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It would be fun knowing the brand and model but most importantly it looks cool plus sounds and plays great.
You surely tell the truth. I bought it because I fell in love with it right away without having an experience with vintage french instruments before this encounter. For me it just played and sounded better than any Aria, Cigano, Eastman and even more expensive instrument I held in my hands. If it turns out to be one of Joseph Reinhardts guitars, who preferred to play those without cutaway (judging by the pictures showing Joseph playing that I know), and was especially built for him by on of the Di Mauro brothers, maybe I would sell it for as many bucks as possible (and immediately buy myself as many Di Mauros and old Patenottes as possible). But as this probably is not going to happen, I will continue with quiet joy gaining more and more information about "guitares manouches" in general and this old piece of wood in particular from month to month. And it really pushed my "desire" to play the gypsy swing guitar and to deal with that beautiful musical style so danceable and melodious.
I am not saying it is, or is not, by either Antoine or Joseph but it is not a normal Di Mauro body style. I have been studying Di Mauro instruments for a long time, particularly those by Antoine and have never seen one like this. You are right the 'Poema' has a much smaller body and although your guitar was not shown in the only catalogue Antoine produced sometime in the early fifties it is of course possible that he could have made a one-off for a custom order.
Many of the luthiers around this time made unmarked instruments for retailers to add their own label - Paul Beuscher, Leon Agel etc - and the labels often got lost down the years. Antoine used more and brighter soundhole decoration than Joseph which is why I thought it could be from the latter. Antoine guitars are far more common than Joseph's, he seems to have had a little factory production line going whereas I suspect Joseph built his guitars alone?
The headstock shape is similar to Di Mauro (but also common to many Castelluccia and other guitars) although most from Antoine have a bit of a taper rather than just parallel slots - see photo - and as it does not have the Di Mauro mark there is another possibility.
It is known that many of the Parisian luthiers would supply each other with parts to complete orders to help each other out, certainly the Di Mauros and Jacobacci were close, and they, along with Castelluccia made many unmarked guitars for Beuscher and the like, there were possibly others too, it seems the Sicilians kept in touch, and this could be a marriage of parts from more than one workshop.
Not to worry anyway, there have been many stories of people finding unsigned guitars which then acquire a 'best guess' identity, but the fact remains if it plays well and sounds right (yours certainly does) that is all that matters.
Wow, what a bunch of information, thank you, Chris!
I don't really believe the instrument was a one-off, because everything is so plain and simple (I like this). I could accept that it is just unmarked and nearly impossible to identify. But thanks for holding up the idea of the guitar being a solitaire maybe ...
By the way , not only Joseph played non-cutaways:
(Regarding the 12 or 14 fret discussion: you obviously can be a soloist even if your guitar has got no cutaway at all.)
The following guitars that I found in an older post https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/uploads/941/VI9J4HXGMI0F.jpg look very similar to mine, including the 10 fret marker:
But the first two guitars above have the Torres shape, mine (third one) has "wider hips".
This seems to develop more and more into a detective story.
Speaking of detective stories: did anybody here ever have in mind writing one about the murders related to the investigations around, for example, a pre-War Selmer (or Di Mauro?😉), almost mint condition, with part of a metro ticket under the bridge with some mysterious note on it; another novel about a fake instrument (with "classical" body shape?) equipped with high-quality forged documents proving it to be on of Matelo Ferrets guitars ... I have to stop here before I reveal to much ...
@billyshakes: Emmet Ray has been changing his name and hiding here for all those years, unfortunately not playing my guitar, but "the guitar with his name on" -> https://www.djangobooks.com/Item/kiehl-emmett-ray
Got the guitar back from the luthier, with new frets. What should I say: Karsten (http://www.karstenschnoor.com/) did a wonderful job, low action - no buzzing! And I am very happy not only because it plays better than before: he said that this old piece of wood was one of the best sounding gypsy guitars he had ever heard! Here is a minute of music I recorded today. Still no perfect rest stroke (lesson #11 of "Gypsy Picking" is what I am sweating about these days), but things are getting better every day (or every "two minute").
(Although the original name of the post in "Guitar Archive" has been changed to from "Di Mauro" to "Gypsy Mystery", the title of the thread here still is "Di Mauro". But as the above discussion shows, that is unlikely.)
Great tone, Willie.
Don't discount the Di Mauro probability just yet. My comments above were based on what I have seen and researched. I have had quite a few guitars by Antoine Di Mauro and although I have seen some more like yours by Joseph Di Mauro that too does not prove anything. Just because I have never seen one the same attributed to Antoine does not mean he did not make it, nobody knows EVERYTHING they made and there may well have been one-offs and hybrids made with parts from others; rumours have it that there often was collaboration between various luthiers and we do know that A. Di Mauro and Vincent Jacobacci were close.
Also, there has only ever been one catalogue known illustrating Antoine's instruments and the sketches in that are not accurate depictions and quite probably did not show everything he made.
A luthier or repairman who has worked on Di Mauros might be able to tell from a close inspection looking inside too.
What I am saying is that for every so called 'expert' opinion there is an exception that comes along to prove them wrong; this may be another one of those.
Sounds good anyway.
That sounded very nice, Willie.