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As the 1914 advert from the Bone book shows, Beare & Son were already in Toronto pre-WWI. Not sure what happened to Alban Voigt. As that name sounds very German, they may have sold the business in...

Mick, here is the Beare & Son, Toronto catalogue from 1936/37. You can see that old cat and his fiddle is prominent and he is still the company's mascot. I saw a late 30s Harmony guitar with that...

On a side note, Beare & Sons continue to this day as violin specialists although they have moved out of London to Dunstable.

In the 40s they imported guitars and mandolins from the US including...

Mick,

We've speculated on this before. I agree that there clearly are similarities between Ceccherini and De Meglio, but I still don't buy the idea that Ceccherini was in effect a more upmarket...

Good luck with the delivery, and the instrument itself -- I've handled quite a few Ceccherinis, keeping the best for myself. At latest count, we have four Ceccherinis in our weekly practice group,...

Part 2

To assuage the disappointment of the music shop non-sale, I found myself combing EBay and Reverb and sure enough there was another Ceccherini. It was advertised as 1881 but would be later...

Not on the bench, but just off the bench…[ATTACH=CONFIG]213152

OK, just checked the Didone thread and while it doesn't mention the Naples Labor Exhibition on the label itself, it was reported in an Italian newspaper of the time:


SCUOLA DI MANDOLiNO
Il...

213135 213136
There have been a couple of posts recently about Neapolitan bowlbacks - the Didone 10-string and my Agara and DiSanto - that sported labels making reference to the luthiers’ medals...

Current goings on:

https://i.imgur.com/j7TcPbC.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/mSEHLTc.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/b9gmlwc.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/j0WFPwZ.jpeg

:)) I can only imagine what they thought about the term "Florentine" in this context. Someone might well correct me, but I believe, after much discussion hereabouts, that the term is assumed to have...

The latest mandolin off my 'Barn Cat Mandolins' bench is something a little different for me. I've given it a slightly wider, rounder body shape than my usual Moggy model mandolin, and its ribs and...

This discussion is indeed time-worn, but there are always some interesting new views - particularly the comparisons to language in this thread.

If you want to learn by ear to speak Italian, for...

Hey, good for you and all the best!

Sue, what you describe about your school music experience is what I complain about...music ed that never addresses the basic issues of the inner ear.

Instead...

There have been a number of ways and methods of reading/writing music that have come and gone over the years. Some of these are still used today. “Shaped notes” immediately comes to mind, but there...

That depends on how you were taught to read standard notation...which in the Italian tradition was a way to sing before you were ever given an instrument.

So I disagree, learning to sight-sing...

Vinaccia Mandolin from 1903 on auction at Catawiki:

https://www.catawiki.com/en/l/82781147-vinaccia-neapolitan-mandolin-mandolin-italy-1903

Your "as received" photo gives me hope that this old Brambilla might be salvageable should my ship ever come in. This was dropped from a shelf in my grandfather's closet by his butterfingered heirs....

Wow, nice job so far!

My opinion of Stridente's is that they sound nice, but have a quite profound tendency to self-destruct :(

Traditionally these had "shelf" bridges like this:

213041
...

Thanks Mick, yes the neck is relatively straight and despite refretting it, i think I may yet replace the board with some built in relief. I added extra stiffening just forward of the sound hole....

I wanted to share my wonderful experience with purchasing a bowl back Mandola from Ikegaku in Japan

I've been wanting to dip my toe into GDAE Mandola for a while, after reading Robert Margo's many...

Here's an example of a Stridente restored by Lucas Sobieranski.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlaeT3Z_AZU

That bridge solo is great. Bassist is killing it too.

Here's another one for OP. To make it even better, he starts out the video by calling an eight-string Harley Benton mandocaster "the world's...

Mick, you have won the prize for the cryptic label challenge!

213019

It is a waltz composed by Nino Rota for Visconti's film Il Gattopardo (1963). :mandosmiley:
...