Castelluccia question.

Texasrockabillyrebel

Hi everybody,

I thought some of you might like to see this old Castelluccia I won on Ebay for $710. A good score in my opinion! I'm wondering if anyone could help out on the date? My guess is late 40's early 50's but I don't know much about Castelluccia's guitars. I wasn't aware of anyone making 14 fret D-holes back then. It's lost its label somewhere along the way so thats no help. The only identifiable thing is a sticker on the back of the headstock which has been French polished over (see pics).

It's going to need a neck reset and the fingerboard is separating pretty badly. The action right now is about 5mm but it's still fairly easy to play and has a good sound to it. It's in good shape cosmeticaly and has a fat D-shaped neck. There are some spots where the finish is gone and a couple of cracks here and there but if I were as old as it is I'd probably have a few cracks myself. It's also the lightest guitar I've ever held. I can't quite figure out what the back and sides are made of. Either a really light rosewood or a mahogany (I'm rubish when it comes to wood naming). The top is spruce and I'm fairly certain the neck is mahogany.

These are just pics from the auction. I can take more detailed ones if anyone wants me to.
Travis

BluesBop Harry

Nice!
The back wood looks just like like a walnut guitar I have and I'm guessing mahogany for the neck, Could the top be cedar?
Try asking Jacques Maazzolenni at www.gypsyguitars.com for more info about Castelluccias and your guitar.
Congrats!

Michael Bauer

I agree with Enrique, Jacques Mazzoleni would be the best person to ask that I know. He jsut got back from Europe, so you should get a quick response from him if you e-mail the pictures.

My Busato is a 14-fret d hole, and almost certainly dates from the late 40's or early 50's, and there is another Busato in Montreal that is a 14 fret d-hole as well, so the idea was out there even then.

Your guitar looks like an absolute steal at that price! Congratulations!

Bob Holo

Be careful about the neck reset. I know that common knowledge in the flat-top world is to re-set a neck, but often necks pull away from the body on old flat-tops so you have a flat neck and a compromised neck joint and a re-set is a good course of action. But on old GJ instruments - particularly old midgrade Mirecourt ones, it may just be that the end of the neck is coming up because there was no reinforcement in it. In those cases, the best result is usually from removing the fretboard (looks like it might not be too difficult on yours ;-) and straightening the neck and reinforcing it with carbon and then re-installing the fretboard (or a new fretboard as long as it's off and the guitar isn't really a collector's item - put a good one on it and keep the old fretboard if it makes you feel good - the grade of wood used in fretboards was not always so good and when you start messing with punky old fretboards that have been refretted several times whose fret slots are loose so you're counting on glue to hold frets in place... you might be buying yourself a whole lot of future angst from frets popping every time the weather changes)

I didn't see anything in those pictures to indicate that the neck joint was going south.. but again... just Ebay pictures and often they're low resolution (sometimes on purpose to hide warts) So your judgement is best as you can take a good look in person and tell easily. If the neck is straight and yet the joint is pulling away at the body join, then a neck re-set would be a good course of action.

As for the wood... tough to tell from those pictures. All I can tell is that it's a light tawny colored homogeneous grained wood... that could be Mahogany, Walnut, or even a Honduran Rosewood... some of the quartered HR looks nearly grainless... odd about that. Most likley Mahog. Tough to tell without being able to see it up close and from different angles because the way you fill & finish a wood has a huge effect on it appearance... how prominent the grain is & its color etc.

Texasrockabillyrebel

Thanks for the congrats! I'm still kind of shocked that I got it for so cheap. The seller didn't really know what it was and he didn't label it too well on ebay. So I got really lucky.

Bob, you're right on about that neck reset and thank you for the detailed response. The top around the neck has sunk a little and everything has tilted forward a little bit making it look, to my layman's eyes, like it needed one. The joint is solid and has no gaps. The neck will have to be straightened and I was thinking of reinforcing it even before it arrived. Is that "rod" technique something that most luthiers know? I haven't ever met the luthier I'll be taking it too, but he has a great reputation and has been in business for about 20 years. I just want to make sure it gets done right.

Oh, and I found one of those ebay "warts". The fretboard has a thin crack running from the 4th fret all the way through the extension and the damn thing is cracked all the way through. So it's toast, I'm not going to bother getting that repaired. I have a feeling that this will be a pretty sweet guitar when all is said and done .

djangophile

I had one just like that, which I sold for about $700 bucks in 2001. Yours may be the same one. I believe it was an early 60's or late 50s. If it is the same guitar, it was owned by the Demeters and passed to a friend whom I sold it for. Why he asked me to take it to the states to sell is anybody's guess. Maybe it was a hot guitar. No pun intended.

My friend has the deluxe version, which his mom got in the 60's. It had a caving top and some other issues. It was restored to spectacular condition by Rosine Charle.
Good luck. These are fantastic guitars.

Bob Holo

Great - well, if there was a hidden issue on the guitar, you're lucky that it's something that's going away anyway.

Sure, reinforcement rod installation is pretty basic stuff. But there was something you said which makes me think I may not have understood the situation. If the top is sunk around the top end of the fretboard, that's different than a banana neck (though it might have both) It's not the end of the world by any means. You haven't mentioned anything unusual or unfixable. If the #1 brace is caved in, it might be remedied by the addition of a new fretboard. Maybe once the old fretboard is off, the #1 brace will pop back up... then the profile can be re-established by gluing the new fretboard while the top is stable and properly formed. But if the #1 brace has been caved in and is not responsive to encouragement - or if it is broken - or if it was too weak to do its job in the first place - it might need to be replaced or repaired or reinforced to establish the right lay for the fretboard. (in other words, a third scenario I'd not considered... the neck may be straight and the neck joint may be good, but the neck may be coming forward because the #1 brace is damaged somehow.) Again - not end of the world, particularly on a D-hole where the guy will have lots of access to work on that #1 brace.

None of this stuff is gypsy-jazz guitar specific... any good acoustic guitar repair person can do this work as long as he understands zero frets (just tell him to make the zero fret .3mm to .5m higher than the rest of the frets and center it where the nut edge would be) Make sure he gets the fretboard placed right so the bridge falls in the same place on the top as it's important to place the bridge properly relative to the #4/#3 braces. A lot of old GJ guitars had odd fretboard placements - like the 14th fret not falling directly on the body line but 3 to 8 mm inside it... But all the structural stuff is common work done on all types of acoustics. All types of acoustic guitars cave & banana... so if he's renown for good work - he should have no problems with it.

Oh, and while the fingerboard is off - if there isn't already some form of reinforcement, it is a good thing to add even if the neck is straight now. It's inexpensive to do as an adder because he's just routing a channel and inlaying the carbon as long as the fingerboard is already off.