Pimentel Harmony
Lorenzo Pimentel and his sons celebrate 50 years of a business
that makes 'a good instrument'
by Franchesca Stevens for the Journal

"When you start building guitars it's very hard — very time-consuming — and not everybody has that passion," Pimentel says. "But once you learn, it's so easy, it's hardly working."

The patriarch of the renowned guitar-making family may soft-pedal the talent, time and toil that goes into each instrument, but he and three of his sons still spend more than 180 hours a week building what famed jazz guitarist Johnny Smith simply calls "a good instrument."

"Any fine classic guitar is handcrafted. They don't get stamped out in the factory like the Japanese instruments," Smith, 79, says by phone from his Colorado Springs home. "A good instrument is a good instrument. A fine classic guitarist chooses a very fine classic guitar, and a very fine classic guitar is handmade by a very fine craftsman."

This year, Pimentel & Sons Guitar Makers Inc. of Albuquerque celebrates its 50th anniversary. But you wouldn't know it from the simple site where all the sawing, sanding and shaping take place.

In the lobby are a few awards and plaques from such luminaries as the Smithsonian Institution, the New Mexico Governor's Office and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But the workshop is just business as usual as Rick, Robert and Victor and their dad, Lorenzo, build more "babies." That is what Robert, 48, calls the guitars they make — babies.

"I like making guitars," he says. I like the sound that it produces. I like watching people play them and saying oooh and aah, 'This is beautiful.'"

Robert, the fifth of Lorenzo and Josefina's 12 children, like Rick, is a master guitar maker and is vice president of Pimentel & Sons. He is also the company's tour director, escorting local and foreign visitors through the workshop and four upstairs lesson and "trial" rooms, explaining the hows and whys of his craft.

Lorenzo and Josefina bought the little two-story house at 3316 Lafayette Drive NE in 1963 for about $9,000. It stands on a corner lot a bit higher than the other houses and has a white wrought-iron fence and a walk with outlines of guitars pressed into the concrete.

Lorenzo had been working full time at bakeries to support his family and making guitars in his South Valley home on the side. He would gather his finished instruments and try to sell them to local music stores for about $100 each.

"I was working like a donkey," Lorenzo says. "It was hard for us to make it with so many kids."

Not everyone appreciated Lorenzo's craftsmanship back then. He says a lot of merchants refused to buy his instruments — referring to them as "Mexican" guitars and insinuating they were inferior to the American Gibsons and Martins.

Now Pimentel's guitars and other stringed instruments retail for $1,000 to $40,000 each. They are built only by order and of such exotic materials as Spanish cedar, Gabon ebony and East Indian rosewood and often decorated with inlaid turquoise, Alaskan walrus ivory, coral, abalone, mother of pearl and 14K gold.

Each rosette — the decoration that encircles a guitar's sound hole — is also handmade, using thin strips of holly that the Pimentels dye in a rainbow of colors and fuse to ebony.

There is a three-year wait for each classical, flamenco, jazz and steel-string acoustic guitar. Pimentel & Sons also makes other stringed instruments, such as requintos, bajo sextos and bajo quintos used by Latin musicians.

Lorenzo and Josefina moved to Albuquerque from Carlsbad, where Lorenzo had learned English. He was born in Durango, Mexico, and quit school at 13 to help support his mother while making guitars with his older brothers.

A few years later, he met Colorado-born Josefina Garnica, who was working in Durango, Mexico. Oddly, Josefina remembers that when she was 15 she hired a photographer to do a portrait of her holding a guitar. She never played guitar, but she liked the instrument and was immediately impressed when she learned Lorenzo made guitars.

Lorenzo and Josefina, who recently celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary, are a shy, unassuring couple who say they worked hard to make the business what it is today.

"She never lost faith in me. She never did," Lorenzo says, looking over at Josefina during an interview at the house on Lafayette. "She wanted me to go full time with the guitar making because she knew it was my passion, and she said, 'Lorenzo, you have to go out and do what you want to do. It doesn't matter how many sacrifices I can make.'

"She never asked me for jewelry or rings or nothing," Lorenzo continues. "She never asked me for anything."

In 1965, Lorenzo says, his business started to take off — thanks, primarily, to an article about the Pimentel guitars in an Arizona magazine.

Then classical guitarist Mel Bay, who was also the world's largest independent music publisher, learned of Lorenzo's instruments. Bay, who died four years ago, featured a lot of Lorenzo's guitars on covers of his guitar instruction manuals and sold Pimentels at his music store in St. Louis.

William Bay, Mel's son, a guitarist who has written more than 150 music books, owns five Pimentel guitars.

He likes the "reasonably priced" instruments because they have "a nice, rich sound." William's son, Collin, 16, also plays a Pimentel.

"There is a whole lot of love in what we do," says Rick Pimentel, 50, the president of Pimentel & Sons.

"That is embodied with our family," he says. "When we're together we just feel all that all the time. We can enjoy each other's company without a question and work with each other. You can't beat that, you know?"

Two of Lorenzo's other sons, Hector and Gustavo, both musicians and recording artists, also work in the family business. Hector, 52, helps with sales and teaches at the house on Lafayette, while Gustavo, 33, also works in sales and gives lessons. Another son, Agustin, helped build guitars until he earned a business degree and set off on another path.

Rick says 70 percent of the company's gross income is from sales to out-of-state customers, while 20 percent comes from sales within New Mexico. The remaining 10 percent comes from repairs.

Building a guitar takes many steps, from cutting and shaping the wood to bracing its interior and sanding its exterior smooth.

Victor, like Lorenzo, Rick and Robert, usually works on several guitars at a time. He says wood cut with the grain running upward produces a lighter tone; and grain that runs downward deepens the tone. The location of the bracing helps determine how loud the guitar sounds and its tone quality.

"I like (making guitars)," says Victor, 41. "This is the best job you could ever have in the world, to me. I guess because I grew up with it and it's easy ... and I'm my own boss. ... Another thing about this job is that when you're making guitars for somebody, a lot of people come in and they say, 'Can I see my guitar being made?' And I say, 'Sure, come on in' and they love it."

Lorenzo sums up his commitment to the craft this way:

"I guess I had a lot of faith in my ability to build guitars and also I had a lot of good people behind me, like my sons, for example, friends.

"They used to push me and tell me over the years, 'Lorenzo, never quit. You have a gift in your hands, and one of these days you're going to be No. 1 in the world."