❌SOLD❌ 1975 Darryl Williams Classical Guitar

Built in Schomberg, Ontario during 1975 by the late Darryl Williams, this classical guitar in the Hauser style has a very large amount of hand work in its construction. The spruce top was hand-profiled and tuned by Darryl Williams, the sides and back were prepared with steel hand scrapers, the neck was shaped with rasps, files and sandpaper. The finish is nitrocellulose lacquer, sprayed on then wet-sanded and polished by hand.

This guitar evokes many memories for me, because I worked for Darryl Williams at the time this guitar was built and did the hand scraping and lacquer finishing on this instrument. Shortly after this guitar was completed I moved to The Twelfth Fret.

Darryl Williams built classical guitars, baroque and renaissance instruments like lutes and vihuelas at his shop in, and then at a new shop near Schomberg, Ontario just northwest of Toronto. As well, he was a film professor at Ryerson University. As a builder, he was acquainted with many other builders like Bruce West, Edgar Mönch and Jean Larrivee and built instruments for many advanced players.
His shop had some fairly hefty equipment and he did some preparation of logs for instrument construction. I can tell you that resawing ebony logs is not a tidy proposition.

This guitar dates to 1975, when the Williams shop had moved from within Schomberg itself to a rural property a few kilometers out of town. Areas like Schomberg are surrounded by many ‘ghost’ communites that by now may be only intersections of secondary roads, with names like Pennville that are remembered by only a few older people.

Williams guitars are built in the tradtitional Spanish style, meaning that the neck blank is built first and the heel carved and finish sanded. The neck has a pair of slots, and the sides are hand bent over a hot tube, placed in a mold, and then the upper ends of the sides fit into these slots. The tail block and linings are added and the back and top are installed then trimmed for binding. The fingerboard and frets are added and the guitar is then sent for finishing; the bridge area is masked off, and the last steps are installing the bridge and setting up the guitar. The top is likely German spruce, the sides, back and bridge are Indian Rosewood, and the fingerboard and headplate are ebony. Top bracing is spruce, the back bracing cedar, and the linings are solid, not kerfed. On the inside of the top, there is a pencil notation – ‘1975 10/45 DW’. The nut and saddle are both ebony.

This guitar is in good condition with minor wear. There are two checks in the ebony headplate, and the finish, being hand polished is not high gloss. It plays well and has a full, open, rich tone. A period hardshell case is included.