Paracho Guitars

Paracho makes guitars the way Santa Clara makes copper: as the whole town's trade, handed down in families. Set in Michoacan's pine highlands - the timber is the reason the craft settled here - the streets are lined with talleres where luthiers bend sides over hot pipes, plane spruce and cedar soundboards to thickness by ear and thumb, inlay rosettes in fine mosaic, and hang finished instruments in rows to await buyers. The range is the point: bundles of inexpensive student guitars ship nationwide from the same street where master luthiers spend months on a single concert classical, using palo escrito rosewood and cedar, for musicians who fly in to collect them. Requintos, vihuelas, guitarrones and jaranas for mariachi and son ensembles come from the same benches. Every August the Feria Nacional de la Guitarra fills the plaza with concerts, competitions and open workshops, and the town's fame reached a wider audience when an animated film set its guitar-making hero in a plainly Paracho-inspired world. Visitors are welcomed to watch, play and haggle politely.

What you actually see

• The workshops - bending, planing and inlaying by hand.
• The instrument range - student bundles to concert classicals.
• Mariachi family instruments - vihuelas, guitarrones, requintos.
• The August fair - concerts and competitions on the plaza.

When to go

August for the guitar festival; otherwise any weekday when workshops are open and quiet enough to talk. Craft runs year-round.

Honest expectations

Quality spans a huge range - cheap guitars are cheap for reasons, and a serious instrument costs serious money and sometimes months of waiting. Play before buying; ask about wood, bracing and humidity care for your climate.

Nearby

Uruapan's park and the Paricutin lava fields lie south; Cheran and the Meseta Purepecha villages surround the town.