[pdalton]

My youngest sister was an Elementary School teacher and played both guitar and harp. After college (about 1978 or so), she moved to Asuncion, Paraguay, where she taught at a missionary school until she returned to the U.S. (about 1985) after receiving a cancer diagnosis. After she passed away in 1988, her two guitars passed to my younger brother (who didn’t play them). Recently, my brother also passed away, so now I now have inherited my sister’s two guitars and am not 100% sure about what to do with them.

I do love guitar music, but I’ve always “put off” learning to play because I’m left-handed and it just seemed . . . “complicated”. But now that I own two guitars, I think I want to give it a try. So, I opened the cases to look more closely at both guitars.

One was made in Mexico (by “JOM Guitarras de Calidad”, Paracho, Mich., Mexico) and the other in Paraguay (by “Fabrica de Arpas y Guitarras De Salomon Sanabria”, Asuncion, Paraguay). I found a little information about each company on the internet, but I’m still unsure about what I have here. I’m OK assuming their value is only sentimental, but I just really don’t know how well either is made.

Nevertheless, I do know both of these guitars need some repair work. The Mexican guitar needs the most – the top of its body has a couple of cracks and separating from the body edge along one curve. And there are what appear to be the beginnings of some cracks on the back of the body. [Perhaps it was dropped at some point?] Anyway, it seems like this one will require more attention than the other.

Although the Paraguayan guitar does appear to be in better shape overall, it does have about a 6” crack on the back of the body, but tt looks like I should be able to close that up pretty easily with glue and overnight clamping.
Both guitars are 30-39½” long and shaped as what I’ve seen called a “parlor” model; neither has a “pick guard” (so I don’t believe either will look “strange” if strung left-handed); the neck width of each is about 2.25” at the body and narrows to about 2” at the nut; and each has 12 frets between the head and the body (the Mexican has 4 inlay dots between some of the frets, but the Paraguayan has none at all).

Because both of these guitars appeared to need new strings, I ordered two sets of Elixer 80/20 Bronze 12|53 strings, solely because they seemed to be well-reviewed and reportedly appropriate for beginners.

However, before those strings arrived, I read an article saying the additional tension of “steel strings” can irreparably damage a “classical guitar”, which instead requires nylon strings. That made me realize that I don’t actually know whether either of these is really an “acoustic” or a “classical” guitar, plus I don’t even know whether the strings I bought are considered “steel strings”. Each of these guitars did have at least 3 “nylon” strings on it, with the other strings appearing to be “metal-wound”. But does that make them “steel”?

So, I felt I should ask for some "better informed" thoughts and recommendations before I start doing anything with these two guitars. I have a photo of both guitars, but I didn't see how to insert or attach it to this post.

Thanks