Antonio cerrito 00 size 1925
This guitar came to me as a project, literaly in pieces. I found it on Ebay USA for little money and somehow it caught my attention. A 12fret V-neck with slotted headstock, cracked at the heel, 00-body with some bad cracks at the endblock and the sides, broken bridge, worn out tuners, rusty screws, all packed up in a cardboard-case, finally arrived in quite poor shape. I dont know why, but I had the feeling that I should give it a chance. After inspecting the parts, I went for a two hours drive to carry the box to Thomas Amberger, well known and excellent luthier for vintage guitars in Cham, Bavaria. Although it took a while, Thomas repaired and assembled the parts, did some repair-and glue-work here and there, replaced the ebony pyramid-bridge with a perfect new copy, refinished the brazilian back and sides and the adirondack top, using french polish, levelled the ebony fretboard, remounted the frets, stringed and tested the instrument and finally phoned me. He was quite excited and told me that this might be a big surprise for me. He was right. This little guitar is realy impressive. Loud, with a very balanced voice, great projection and the ability to cut through any playback. You could say, this guitar sounds double the size it is. Therefore it became my main instrument for the stage and about a thousand solo-shows in the past 15 years. So, the the play-wear, visible on the top, is definitely mine.
Of course I did some research and found out that this guitar was made by the New York City Italian Guild of guitar makers that was founded by A. Cerrito, R.Ciani, J.Neptuno and others. Some of this craftsmen were later employed by the Oscar Schmidt guitar factory in nearby Jersey City NJ, building the iconic Stella guitars. But the instruments, produced in their small New York shops exhibit a much higher level of craftsmanship than those of the Schmidt factory guitars. This particular 00-size 12fret example is much likely from the shop of Antonio Cerrito , although there is no label inside to prove it.
