A big guitar at the entrance to Paracho de Verduzco, Michoacán, Mexico. Kevin Read/Wikipedia

In Mexico, the settlement of Paracho de Verduzco is guitar town. And just as in centuries past, rope is still used as a tool in assembling the higher-end handmade instruments.

The town has several guitar manufacturers and custom makers. According to Laura Fraser writing in Craftsmanship magazine, almost everyone in town is connected to the craft of guitar making.

“Today, locals estimate that 90% of the people who work in Paracho make guitars or guitar parts (the population is about 35,000), producing some one million instruments per year.”

While most of that one million number are mass produced guitars, some of the instruments are high-end models crafted by highly skilled luthiers (guitar makers are called luthiers from the French luth for lute). And they make use of cordage to impart a uniform compressive force on the bodies as opposed to the use of clamps.

Miguel Huipe is a Paracho luthier who makes guitars for use in flamenco music. To keep the body in proper alignment while the glue is drying he employs the traditional approach of tying the body of the guitar with cordage in an intricate pattern proven by years of practice.

A flamenco guitar made by Miguel Huipe. Andrew Sullivan photo. www.andrewsullivanphoto.com

And Mexico doesn’t just make traditional acoustic guitars. In the 1980s the Fender guitar company began making some of its signature telecaster and stratocaster models at a factory in Ensenada on the Pacific coast south of Tijuana. Those are solid body electric guitars manufactured from a single slab of wood, however, so the company eschews the use of rope!