This guitar is from Jean-Pierre Favinos transitional period (late 80s to mid 90s). Guitars from this era still have the body size and longer scale length of the older Jacques Favino guitars: 16 3/4″ wide, 4″ deep. 675mm scale. However, the sound is more balanced and less “honky” then the old Favinos. This guitar has a lot of “middle” frequencies, which older Favinos dont have. It gives the guitar a very even, and more modern sound. If played lightly, it can sound a bit like an archtop, but if played hard, especially close to the bridge, it will “bark” like the Gypsy guitars of yore.

Robin Nolan plays the oval hole version of this guitar which sounds almost exactly the same. His was built only a year earlier (Favino #1001). He gets a fantastic modern Gypsy tone out of it.

The back and sides are Indian Rosewood, the top is Spruce, and it has a Mahogany neck. The fingerboard extension goes all the way to up the 25th fret. There is a strap pin mounted on the heel. It has very nice DR tuners and an original Billardi tailpiece. These tailpieces are very hard to find and are now very collectible.

This was my personal guitar for the last three years. I played it on hundreds of gigs including DjangoFest NW, Django in June, and Djangofest Sante Fe. It was also used to record the CDs for the Gypsy Rhythm and Unaccompanied Django books.

This guitar was also owned by the accomplished rhythm player Ted Gottsegen.

The guitar is in good condition. It has one crack on the top that was professionally repaired over five years ago by Jean-Pierre Favino himself. It has the sorts of dings and checking youd expect from a guitar that has been played a lot. But nothing serious.