1975 Miguel Rodriguez 'Church Door' classical guitar

A true museum quality guitar - A Miguel Rodriguez Church Door. It is owned by renowned classical guitarist Susan McDonald, and for the first time in years she allowed someone to give it some much needed attention. While the tone and appearance of the instrument are both striking, they pale in comparison to the backstory and lore of its origin! 

The tale is that famous guitar maker Miguel Rodriguez of Cordoba, Spain came into possession of an old large church door in the 1970's and built a small series of guitars from said wood. It is unclear if the door material refers to the rosewood back and sides or the cedar top, but thats another discussion.

 They are most notable for the large amount of light color 'sapwood' present on the back and sides. This was sometimes viewed as lesser quality material, but in reality it's tonally equal to the darker 'heartwood'. The perfectly book-matched back accentuates the sapwood grain in a wonderful way. The end result is a guitar that is as much a piece of beautiful natural artwork as it is a fine functioning instrument.

This particular guitar was built by Miguel personally for the famous Pepe Romero. Susan studied under Pepe for years and eventually came into possession of this valued instrument. It has been her main guitar ever since, and rarely has she let anyone other than herself handle it. 

You can see that the french polish finish is becoming worn and will need to be re-done sometime in the near future. One repair at a time! 

The construction of the church door series does not differ from typical Rodriquez guitars from the same era. It has an extremely large body and results in an extremely large sound. 

Players also rave about the string tension on these and how it allows the notes to ring clearly easily. These sort of intangibles can become lost on a heavy handed electric player such as myself, but I will say that this guitar responds as naturally and clearly as any I've ever played.

So while the real catalyst for the visit was to address some creaky tuners, the fretboard and frets also got some attention. This guitar hasn't even had more than three strings off at once for probably about 20 years, preventing it from ever getting fully cleaned. After some reassurance to the customer, we were allowed to take all the strings off and give the fingerboard and frets a proper cleaning.


This is a question that comes up often with customers:  Is it okay to remove more than one string at once? Will that negatively affect my guitar?

The answer is yes, it is perfectly okay to remove all the strings from the guitar at once. Any guitar thats built well (like this one) can handle a few hours or more without the strings on. Guitars are resilient and are built to adjust to changes in tension, humidity and atmosphere. In fact, it's probably more risky to allow the fretboard to descend into a grimy state than it is to leave the strings off for a week or more.

These tuners are original to the guitar and still work as well as the day they were installed. The only issue was that the gears had become slightly dry and were making a lot of unwanted noise because of that. They can also become sticky and 'jump' as opposed to smoothly turning the string. We used some high quality synthetic lubricant that silenced these squeaky tuners. 

In its only other trip to a repair shop, it had this bone nut installed sometime in the 1990's. Notice the compensated G string slot. This is done because the intonation of the G is a little bit funny on classical guitars and this little shelf does a lot to improve it. Not an easy thing to make, trust me!

Another twist in the story of this guitar is that while the guitar was still owned by Pepe, he took a nasty fall while carrying it. While not confirmed, one probable remnant of that incident is this crack in the center of the ebony fingerboard. It may make you gasp at first,but it hasn't moved or worsened at all since she has owned the guitar, making it a non issue. It does however add even more character to the guitar.

The sound hole label bears the unmistakable mark of Miguel Rodriquez. He brands them in the corner straddling the label and wood to ensure that nobody can transfer this label to another guitar. The same stamp adorns the back of the headstock. 

Susan has played many amazing concerts including on the famous stage of Carnegie Hall, as well as for former President Bush and former Governor Ann Richards. Do your best to seek out her music and watch some videos of her playing, she is truly an incredible musician.