Albuquerque. As we were growing up, he worked in his garage making guitars, and as kids we were always around him, and he would teach us how he would do all the different things that go into making a guitar. So we learned the old way\u2014everything it takes to make a guitar by hand\u2014cutting the wood, making the rosette, making the nuts and saddle out of bone, working with the bridges and fingerboards, putting the necks together. We make everything here\u2014we don\u2019t buy anything premade, not even the rosette. We do custom inlays, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did Robert, who is vice-president of the company (brother Rick, who mainly makes steel-string acoustic guitars, is the president), ever wish during his youth that he could go out and play baseball with his friends, instead of working on guitars? \u201cNo, but I wanted to go out dancing with girls, and my dad always said, \u2018You\u2019re not going to go dancing, you gotta work, boy!\u2019\u201d he says with a robust laugh. \u201cIt was OK, because that hard work taught me a lot, and I like to think I\u2019ve become a great guitar maker, which is something to be proud of. I can do anything to a guitar\u2014I can build it, repair it. I can put on a new top, a new fingerboard. I can put a new back on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working on guitars for all of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n