Manuel Contreras started his professional activity as independent guitar maker in 1959. His work reveals us a maker who was open and innovative.
His first achievement, in this sense, was the design of the model "Double Top", which Contreras presented in 1974, after a number of experiments in order to improve the tone, volume and projection of the instrument. The great acceptance this model immediately got in the professional guitar world.
In the mid 1980s, Contreras thought up the "Sounding Back Support", a design that he developed, side by side with his son Manuel Contreras the second during some years, up to the moment when they definitively incorporated this item to their top line guitars. It was thoroughly designed to improve the sound response of the guitar in large halls, chamber ensembles and performances with orchestra.
Manuel Contreras passed away in 1994. His son continued then the work he had begun.
Born in 1957, Manuel Contreras the second was trained by his father since his youth and took definitively the lead of the workshop in 1986. Since then, he continued the same line of work, not only constructing the already characteristic models of Contreras workshop, but also showing his innovative spirit inherited from his father, which led him to widely develop different aspects of the construction of those models, as well as to introduce in 1998 the guitar with inner "Sounding Back Support" or 10th Anniversary model, winner of the "Joaquín Rodrigo International Luthier Competition" in November 17th 2000 and very much appreciated by professional performers and guitar lovers since then till nowadays.
Nowadays Contreras workshop is managed by the guitarist Victoria Velasco together with the luthiers formed at the workshop during the last decades, has a world-wide reputation in the Concert Guitar construction. Its name has been associated during the last 50 years with the newest theories appeared about guitar construction. Professional guitar performers in all the world have found in Contreras guitars, the answer to their musical needs.
