Any idea what this is?

Michael Bauer

I'm trying to help a friend identify a guitar he bought. Does anyone have a clue about this one?

Craig Bumgarner

I dunno but it has some serious anti-gravity mojo goin' on.

Michael Bauer

LOL!!! Yes it does, now that you mention it.

Frater, I just know you are going to nail this one down.

frater

Hello Michael, archtops are not my cup of tea I'm afraid but I'll think about it. Incidentally, I've just bought for about 300$ a great old one whose maker is totally unknown to me. Looks a bit like a Kay but it isn't. It has a big "manouche" walnut neck, custom and very elegant hardware, and it plays VERY loud and "gypsy". The markers are at the 10th fret, the seller told me it was made in Belgium. So I'm up for another mystery and this time I bought it!

Michael Bauer

Looks nice, Frater!!!

Here is my latest mistress, a 1924 Maccaferri "classical",dated February, 1924. Number 99 on the label...serial number or model number.

You can see it's already way ahead of its time for 1924. It has a thin body, that oddly is close in dimension to the resonator inside the Selmer Maccaferri. No heel on the neck, so you can play all the way up.

Small body, big sound!

frater

Ah, you can see Mozzani influence there... but, hey, no heel on the neck, big cutaway: this thing was made for shredding! Maccaferri was a genius, no doubt about it.

Jeff Moore

Michael
"You can see it's already way ahead of its time for 1924"
It's only 2013 now, and he's still leading from behind.
He had his own relationship between some kind of mastery of the old ways and evolutionary leaps. You'd think, given all that he knew, that he should have been another pedagogist, but it's the opposite. How many other Mario surprises will there be? Maybe this one isn't a surprise to some.
Is there anybody with a good pre-selmer Maccaferri collection that we can view?

Beautiful and kinda Bauhaus (form following function)! Who needs a heel anyway really?

Frater
That body shape looks kinda like a Vega.

Michael Bauer

Jeff, the only other pre-Selmer Maccaferri I know of belongs to Jacques Mazzoleni, and he said it's the only one he ever heard of or came across in 30+ years. You can see it on the gypsyguitars.com website. And that one is a straight classical with no label, perhaps even done when he was a student of Mozzani. Statistically, I'd guess there must be a few more out there, but they haven't popped up in any public way that I know of. So for the moment, this one is it as far as pre-Selmer Maccaferri "experiments" to be ogled, unless Frater or someone else knows of any. But if Jacques never came across more than one, given his interest and connections, I'd say they remain in the "hen's teeth" category, for the moment.

frater

As a matter of fact I do! I didn't mean to mention it here but since Jeff asked: I'm in contact with a young and very clever luthier who established near Cento just in order to study Mozzani and Maccaferri instruments before the Selmer period. Last year he was asked to restore a D-hole Wappen style guitar that resulted being built by Maccaferri. It's a sort of transitional guitar between Mozzani school and what Maccaferri did later at Selmer. The guitar has been accurately measured and studied and we're considering to use some of that knowledge to build a new instrument incorporating some of these early Maccaferri specifications and some typical Selmer features like a heat-bent pliage. A first prototype already exist and sounds great. More later!