Mario Aracama cedar 2026 – Spain

Mario graduated from the prestigious London Guidhall University with a degree in classical and flamenco guitar building under the guidance of David Whiteman. In 2003, Mario moved to Granada, where he honed the skills he had acquired internationally with Antonio Marin Montero. Close to the new generation of Granada luthiers (Michael Ritchie and Jose Vigil), Mario’s lutherie is as much rooted in the know-how of Granada luthiers as in the latest experiments in lutherie.

The result: the sound quality of traditional Granada guitars, with a beautiful dynamic range halfway between that of traditional guitars and powerful double-tables or lattice guitars.

For this 2026 guitar, Mario Aracama and I selected a magnificent set of Indian rosewood and a cedar top with a very light bracing. The spruce we received previously was magnificent, but this one with its cedar top is more open and offers plenty of resonance, giving an impression of power. One very interesting thing which is a key feature in Mario’s process of making the guitar: he assembles his tops years before assembling the guitar. He makes sure all the tops stay in a regular moisture content room with some applied tensión on them. This allows choosing the best top which is then matured which helps the guitar to be right opened the very first day.  The top of this guitar for instance has been glued in November 2023 and has spent more than 2 years stored with tension on it. It helps to settle down the whole top working as a unified piece and gain the required stiffness in order to receive string tension.