The following article will document construction of a copy of La Leona and will appear in installments.
The guitar known as La Leona (The Lioness) is one of Torres’ most famous instruments. The name, La Leona, is thought to have been given to the guitar due to its exceptional volume and the quality of its sound. One hundred years after Torres’ death, a monument in his memory was erected in the main square of La Canada de San Urbana. The monument includes a bust of Torres and a sculpture of a guitar. The sculpture incorporates the head of a lioness underscoring the importance of this guitar as part of Torres’ legacy.
Both Pujol and Romanillos reference La Leona in their books. Pujol includes Sirvent’s letter which mentions the guitar: “While he was building regular models for sale, he wanted to build one with cypress back and sides, cedar neck, ebony fingerboard, machine heads, a bled-spruce top [a tapa de pinabete sangrado], simple binding, and a tornavoz. He called it ‘La Leona’.” Romanillos devotes a chapter to La Leona tracing the ownership of the guitar from Torres to the present day. The correspondence included by Pujol and Romanillos provides descriptions that sometimes are at odds with each other but, taken together, they paint a picture of the guitar as it was during Torres’ lifetime and changes that may have occurred since.
The top is spruce (two unmatched pieces according to Romanillos). The back and sides are cypress with the back made up of three pieces separated by strips (Romanillos says the strips are rosewood). The rosette is very simply made with only circular bands. Romanillos indicates the fingerboard and bridge are rosewood (Sirvent’s letter says the fingerboard is ebony). The headstock veneer is rosewood, although Romanillos believes this may have been added when original peg tuners were converted to machine heads (Sirvent describes the guitar as having machine heads).
La Leona was built in 1856 and is designated by Romanillos as FE 04 making it one of his earliest surviving instruments. It may have been built by Torres as an experimental guitar as it incorporates a number of distinctive features. It would have been one of his earliest guitars to employ a tornavoz. Oddly, an old style tie bridge was used with no saddle. Continuous linings were used for both the top and back versus his more typical kerfed linings. Most unique, however, is the bracing for the top. In a number of guitars, Torres created openings in the harmonic bar below the soundhole that allowed the outer radial fan braces to extend upwards from the lower bout to the soundhole. In these cases, the harmonic bar was still attached to the top. In the case of La Leona, the harmonic bar “ floats;” it is not attached to the to top, but is anchored to the sides just above the continuous linings. This allows all the radial fan braces to extend upwards towards the soundhole. Also, while the outermost fan braces intersect the lower diagonal cutoff bars, the interior fan braces terminate in the area of the bridge rather than extending closer to the cutoff bars. As La Leona is fitted with a tornavoz, it is difficult to inspect the interior bracing of the sound box. The Greifenberger Institute Fur Musikinstrumentenkunde website includes interesting photos from both borescope and x-ray inspection. These photos appear to show that the braces were peaked rather than rounded as they were for SE 114.
La Leona is lightly built weighing in at 1200 grams. (Guitar weight is discussed in another article on this website.) Torres’ guitars in general are lighter than modern guitars. A weight of 1200 grams was typical for Torres for guitars without a tornavoz. A tornavoz itself adds weight and also requires somewhat more interior brace support to secure the tornavoz in position. Torres may have taken other steps to lighten the guitar. There is no transverse bar between the interior heel block and the harmonic bar just above the soundhole and the back only has two transverse bars.
La Leona has “props” wedged between the bottom of the soundhole and the back. These are basically wooden dowels. It has been speculated that these were inserted to help support the top given the floating lower harmonic bar. However, these are easily added or removed and can be repositioned so it is hard to draw definite conclusions about how they might have been fitted by Torres.
La Leona is one of the guitars Torres kept his entire life, although he apparently loaned it to Julian Arcas for a time. While in Torres’ possession, the guitar was apparently never given a finish, polish being added later during repairs.
Key dimensions for La Leona from Romanillos’ catalogue are listed below:
Upper bout 263 mm
Waist 229 mm
Lower bout 343 mm
Body length 464 mm
Scale length 649 mm
Side depth top 91 mm
Side depth waist 94 mm
Rib depth bottom 97 mm
Soundhole diameter 86 mm
Weight 1200 grams
The first step in building La Leona is to create a template for the body. The adjacent picture shows one way to accomplish this. If a good photograph of a guitar is available, software can be used to create and print a full scale image. This in turn can be used to compare the actual plantilla to that calculated as shown in the “Torres” webpage on this site.
The plantilla for La Leona created using a scaled photograph conforms well to the calculated values with the exception of the waist dimension. The calculated upper bout width is 261 mm vs. 263 mm as given by Romanillos with the upper bout positioned at 0.2 times the body length. Sixty degree angled lines originating 25 mm from the bottom of the body locate the position of the lower bout well. The calculated body length is 1.5% greater than that specified by Romanillos. The calculated waist width is 5% smaller than that catalogued by Romanillos. This larger deviation for the waist may be influenced by the larger diameter of the soundhole which is given as 86 mm or a result of the layout of the unique internal bracing. Romanillos indicates that the point of convergence for the fan braces for La Leona is between the eight and ninth frets. For SE 114 and FE 17, this point of convergence is closer to the fourteenth or fifteenth fret location.
La Leona employs Spanish cypress for the back and sides. This was a very common choice for Torres. Today, cypress is most often associated with Flamenco guitars but it is not clear this distinction existed in Torres’ day. Urlik’s collection included 24 guitars with Spanish cypress back and sides. In this group is Torres’ guitar from 1883. Thickness data is provided for the back and sides of these guitars. For the sides, one thickness measurement is given for each side of each guitar with the thickness measured at the waist mid-depth. The average side thickness is 1.5 mm, ranging from 1.0 mm to 2.2 mm. The side thickness for the Torres guitar is 1.2 mm. Urlik maps the thickness of 9 locations on the back, mostly around the periphery with one measurement more centrally located. For these cypress guitars, on average, the back thickness is around 2 mm with individual thickness measurements ranging from 1.2 mm to 3.5 mm. For the Torres guitar, the average back thickness is 2.9 mm with a minimum of 2.6 and a maximum of 3.1 mm.
Romanillos describes La Leona as being “heavily arched” by both the lower harmonic bar and the extra long arched bridge. Elliott’s plan for SE 114 specifies the arch of the top as 2 mm to 3 mm. The author has found no specific information on the actual arching of La Leona.
To be continued…