private industry musical instruments founded 1882 ; 134 years ago 1882 in madrid spain founder jos ram rez headquarters spain products classical guitars website guitarrasramirez.com ram rez guitars guitarras ram rez in spanish is a spanish manufacturer of professional concert quality classical and flamenco guitars . contents 1 history 2 performers 3 see also 4 external links history edit five generations of the ram rez family have produced ramirez guitars . the company was founded in 1882 when jos ram rez opened a workshop at 2 concepci n jer nima madrid . following jos ram rez s death in 1923 his son jos ram rez ii who was married with two children jos iii and alfredo returned from south america where he had been working as a guitarist . he was also a guitar maker and by 1925 jos ii was running the business . considerably hindered by material shortages during the spanish civil war jos ii and his son jos iii by now himself a guitar maker began experimenting with non traditional woods and design techniques . jos ii s other son alfredo managed the business . alfredo died in 1954 and jos ii in 1957 forcing jos iii to take over the management of the shop and for a time abandon guitar making himself . however he continued to experiment putting designs on paper to be built by journeymen and supervising every phase of construction of the instruments . he worked closely with top performers which brought acceptance to his innovations . he built concert guitars for andr s segovia which were larger and more powerful than those of torres . these guitars featured a longer scale length and asymmetrical bracing unlike the symmetrical torres pattern . both these innovations and many others are standard today . more radical still in 1963 he built a ten string guitar for narciso yepes to accommodate yepes unique chromatically balanced tuning and later an eight string guitar for jos tom s. high end professional models based on both of these extended range guitars remain in the company s current catalog . in the 1960s to cope with increasing demand jos iii moved the workshop to general margallo street and greatly expanded the number of employees leaving the original premises as a shop only . in the early 1970s this was replaced by a larger shop at 5 concepci n jer nima directly in front of the original establishment . the original shop was restored and reopened at the end of the 1980s by jos iii s children jos ram rez iv and his sister amalia both themselves by then guitar makers . in 1988 jose iii passed control of the business to jos iv and amalia . in 1993 they undertook a major restructure of the business concentrating on wholly handmade professional instruments and contracting out the construction of top quality student instruments to be built to their designs and delivered to their own workshop for final inspection and adjustment . in 1995 they were unable to renew the lease on the original shop and moved to the current address nearby at 8 calle de la paz . jos iv died in 2000 leaving amalia to oversee the entire operation . as of 2010 update this consists of a team of fourteen including amalia herself four other guitar makers and three apprentices . enrique and cristina ramirez her nephew and niece will continue with the company in future . performers edit the romeros egberto gismonti mark knopfler christopher parkening sabicas manolo sanl car andr s segovia roberto fabbri kazuhito yamashita galina vale v ctor monge serranito narciso yepes george harrison of the beatles on the band s song and i love her matthias jabs of scorpions on the album sting in the tail charlie byrd hank marvin of the shadows used a ram rez flamenco guitar on the shadows hit recording guitar tango chet atkins played his ram rez on several recordings mike oldfield bucky pizzarelli see also edit classical guitar making external links edit official website usa website ram rez & classical design evolution by george gruhn ; guitar player july 1983 . classical guitar portal retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title ram rez guitars & oldid 739598504 categories guitar manufacturing companiesclassical guitar makershidden categories articles containing potentially dated statements from 2010all articles containing potentially dated statements navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages add links this page was last modified on 15 september 2016 at 17 39 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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