SIf we’re interested in guitars, specifically, we’ll
recall some of the oddball designs found in 1960s Giannini instruments.
And we all know about the fascination with South American tonewoods,
especially Brazilian rosewood.
Lito Benito intends to expand our horizons by putting Chilean guitars
and indigenous timbers into our consciousness (and onto our laps).
If a little taste of Chilean music comes with them, so much the
better.
Benito, the man behind Benito Guitars, was a rock star in Chile
in the ’70s with the group Los Escombros, and was later an
itinerant musician in Germany. Jorge Rosenblut, the band’s
manager, found him a Les Paul while on a shopping trip in the U.S.
with Elvin Bishop.
“When I got the guitar, I took everything apart... crazy,”
he said. This curiosity led Benito to Spain to study theory and
technique of building classical guitars.
There, he did repairs and made jewelry to supplement his income,
and finally ended up in the U.S.
While building guitars for Taylor, Benito took advantage of the
company’s policy of allowing employees to build themselves
one guitar a year, a strategy designed to expand each worker’s
overall knowledge of the building process. Lito took his wood home
instead of jobbing it out to other factory specialists. Bob Taylor
was impressed with the result, and Benito later became head of final
assembly.
In ’97, Benito went to Mexico, where Taylor set him up in
a factory that fabricated parts, part-time. This allowed him time
to build guitars in the afternoons. He also made luthiery machinery
for Dell’ Arte. His time in Mexico was, as he says, “Like
a university.”
In 2001, Benito returned to Chile and reunited with Jorge Rosenblut,
who helped him establish a factory, where he started tooling to
produce guitars.
The relative isolation of Chile created challenges for Benito’s
craftsmen. Between the mountains and ocean, in a country with virtually
no infrastructure for someone like a luthier, Lito was forced to
develop machinery, tools, and techniques from scratch, utilizing
his experiences in the U.S. and Mexico.
Marketing guitars in Chile proved a challenge, as well.
The big discovery, however, was alerce fitzroya cupressoides, or
Andean larch, which grows in the inclement rainforests of southern
Chile. Heavily forested over the last few centuries, alerce, protected
since 1976, was being used extensively as a building material, prized
for its water repellent properties. The lumber came from trees determined
to be between 3,000 and 4,000 years old – the product of very
slow growth affected by the environmental and geological impact
of earthquakes, volcanic activity, constant rain, and ocean wind.
A damaged Gibson ES-335 with a new top of alerce made its way to
Benito’s shop for repair and setup. Intrigued by the response
of the top and musical tone of the guitar, acoustically and electrically,
Lito began working with alerce in his designs. Experimentation began,
and alerce, though it has a strength-to-weight ratio similar to
spruce, is a different timber. Its greater flexibility required
a rethinking of bracing materials, and Lito ultimately settled on
hemlock, which is stronger and denser than spruce.
Glues Lito had depended on for years didn’t work with the
moisture-resistant lumber.
Most important, its frequency response was equal to or surpassed
sitka spruce in almost every range, and his bracing designs had
to be adjusted to maximize its full sonic possibilities.
As intriguing as the new sounds found in the redesigned guitars
have proven to be, alerce is a finite resource.
Benito has traveled the world playing his Les Paul through a Marshall,
and redefined acoustic guitar tone with his alerce models.
In an industry where computerized machines dominate, Benito Guitars
promises a return to the construction values of the past, helped
by the millennia of growth that produced a signature tonewood.
Published at Vintague Guitar
april to 2005
|
