Concert classical

The figures above are named Barcelona guitars, anchored on Guitar Salon’s 1960 spruce concert guitar, No. 190. Gabriel Fleta Jiménez still builds to order and publishes no single specification. A 1936 maple copy of a Torres, a 1941, and the Met’s 1953 are earlier guitars. A 1973, a 1981, and anything from the sons are later. Scales in the sources are 650 mm, 25 3/4 in. (65.4 cm), and 660 mm. Nuts run 50, 51, 52, 53, and 54 mm.

Construction

The job was a classical guitar you could hear at the back of a hall. The man who built it had spent his working life on violins and cellos. Guitar Salon’s account of the guitar he then made is a larger, stiffer instrument than a light Torres, for rooms that had gotten bigger.

Ignacio Fleta Pescador was born on 31 July 1897 and died in Barcelona on 11 August 1977 (Wikipedia; Guitar Salon). Where, exactly, is printed two ways. Guitar Salon and the Gran Enciclopèdia de la Música give Huesa del Común, in Teruel, and Guitar Salon calls a Huesca birth a mistake. Blanco y Negro, 15 December 1962, prints “Huesca, provincia de Teruel.” The Met’s card says Huesca.

He left for Barcelona at thirteen with two older brothers, Manuel and Bienvenido, and learned violin, cello, and bass viol largely in the French line, from makers including Benito Jaume, Etienne Maire, and Philippe Le Duc (Guitar Salon). The encyclopedia’s route is fourteen years with his older brother, the luthier Francisco Manuel Fleta, then Philippe Le Duc in Paris, then his own bench in 1927 on carrer dels Àngels. Guitar Salon’s 2011 profile has the three brothers opening a shop in 1915 and Ignacio leaving it in 1927. The 2013 memorial, from his grandson, puts the house and shop first on c/ Calabria, where Gabriel was born in 1929, and at c/ Los Angeles 4 from 1931. The 1962 interview already finds him on calle de los Ángeles. 1927 and 1931 both stand.

He told Blanco y Negro he built his first violin at twenty-two, following Manuel and otherwise teaching himself, and that at forty-five the maestros Gálvez and Raventós fought over a cello of his. Asked which instrument he preferred to make, he said the bowed ones. A guitar, he said, takes a different technique, and he brings it the same care. The same article names Pablo Casals, Gaspar Cassadó, and Juan Manén among artists who recognized the work. That passage is about the man, violins and cellos included. It is not a guitar in Casals’s hands. Randy Osborne calls him Casals’s repairer.

The guitar was already in the shop before it became the shop. Between 1939 and 1945 he reproduced a set for the society Ars Musicae: gothic harp, fiddle, lute, vihuela, viols, and a modern classical guitar (Guitar Salon; the encyclopedia says the 1940s, and fiddles and viols). In 1936, after restoring Francisco Tárrega’s 1864 Torres, the one catalogued FE 17, he built a structural copy: spruce, flamed maple, 650 mm, a 52 mm nut, herringbone, a carved head (Guitar Salon). It is not FE 17, and it is not the later concert guitar. La Suite’s 1941, No. 34, is spruce and Rio rosewood, with a cedar neck and an ebony board. The Met’s 1953, accession 2010.420, No. 50, is the early bracing in a measured box: seven fans, 650 mm, nineteen nickel-silver frets, spruce, rosewood, ebony, a golden varnish, herringbone in the rosette and the binding.

1955 is the year the sources treat as the turn. Guitar Salon: full-time from then, after he heard Segovia, and only good guitars. The encyclopedia: he began building guitars in 1955, and the guitars, not the violins, made the name. La Vanguardia, 17 February 2021, dates a guitar for Segovia to that same year. The earlier labels are still earlier. Occasional, then the job.

What he changed was mass. Guitar Salon, setting him beside Hauser II and José Ramírez III: away from a light Torres, a larger body, a stiffer guitar, tops that eventually carried nine fan struts and four harmonic bars, two above and two below, and a back with a fourth transverse brace. The neck goes on after the box is closed. No. 190, from 1960, is that nine-and-four top, still spruce, Indian rosewood, Ignacio’s name alone on the label. The 1953’s seven fans are the earlier pattern. No year for the change to nine fans has been published.

The top wood moved. Collectors, in Guitar Salon’s wording, talk about a spruce period in the late 1950s and the 1960s, then cedar. He came to prefer cedar, and by the early 1970s he was working almost only in it. Most backs and sides are Indian rosewood. CSA rosewood, maple, mahogany, and cypress are the rare sets. In December 1962 he was still describing a European spruce soundboard, from the center and north of the continent, and a guitar back that was usually jacaranda. Siccas’s 1963, No. 287, is still spruce, 650 mm, nut 51 mm, 1755 g, Fustero machines. A 1968 at Guitar Salon is cedar. Spruce did not stop on a single New Year.

The varnish answer in that 1962 interview is the violin and cello recipe, forty-five years and twenty formulas to get there: linseed oil, gum elemi, sandarac, mastic, benzoin, and shellac, colored with dragon’s blood, gamboge, saffron, turmeric, and sandalwood. A violin’s varnishing, he said, takes almost a year, and the rest of the violin another five or six months. That clock is a violin. Guitar Salon calls the guitar’s finish the violin formula, French-polished, and hard to copy. Siccas lists nitrocellulose on No. 339, a 1964. The two descriptions are not the same surface.

His sons were already masters in the 1962 piece: Francisco, born 22 July 1925, and Gabriel, born 21 December 1929 (Guitar Salon). The 2013 memorial says Gabriel Sr. had a hand in the guitars that made the name, and that Francisco came to specialize in the French polish. The label changed to “Ignacio Fleta e hijos” sometime in late 1963 or 1964. Guitar Salon’s memorial calls that change somewhat arbitrary, because the sons were already in the shop, and says the exact date is unknown even to the family. The current Guitar Salon page says the mid-1960s. Osborne reports a 1942 cello, at Bonhams in 2008, already lettered Ignacio Fleta e Hijos. A cello label and a guitar label are not the same change.

Ignacio died on 11 August 1977. Francisco died in 2003, Gabriel Sr. in January 2013 (Guitar Salon). Gabriel Fleta Jiménez, the grandson, born 1963, told La Vanguardia he started at thirteen, in the summers, finished a first guitar at seventeen, and had his grandfather in the shop until he was fourteen. He studied guitar for five years. His father had studied violin for seven and built a violin for himself. The bench in that 2021 interview is carrer de Farell 15, Hostafrancs. He was working wood from the 1970s and 1980s. Indian rosewood is the usual back now. Brazilian, he said, was the older wood, and it is protected. He finishes two to four guitars a year, works two at once, and counted 250 to 300 guitars of his own life up to that interview. The varnish stage can take more than two months. As of that interview he had never taken an apprentice, and his children, Claudia and Martí, had not taken the bench. That 250 to 300 is his own count. It is not his grandfather’s.

Not this guitar. Francisco Manuel Fleta’s instruments are the older brother’s. A Casa Montalvo “Ignacio Fleta” is a Mexican guitar wearing the name. Ennio Giovanetti’s 2020 “1936 Fleta” is a new copy of the maple guitar. The 1912 from Manuel Ramírez’s shop, a Hermann Hauser, and a José Ramírez 1a are other guitars Segovia played. FE 17 is the Torres he copied in 1936. It is not the copy.

Players

The 1936, the 1941, the Met’s 1953, a Hauser, and a Ramírez are not the guitars in the sentences below. A program that says only “a Fleta” is not a serial number.

Andrés Segovia — more than one Fleta, and the first year is not agreed. La Vanguardia (17 February 2021) says he built one for Segovia in 1955. The Museo Andrés Segovia, in Linares: in 1956, with extreme changes of climate on his tours of the United States, Fleta showed him several from the shop; the maker then made four more; the sons Francisco and Gabriel Fleta Cañellas made two after that; the museum’s heading is seven guitars, 1956 to 1987; the first of the sons’ two, delivered in 1976, No. 700, is in Linares. Guitar Salon’s 2011 profile: the first was 1957, and Segovia later ordered two more, three in all. Vichy Enchères, citing the 2008 Accornero, Epicoco, and Guerci catalogue, also has three commissioned from 1957. Randy Osborne, writing in 1997 from BMG magazine, says that by 1959 Segovia had already had his first Fleta for at least a year. 1955, 1956, 1957, and “at least a year” before 1959 are four tellings. Three guitars and seven guitars are two counts. No. 700 is one object, in the museum. Artist-owned — not a comp. The 1937 Hauser and the Madrid 1a are other instruments.

John Williams — a 1961, and not only a 1961. Guitar Salon: he owned Fletas of 1956, 1961, and 1972, and played the 1961 in concert and on record until 1972. Christie’s: No. 235, label “Ignacio Fleta-Barcelona / Construido en 1961,” length of back 19 1/2 in (495 mm), his primary guitar for recordings and performances for many years; after he retired it he kept playing Fletas into the late 1970s. From Williams it went to Malcolm Weller, and in 1976 to the Australian guitarist Jason Waldron. Vichy: more than twelve years on No. 235. Zavaleta’s listing for a 1971, No. 572, calls Williams’s 1972 the guitar No. 609. Until 1972, more than twelve years, and other Fletas into the late 1970s: the sources do not describe one unbroken run on one serial. Christie’s heads a discography “probable,” and the records it names include CBS Records Presents John Williams (recorded 1964), More Virtuoso Music for Guitar, and the concertos with Eugene Ormandy. Probable is Christie’s word. LotSearch records the Christie’s sale of 22 April 2005 at $74,400, estimate $40,000–$60,000. Not a comp.

Angel Romero — three guitars, in Guitar Salon’s account of instruments that passed through the shop. The Villa-Lobos concerto on a 1962. The Lalo Schifrin concerto on a 1963. He was the first owner of a 1992 that Francisco and Gabriel named “La Princesa.” Three guitars. The 1992 is the sons’ shop.

Marcelo Kayath — a 1981 he bought from his teacher Turibio Santos. Guitar Salon: first prizes on it, including Toronto and Paris in 1984, and he played it for Segovia in 1986. Santos’s hands are the previous owner’s, not a separate concert credit.

Also known to play, on Guitar Salon’s word and without a second source for the night: Alirio Díaz, with no guitar named; José Rey de la Torre, a 1965, in concerts in the United States and Europe; Lars Hannibal, a 1961, on Siesta with Michala Petri; Jürgen Ruck, a 1989, with the Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado; Norbert Kraft, first owner of a 1992. The 2011 profile also names Carlos Bonell and Jorge Morel, and names no guitar for either. Theodore Bikel’s 1955, same shop’s account, was a working guitar for him on stage, in the studio, and on screen. No film title is given.

Rarity

You can still commission one. You cannot commission No. 235, and you cannot commission No. 700. Gabriel Fleta Jiménez told La Vanguardia in February 2021 that the wait runs to nine years, and that he completes two to four a year. Guitar Salon’s 2011 profile says a twenty-year list, and Siccas’s notes still print about twenty. Those are different clocks.

The older clocks move too. Pablo Vila San-Juan, La Vanguardia, 2 November 1976, has him at eighteen years for an order placed then. Osborne’s 1997 column, from BMG: six months in 1959, a year and a half in 1961, four and a half years in 1964–65, nine years in 1972, and eighteen years for the sons as of 1997. He also remembered two, sometimes, on the wall at Ivor Mairants. A wait is not a census.

Blanco y Negro on 15 December 1962 gives his working life to that date as 82 violins, 39 cellos, 5 violas, and 270 guitars. That 270 is not a total through 1977. Siccas’s 1964 is already No. 339. The Linares guitar is No. 700, in 1976. A label number identifies a guitar. It does not count a year, and it is not the magazine’s 270. No total from 1955 to his death has been published. Vichy Enchères, 30 September 2024, says that over the previous thirty years only about twenty instruments by Ignacio Fleta had come to auction.

Thinner than the name: a guitar from before 1955, such as the 1936 maple or the Met’s seven-fan 1953; a spruce concert guitar from the years Williams and Segovia were recording on them; Brazilian or Rio rosewood, which the grandson calls the older back; a label that is actually No. 235 or No. 700. An “e hijos” guitar from after August 1977 is the sons. A guitar from Farell 15 is the grandson. The brother’s guitars, and a Casa Montalvo with the name on the head, are other makers.

Value

Informal estimate, 30 October 2026. Not an appraisal.

Asks and list prices are marked as asks. Hammers are marked as hammers. Segovia’s No. 700 and Williams’s No. 235 are not comps. A new guitar from the grandson is not a 1960. No Reverb price-guide band for the maker was on the brand page that day. Few sold prices are public. The workshop publishes no current price.

New street. Nothing on a wall with a printed figure. La Vanguardia in 2021 gives the wait and the two-to-four a year, not a euro. The 1976 column is talk, not a list: word was going around that he had received four thousand dollars for one guitar for the United States, and Vila San-Juan writes that he may well have charged the sum people were naming. One reported guitar. Not a 2026 price.

Used modern. The living name, after Ignacio, is still a commission, so a recent guitar is a used one the moment it leaves. Named asks, not hammers: a 1992 Ignacio Fleta e hijos on Reverb, cedar and Indian rosewood, 650 mm, nut 52 mm, at $35,630.93. Classical Guitars Copenhagen, a 1981, No. 798, cedar and Indian rosewood, 650 mm, nut 54 mm, French polish restored by Gabriel Fleta, €29,000 or the highest offer, on a page dated 19 May 2026. Different decades. Different wood only in the sense that both cards say cedar and Indian rosewood.

Vintage / collectible. More asks, checked the same day. A 1973 “e hijos,” cedar and East Indian rosewood, nine-fan, 650 mm, nut 53 mm, Fustero, at Mike & Mike’s on Reverb, $15,769.99. A 1970 mint cedar, Bernadette’s Gear Garage, $58,000, the listing about a year old; Reverb’s brand index the same day also showed a 1970 mint at $65,000. The two pages do not agree, and they may be one guitar moving. Luthier’s Collection, a 1969, cedar and Brazilian, 650 mm, $60,000, the page dated 14 September 2026. Guitar Salon’s 1960, No. 190, was in stock with no price printed.

Named hammers, not a series: Bretagne Enchères, 8 December 2025, a 1957 concert guitar, €16,250 (Gazette Drouot, 8 January 2026). Christie’s, 22 April 2005, Williams’s No. 235, $74,400. That is one player’s guitar. Bonhams, 9 July 2007, a 1963, £14,400 including premium. James D. Julia, August 2010, a 1965 “e hijos,” No. 354, $28,750 including premium. The 2005, 2007, and 2010 results are old hammers. They are not the asks above.

Ahead, not behind: Gardiner Houlgate, 11 December 2026, a 1959, Brazilian, spruce, cedar neck, 660 mm, nut 52 mm, estimate £15,000–£25,000. An estimate. La Suite, 1 October 2026, the 1941 No. 34, estimate €10,000–€13,000. The public lot page did not show the hammer. The 1941 is an earlier guitar, and that estimate is not a price for the 1960.

See also

• 1a — Madrid’s long-scale concert guitar, another one Segovia played; not this Barcelona shop
• Segovia 1937 — the Munich guitar in the same story; not a Fleta, and not No. 700
• La Leona — the Sevilla pattern behind the later fans; the Torres he copied in 1936 is FE 17, not this 1856

Sources

• Guitar Salon International, Ignacio Fleta — 31 July 1897, Huesa del Común; 11 August 1977; full-time from 1955; “only good guitars”; nine fans and four harmonic bars; fourth back brace; violin-method neck; spruce then cedar, almost only cedar by the early 1970s; Indian rosewood usual; Williams’s 1956, 1961, and 1972, the 1961 played until 1972; Romero’s 1962, 1963, and 1992 “La Princesa”; Kayath’s 1981; Rey de la Torre’s 1965; Hannibal’s 1961 Siesta; Kraft’s 1992; Ruck’s 1989; Bikel’s 1955; sons’ dates; Francisco 2003; Gabriel January 2013; grandson’s wait-list
• Guitar Salon International, Luthier: Ignacio Fleta (12 April 2011) — 1915; own shop 1927; 1936 copy of Tárrega’s 1864 Torres; Ars Musica, 1939–1945; Segovia on the radio, all Bach, 1955; first Segovia guitar 1957, two more later; orders by 1958, Williams among them; twenty-year wait in that profile; Bonell, Morel, Díaz, Santos, Kayath
• Guitar Salon International, In Memoriam, Gabriel Fleta (25 January 2013) — Calàbria, then Àngels 4 from 1931; label change late 1963 or 1964, date unknown even to the family; sons already in the work; Francisco and the French polish
• Guitar Salon International, 1960, No. 190 — spruce, Indian rosewood, 650 mm, nut 50 mm, nine fans and four harmonic bars, French polish, G#, Rodgers, 3.95 lbs / 1791 g; Ignacio’s name alone; in stock with no price printed
• Guitar Salon International, 1936, after Torres FE 17 — spruce and flamed maple, 650 mm, nut 52 mm; structural copy, not a lookalike; Giovanetti’s 2020 is a later copy
• Guitar Salon International, 1964 spruce — 650 mm, nut 52 mm
• The Met, Guitar, Ignacio Fleta, 1953, 2010.420 — No. 50; 650 mm; seven fans; 19 nickel-silver frets; spruce, rosewood, ebony; 38 7/16 in. (97.7 cm), lower bout 14 9/16 in. (37 cm), depth at the tail 3 7/8 in. (9.8 cm); the card’s birthplace is Huesca
• Gran Enciclopèdia de la Música, Ignasi Fleta — Huesa del Común, Teruel, 1897–1977; fourteen years with Francisco Manuel; Le Duc; 1927, carrer dels Àngels; Ars Musicae in the 1940s; guitars from 1955
• *Blanco y Negro*, 15 December 1962, p. 43 — interview on calle de los Ángeles; first violin at twenty-two; Gálvez and Raventós; prefers bows; European spruce; jacaranda backs; varnish recipe; sons already masters; 82 violins, 39 cellos, 5 violas, 270 guitars; the printed birthplace is “Huesca, provincia de Teruel”
• *La Vanguardia*, Suso Pérez, 17 February 2021 — a guitar for Segovia in 1955, in this telling; Farell 15; nine-year wait; two to four a year; 250 to 300 of his own; 1970s and 1980s wood; Indian rosewood; Brazilian protected; born 1963; no apprentice
• Pablo Vila San-Juan, *La Vanguardia*, 2 November 1976, p. 62, English by Randy Osborne — eighteen years for an order placed then; talk of four thousand dollars for one guitar for the United States
• Randy Osborne, 1997 column, reprinted 2026 — BMG waits: six months (1959), a year and a half (1961), four and a half years (1964–65), nine years (1972); Segovia’s first already at least a year old by 1959; sons’ list at eighteen years in 1997; a 1942 cello label read as “e hijos”
• Wikipedia, Ignacio Fleta — Ignacio Fleta Pescador, 31 July 1897, Huesa del Común; 11 August 1977, Barcelona; Segovia, Williams, Alirio Díaz named, no guitars dated
• Christie’s, ex-John Williams, Barcelona, 1961, No. 235 — length of back 19 1/2 in (495 mm); Weller; Waldron in 1976; Fleta instruments into the late 1970s; the discography is headed probable
• Christie’s, Barcelona, 1961, No. 214 — scale 25 3/4 in. (65.4 cm). Not No. 235
• LotSearch, Christie’s, 22 April 2005 — No. 235, $74,400, estimate $40,000–$60,000
• Museo Andrés Segovia, Linares, guitars — seven Fletas, 1956–1987; several shown in 1956; four more by Ignacio; two by the sons; No. 700, 1976, in the museum
• Vichy Enchères, 30 September 2024 — three commissioned from 1957, citing Accornero, Epicoco, and Guerci (2008); No. 235 for more than twelve years; about twenty Ignacio Fleta guitars at auction in thirty years
• Bonhams, 9 July 2007, a 1963 — length of back 494 mm; 19 nickel frets; £14,400 including premium
• Siccas, 1963, No. 287 — spruce, Indian rosewood, 650 mm, nut 51 mm, 1755 g, Fustero; the shop’s note still says about twenty years
• Siccas, 1964, No. 339 — spruce, Indian rosewood, 650 mm, 1815 g; nitrocellulose on the card
• Zavaleta’s, 1971, No. 572 — calls Williams’s 1972 the guitar No. 609
• *Gazette Drouot*, 8 January 2026 — Bretagne Enchères, 8 December 2025, a 1957, hammer €16,250
• Gardiner Houlgate, 11 December 2026, a 1959 — Brazilian, spruce, cedar neck, ebony, 660 mm, nut 52 mm; estimate £15,000–£25,000; not yet a result
• La Suite, 1 October 2026, a 1941, No. 34 — Rio rosewood, spruce, cedar neck, ebony; estimate €10,000–€13,000; the public page did not show the hammer
• James D. Julia, August 2010, No. 354 — 1965, “e hijos,” Calle de Los Angeles 4; $28,750 including premium
• Reverb, 1973 “e hijos” — ask $15,769.99 on 30 October 2026; cedar, East Indian rosewood, nine-fan, 650 mm, nut 53 mm bone, mahogany neck on the listing, Fustero
• Reverb, 1970 — mint ask $58,000; the brand index the same day showed a 1970 mint at $65,000
• Reverb, Ignacio Fleta classical — no price-guide band on 30 October 2026
• Reverb, 1992 “e hijos” — ask $35,630.93; 650 mm; nut 52 mm
• Luthier’s Collection, 1969 — cedar, Brazilian, 650 mm; ask $60,000; page dated 14 September 2026
• Classical Guitars Copenhagen, 1981, No. 798 — €29,000 or offer; 650 mm; nut 54 mm; page dated 19 May 2026