About

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Alfredo Velazquez was born on October 23, 1970 in Manhattan, New York. A budding guitar maker from the start - as soon as Alfredo was able to walk, both his parents would catch him sneaking into his father’s workshop. 

The Velázquez family returned to Manuel Velazquez’ native Puerto Rico in 1972, settling in the city of Ponce in southern Puerto Rico. Here his father continued to build guitars for the international market. This move assured that Alfredo would be raised in the traditional values and environment similar to those his father experienced in his youth. 

As a child, Alfredo Velazquez was exposed in his father’s home workshop to visits by many of the great classical guitarists of the day such as Rey de la Torre, Angel Romero and Ichiro Suzuki. These memorable experiences made a lifelong impact on Alfredo’s musical and artistic development. In 1982, his family moved back to the United States, this time settling in Virginia, where Alfredo furthered his studies and served in the armed forces for several years. Later, after helping his family settle in Orlando, Florida, Alfredo took the opportunity to involve himself on a professional level in his father’s calling. In 1991 at the age of twenty Alfredo Velazquez built his first guitar.

By learning the basic foundations of guitar construction laid out by Torres, Santos-Hernández and Hauser Senior as taught to him by his father, Alfredo Velazquez gained deep and thorough insight into his father’s tonal ideals and construction methods. These foundations were further reinforced and acted as a catalyst in the development of Alfredo’s own philosophy of guitar construction when he began repairing and refurbishing his father’s earlier instruments. In addition, whenever Alfredo Velazquez saw and heard instruments by contemporary makers which impressed him as contributing to the development of the classical guitar, he spent hours painstakingly examining and learning from them. 

Today, through careful selection of materials and meticulous calibration of his soundboards, Alfredo Velazquez constructs instruments which many generations of classical guitarists have come to refer to as having the “Velázquez sound.” Moreover, by combining his traditional artistic values with certain modern construction approaches, Alfredo Velazquez’ current guitars embody a unique balance of the refined tonal characteristics of his father’s guitars’ with the power many contemporary players seek.