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Restorations of Guitars by Louis Panormo
Louis Panormo, 1784-1862, had a workshop in Bloomsbury, London. Many guitars were made, it may even have been a small factory. Today, his guitars are much sought after and often restored with the intention being used. They have a wonderful tone and can be a delight to play.
There appears to be two types of Panormo guitar, with very different labels . One label says "Panormo Fecit" while the other reads "Louis Panormo, The only maker of Guitars in the Spanish Style". The "Panormo Fecit" guitars are smaller and have cross bracing on the soundboard, while the "Only Maker" style guitars are larger and have some type of fan bracing.
The address given is 40, High Street, Bloomsbury. This street is, I believe, now known as St. Giles High Street, and the address is very near to Centerpoint.
James Westbrook, of the Brighton based Guitar Museum, is currently doing a PhD on the Panormo guitar.
I have restored eight of these guitars, dated: 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834, 1836, 1837, and two from 1849. Details of the restorations are below, with the most recent, the 1836, at the top.1836 Panormo
As arrived, number 3091. The label is extremely difficult to read, but 1836 is my best guess.
Restoration begins
Removing the back reveals unusual previous repairs.
Using wet cotton wool to soften old glue, but the label must not get wet.
Adding reinforcing dots, splinting cracks and showing all the repairs inside the body, lightly stained to match the inside of the guitar.
The restoration label.
The restored guitar, July 2011, shows signs of its 172 years, but plays very well with a wonderful full tone.
Dimensions:
String length: 632mm
Overall Length: 935mm
Width of upper bout: 227mm
Width at waist: 174mm
Width at lower bout: 286mm
Height at upper bout: 87mm
Height at lower bout: 91.5mm
Nut width: 47mm
1831 Panormo (Panormo Fecit)
Number 1974
A restoration done in 2010 for a Norwich guitar enthusiast who intends the guitar to be used by the classical guitarist, James Boyd. James's website, www.jamesboyd.co.uk, gives details of his music and of an interesting 2013 musical sailing tour based on his classic yacht, Concorde.
This is the earliest of the Panormos I have worked on so far and my first with the "Panormo Fecit" label. The guitar as it arrived was dirty, damaged and had some woodworm, but it did not show signs of wear due to playing.
The pictures show screws through the bridge, many cracks in the soundboard, at least one broken bar on the back and a good deal of missing mother of pearl. Over the years the back bars have become relatively larger than the back (perhaps the guitar shrunk but the bars less so), forcing the sides of the guitar out and revealing that the rosewood binding is made of two pieces. The back will be removed from the guitar to gain access to the underside of the soundboard.
I like to remove as many parts as possible before beginning the delicate woodwork, so my first job was to remove the machine heads. I am not certain if the head, with it's Baker tuning machines, is original but if it replaces an earlier head with friction pegs, the craftsmanship of the replacement is high. Two of the tuning machine handles were very bent and the whole mechanism was filthy with years of neglect.
Once removed, the tuning machines were soaked in vinegar and water solution. A little work with a toothbrush made them almost look new. They were lubricated with light machine oil and the heads partially straightened. I was very careful not to break off the heads, and compromised with two of the heads usable but not completely straightened. Replacement tuning machines are available, but very expensive. The delicate ivory heads of the original are not available as replacements anywhere.
Patience is needed removing the back. The outer binding was difficult to remove and broke off in small pieces. I decided to replace it with new wood later. The inner binding mostly remained attached to the back. Once inside many previous repairs became apparent as did the two rather tattered wooden blocks for the screws in the bridge. The join of the two halves of the soundboard is reinforced with small pieces of wood with the grain aligned at right angles to the grain of the soundboard. This is not a usual practice in musical instrument making. Unfortunately, a crack has developed adjacent to them.
The entire instrument was treated for insect infestation
The label was photographed at this time. It is small, 35 by 60 mm.
The guitar was not built with fan strutting. I chose to leave that unchanged, but to clean up the inside, reinforce all the cracks with a minimum amount of wood and glue up anything that was loose. I replaced the two tattered wooden blocks with new wood. Some of the old reinforcement was removed as the wood below was in poor condition and needed more continuous reinforcement. The area between the two blocks was particularly damaged.
It's easily seen that a toothed plane was used and that the tentellones were pricked, probably enabling them to be placed in position.
Repairs to the back included gluing up a cracked bar, attention to one short crack near the rear, re-attaching bars to the back, straightening the back which had become warped during removal, and a thorough clean.
Two pictures showing the underside of the soundboard and the back after all the internal work has been completed. The guitar now feels structurally sound but no heavier.
Splinting soundboard cracks and cutting Mother-of-Pearl.
More reinforcement was needed as there were cracks in the soundboard where it met the fingerboard.
Attaching the back to the body and replacing the sacrificed bindings.
The restored guitar October 2010.
Dimensions:
String length: 634mm
Overall Length: 930mm
Width of upper bout: 210mm
Width at waist: 162mm
Width at lower bout: 285mm
Height at upper bout: 80mm
Height at lower bout: 88mm
Nut width: 45.5mm
1832 Panormo
This guitar was restored to playing condition for use in a consort based in Wiltshire. The back, already loose in several places, was removed and the many small repairs inside easily completed. New dots, with mother of pearl inlay, were made for either side of the bridge.
The guitar as it arrived, the peghead and machines, and restored.
1833 Panormo
Number 2057
A Panormo that was unsympathetically modified by its owner in the late 1960's. A wooden set square was glued to the sound board. Attached to the set square, a bridge was used to space the strings. A crude tailpiece was added at the stern and steel strings were fitted to the guitar. Many screws and bolts, as well as glue, were used to attach these modifications. To finish the job, a coating of thick brown varnish was applied over everything on the top. One side of the guitar was badly cracked.
My client was a friend of the owner and they fell out over the modifications. They never spoke again but at the owner's funeral my client asked about the guitar and just in the nick of time, saved it from being taken to recycling. The owners family and my client decided to have the guitar restored.
The first job was to remove the hardware and the set square. There was a lot of glue beneath the set square and very ugly holes left by screws and bolts. Next the back was removed revealing plenty of loose bars, some serious damage to the bars below the bridge. One bar needed to be replaced.
The label was easy to photograph at this time. The body of the new bridge was attached before the back was replaced.
Decorative additions to the bridge came later. I had been unable to save the original varnish on the sound board and used half a dozen brushed on coats of shellac instead. The top was so worn and corrugated that any finish involving sanding was out of the question.
The finished guitar will always display traces of it's turbulent modifications, but I think it successful as a working guitar.
A quote from James Westbrook, The Guitar Museum:
I met [your client] this week and he showed me the guitar, for all of its faults, it does sound and play really well.
Dimensions:
String length: 637
Overall Length: 930
Width of upper (smaller) bout: 228
Width at waist: 176
Width at lower bout: 287
Height at upper bout: 85
Height at lower bout: 95
Nut width: 47
1834 Panormo
The guitar as it arrived, with friction pegs, number 2218:
The owner is from Cornwall, England. The guitar has been in the family for many years and has been played and appreciated as a wonderful guitar. It has deteriorated and came to me for restoration. The intention here is to make the guitar stable and playable, without doing any irreversible repairs. The owner does not wish to sell, but wants nothing done to reduce the potential value. He intends to play the guitar himself, as he has done before. There is no necessity in this case to prepare the guitar for sale. The friction tuning pegs will be kept.
The owner wrote: "I showed my father the pictures and he was delighted and very interested to see the other guitars.We chatted about how he came by ours. You may be amused to learn as an eleven year old (just after the war) he bought it from my great Uncle George for the princely sum of £2.00 + learning a few tunes so that he could accompany George on his Balalaika. The Balalaika still hangs on my sisters wall, a beastly thing with an action one could loose an arm in.Played it once and still have the scars."
The back was easily removed, revealing many previous repairs, including a mahogany plate glued beneath the bridge. As the guitar uses bridge pins, the wood below the bridge deteriorates and many Panormos have such a plate, often inserted through the sound hole. The smear of glue as the plate was slid back is obvious.
First the plate was carefully removed. Then using cotton wool and water to soften the old hide glue, it was removed with hot water and a brush. At the lower end of the guitar, quite a few simultaneous repairs were needed; clamps, a large elastic band and string held the pieces together as the new hide glue set.
This is very close to the original state of the inside of the guitar before Mr. Panormo glued on the back in 1834. The main difference is that the holes for the bridge pins have become damaged.
To reinforce the holes for the bridge pins, a thin plate of maple is glued over the holes. These will be drilled when the new bridge pins are fitted. Both soundboard bars had become loose in placesand the photo on the right shows one spot being clamped while gluing.
When removing the back, both bars on become completely detached. Replacing them gave me the opportunity to clean up excessive glue from previous repairs. There were several major cracks in the back, mostly from distortion of the rosewood. The cracks were closed, the rosewood flattened and reinforcement dots placed over the cracks. Later these were dyed dark brown to be less obvious from the sound hole.
The label on this guitar was never easy to read.
The guitar as finished in October 2010. The friction pegs work remarkably well. I strung it with Savarez White Card - light tension strings and tuned it to concert pitch. The guitar has a wonderful tone
Dimensions:
String length: 630mm
Overall Length: 935mm
Width of upper bout: 227mm
Width at waist: 175mm
Width at lower bout: 285mm
Height at upper bout: 92mm
Height at lower bout: 99mm
Nut width: 46.5mm
1837 Panormo
This Panormo guitar had already been extensively played, damaged and repaired. Above left is the guitar after it's 21st century restoration, above right, the lable. The original frets cut from sheet brass were still on the guitar, suggesting that all the playing, damage and repairs dated from before fretwire was commonly used. As requested by the owner, I fitted modern frets.
Above left shows the state of bars on the back. Note that the inside back is covered with a dark stain which even shows under the bar and dots, but the rear side of the bar is not painted as if it was coloured with a paintbrush through the soundhole. Above centre shows the large piece of wood used strengthen the top under the bridge, the crude cloth reinforcement and some of the dots. Only the transverse bar is stained a dark colour. On the right is the soundboard and body ready to receive the back. This was a fascinating guitar to work on. Not only was it a splendid guitar, but it was interesting to see the work of other repairers.
Dots
Inside the 1835 Panormo there was a suprising number of repairs and it soon became apparent that many different hands had already been here.
Repairers use small carefully cut pieces of softwood, spruce or pine, to reinforce and align repairs of cracks. I call these pieces dots though they are often called studs or cleats. The grain of the dot runs at right angles to the crack and they are carefully trimmed to reduce weight. The repairs here are unusual as there are at least four different styles of dots used on this guitar. Four styles of dots probably means four different repairers worked on the guitar, although one could have been the original maker.
Style 1
Elegant dots cut from a strip. The grain of the dot is not quite 90 degrees to the crack. Being close to the soundhole, the dots were easily positioned, even then the repairer left a bit of glue about. In the larger picture, the pinpricks in each dot give a clue about the tool used to position the dots.
Style 2
The upper picture shows a crack near the stern of the guitar. A small piece of wood has been inset into the side of the guitar.
Below, the same place on the inside of the guitar. The dots placed on the crack here are in an area inaccessable to the hand (remember the top would not have been removed). This repairer drilled a small hole very near the crack and passed a thin gut string through the hole. The string was then pulled out of the soundhole and attached to a dot. Glue was applied to the dot and the string pulled the dot back through the soundhole to the inside of the cracked rib. This was done three times. It is extraordinary that the three dots are so different. Please notice that only two dots are successful in reinforcing the crack.
Style 3
Another style of dot applied to the back before it had been stained black - one dot is missing. These dots reinforce the back of the guitar near the end block, or stern. Perhaps this work was done by the maker.
Style 4
Rounded dots on the inside of the back of the guitar on the upper bout. Yet another style of dot.
1849 Panormo
The guitar as it arrived, number 1967:
Note that by this date, the address on the label is overwritten.
All repairs to the body were done through the sound hole as there was no need to remove the back. Much time was spent ascertaining that nothing was loose inside. Thin hardwood reinforcement plates were needed below the bridge, as in the 1834 and these were put in place through the sound hole. Some cracking at the waist was reinforced with linen, the cloth stained a dark colour to be less obvious.
Strung up with light tension strings the instrument did not resonate well and it was apparent that the first three frets needed to be replaced. At first I thought the frets to be made of silver sheet, but the local jeweller soon proved that incorrect. Another local craftsman identified the metal as nickel silver and drew pieces of an old EPNS (Electro-plated nickel silver) spoon into sheet of the required thickness.
Restrung with Savarez Red strings, the instrument responded very well and the three new frets appeared the same colour as the original ones.
In December 2010 the restoration is complete and the guitar will be put up for sale.
Dimensions:
String length: 630mm
Overall Length: 935mm
Width of upper bout: 227mm
Width at waist: 175mm
Width at lower bout: 285mm
Height at upper bout: 92mm
Height at lower bout: 99mm
Nut width: 46.5mm
1849 Panormo
The guitar, as it arrived, number 1956. It is nearly identical to the guitar above.
Externally the guitar appeared to be in excellent condition, but it had developed some problems. The first was a distinct buzzing or rattle when the guitar was played. This was not always apparent and its appearance seemed to depend on the weather. Second, the rosewood sides had split in several places. Lastly, one of the bars on the back had a small crack.
The rosewood sides had been repaired on many occasions and some of these repairs had been reinforced with parchment and paper which was no longer cleanly attached to the inner side of the ribs.
I closed the cracks on the ribs, reinforced these repairs with linen, repaired the broken bar and spent hours making certain that earlier reinforcements were well attached to the inside of the guitar. Most of the work was inside the guitar so there are few photos.
I don't which repair cured the rattle, but it was gone when the guitar was restrung Savarez Red strings. In the spring of 2011, the owner was very pleased to have the guitar back in working order.
