1981 Condal Classical Guitar hand made in Barcelona Solid Cedar & Solid Rosewood

Description

This is a handmade classical guitar built and signed by Manuel Condal in Barcelona, Spain in the early 1980s. It is made with all solid woods with a solid cedar top and solid rosewood body with high grade woods. This was not a factory, he made these guitars by himself  the old school way. This is from one of the last batches that he built as he was already an old man in the late 60s when he was making them with Brazilian rosewood. This guitar actually sounds better than some of those guitars because the cedar adds volume and depth over the spruce topped guitars that he made in the 60s.
I bought this guitar about 5 years ago. I had owned a $ 1500 Admira and a 00 Ramirez 125
th
Anniversary Studio guitar and wanted a guitar with more character that wasn't made in a factory with a thick polyurethane finish. They were listed on ebay as a pair, the lower CA80 and  this CA100 model had been stored without proper humidity and had some humidity cracks, the fingerboard had shrunk on the CA100 and the owner was asking for ,000 for the pair. I ended up buying the guitars and put a new fingerboard and frets on this guitar and the cracks were repaired so it plays well and sounds  good. It has character and it is attractive with nice inlays and wood bindings and the neck has the ebony reinforcement that you do not see on lower models. The finish is thinner than on most new factory guitars and this guitar was literally made by hand with a luthier's labor and tools, not by the machines and robots used in some of the Chinese and Spanish factories these days where the guitars are spit out.
Manuel Condal never achieved the fame as other builders that had celebrities play their guitars; I have seen his guitars sell for $ 3,000 but not for ,000. The story as told word for word by the previous owner, below, was that his girl friend bought the CA80 guitar and he liked it and ordered this higher end model. He subsequently bought a Ramirez Elite which is apparently worth over ,000 now and said that this guitar sounds almost as good. I would just say that if you are looking for a hand made classical guitar with some personality that plays well and sound good and are not going to spend thousands of dollars this fits the bill. I have been playing it again recently and it sounds very good, it has a rich full sound with good volume and projection.
There were cracks on each side of the fingerboard and there is a repaired crack parallel to the top grain but the guitar is structurally fine and looks very good overall. The new fingerboard is thick enough to allow for lowering the action with a re fret in future decades but it plays easily now and has plenty of room to lower the saddle so this is a very playable guitar with a straight neck, good new frets and good action.  I may have put a carbon fiber composite truss in when I replaced the fingerboard; I did on the CA80 but am not sure since this one already has ebony. This was the fanciest model that Manuel Condal made except for the CA120 which had a carved headstock but was otherwise the same. This one was signed but I have owned 60s Condals that were not signed.
I just noticed another nice Condal listed on ebay now and this is from the decription on that one as it applies to this one as well: "
This guitar was built in the Condal family workshop, in the same area of Barcelona as the legendary workshops of the Juan Estruch family and of Enrique Sanfeliu Sr. and Jr. The Condal philoshophy of guitar making was to build a more refined instrument than many of their well known neighbors. These were made to order with greater care, one instrument at a time, instead of in a line of workers.
What Condal guitars do share with other Barcelona makers is bright visual flourishes and matching all of those colors and patterns in the rosette, bridge decoration and bindings. The body silhouette is also similar to Estruch or Sanfeliu, which I have found to create a very rich Spanish sound, with more warmth than Madrid guitars."
Again, this guitar has more character and class than the new Chinese guitars and the Spanish guitars made in factories at even double or triple this price point.
It is being shipped with a near new foam case that will protect it well and I will pack it carefully. The shipping cost is for domestic shipping only
From the original owner
; "
The guitars have no cases they were shipped to me by air nicely wrapped. How I came to own these guitars is: My girl friend got a job in Madrid and during a sightseeing trip to Barcelona were taken by the tour guide to visit Manuel Condal's shop. She said Mr. Condal besides making musical instruments, he made cabinets and furniture that were displayed in his shop. She bought the master built demonstration model CA80 for my birthday. I liked the sound of it and wrote her back asking her to buy the very top model of Mr. Condal's guitar. Months later the master had built and sent me a guitar that carries a model No. of CA100. It sounded the best of the classical guitar I have ever owned. Since her Barcelona trip, She had caused me to spend thousands in Spanish guitars. My purchase of the Jose Ramirez Elite and others were all because I wanted to see if there was a Spanish guitar could sound better than my Condals. In the end, the Elite sounded the best but the Condal is not far from it. Later I learned that there was a Condal CA120 and I asked her to look into it. After some facts findings, her reply was that the CA120 was the same construction as my CA100 except that the CA120 were not all made by the master himself. So my CA100 was the last batch of top guitars made by Mr. Condal and both are made of solid woods. Cracks and loose frets were results of dry heating of NY condo despite of my efforts to put humidify stick inside the body. Because of the CA100 needs refretting you can ask the repair shop to mill a slope on the finger board to get a better neck angle and to lower the bridge could get a good action, really 4+mm action on 12th is not bad. Look, Condal guitars are rare, these are the truly master built instruments that their legacy glorifies their master who once lived. Trust me buy these guitars you'll won't ever find a Jose Ramirez Elite for sell
."