Giuseppe Vinaccia

[Martin Jonas]

I've just received the Giuseppe Vinaccia that I recently got from Ebay. It's a beautiful mandolin, with a perfectly straight neck, a sound and very attractive maple bowl with slight flame figure (a nice contrast to my rosewood bowls) and a low action, right on the spot for playability. I like the understated plainness of the decorations, which is nicely off-set by the quality of the wooden binding at the sides and around the soundhole. No painted-on "binding" or heat transfers here, as one sees with some Neapolitan or Catania builders. The top is clean with little or no finish and an even colour with a nicely-aged honeyed hue.

Having said all this, this mandolin does have some structural issues and unlike my previous three Ebay bowlbacks, this one will need to see a luthier before it is playable. There is a fairly substantial split in the soundboard between tailpiece and bridge, and a second smaller one parallel to it. These weren't visible in the Ebay photos, as they are directly underneath the e- and a- strings, but are pretty obvious in the flesh. They're along the grain, so they might not be too serious structurally, but I'd rather have them closed. Probably more seriously, the edge of the soundboard has come away from the bowl and the binding on the bass side over a length of about 15cm and there is about a 1mm gap and some give in the soundboard when pressed. This clearly needs to be reglued, if the seam can be closed somehow (which I'm not sure about at the moment). The photo below shows the problem, although because a gap looks much like a dark binding strip, it's not nearly as prominent on the photo as it is to the eye.

The bridge also needs some work. It was on the mandolin the wrong way around, with the string spacers facing the soundhole. Bizarrely, a previous owner had nailed the bridge to the soundboard. Luckily, I was able to gently pull the bridge together with the nails out by hand without damage to bridge or soundboard. Most of the string spacers are broken off, and to compensate for that, a previous owner has put notches into the bone saddle insert (which should be smooth for this style of bridge). I expect I'll be able to replace the broken string spacers with a slice of ebony and then smoothen the saddle insert.

As was obvious from the photos sent out by the seller by e-mail, the tuners are mismatched, with the treble tuners having the post below the gear and the bass tuners post above the gear. So, the tuners turn the opposite way on one side to what one would expect. However, the tuners all work smooth and seem good quality. The replacement seems to have been done a long time ago, as the two sets of tuner buttons, while slightly different from each other, are all real ivory rather than bakelite, celluloid or pearloid.

No idea about tone yet, of course, although I did briefly pluck the old strings that were on. Even with the strings detuned for transport, it did sound rather intriguing and I can't wait to hear how it will sound with the top and bridge repaired and new Lenzners on.

More later.

Martin

[Martin Jonas]

Here are the splits in the soundboard between tailpiece and bridge. The two small holes at the bridge position are where the bridge was nailed on.

Martin

[Bob A]

The splits in the soundboard are not too worrisome - they can be repaired. The Pul;ling away may have something to do with shrinkage of the pickguard - after all resto was done on my Vinaccia it had to go back, because the shrinking guard had contributed to splitting the mainbrace (Splice the mainbrace? With a tot of rum?).

My Vinnie also had the braces poking thru the sides of the instrument. A hairy repair. Also the bridge was glued down(!).

Hard to understand the abuse heaped on some of these instruments.

[vkioulaphides]

Let me be the first one to congratulate you on the arrival of your new/old baby. Good catch, Martin!

And, you have company: when I got my current bass, the soundpost had been fastened to its place by means of a NAIL, driven straight through the top! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Ultimately, after simple surgery, the bass was just fine, as will be your lovely Vinaccia. Incidentally, as the top is not deformed, I trust that the cracks in the bottom (as depicted in the images you attached) will be perfectly curable.

Once again, congratulations!

[Jim Garber]

Martin:
Congratulations to you on this acquisition.

None of those repairs sound to me beyond the capabilities of a moderately competent luthier. Do you have one local to you who can handle this and can deal with the structural aspects of bowlbacks?

Jim

[Martin Jonas]

Thanks, Jim, Bob and Victor. No bowlback luthiers locally, but our own Jon (onthefiddle) has kindly offered to have a look at it when I'm in his neck of the wood later this month. I'm not too concerned about the defects, but the repairs are not ones that I would attempt myself. I'm happy to do setup and such, but cracks I leave to the professionals.

I've just posted some photos over in the picture forum. More to come once the repairs are done.

Martin

[Eugene]

Congrats, of course.

[Martin Jonas]

I dropped my Giuseppe Vinaccia off a week ago at the shop of Jon (onthefiddle) in Cambridgeshire. Had a very nice chat about bowlbacks and so on and I had a good look at his bowls. He's now started working on it and we have a much better idea of the extent of the problems. Quite a few hidden bits of trouble, such as a fingerboard (non-original, presumably) that has the fret positions all over the place and simply needs to be replaced to get decent intonation, and some sloppy original workmanship at the purfling (channel cut too deep) that comprimised the soundboard/bowl joint. Jon has sent me some photos of the internal bracing of the bowl, and I thought others here might be interested.

Martin

[Martin Jonas]

The old fretboard, by the way, was in several pieces to start with because some of the frets were deeper than the fretboard -- I wouldn't want people to think that Jon cut the fretboard in half when taking the top off. This next photo shows the bracing, and in particular the rather interestingly shaped tone bar with the greater bulk on the treble side, presumably to balance the tone.

Martin

[Alex Timmerman]

Hello MartinJonas,


Very nice sharing these photos with us here!

And you can be confident that nothing is wrong with the fretboard; often on Neapolitan mandolins made around the turn of the century (and especially on those manufactured by the Vinaccias and Antonio/Niccolo & Raffaele Calace, Fenga, Checcerini, Casella etc. etc. ) the thin rosewood fretboard is cut through by the frets. In a similar way as can be notiched when a Mother of pearl finger/fretboard is applied.


Best,

Alex

[Martin Jonas]

Thanks for your comments, Alex. I'm not too concerned about the fact that the frets cut right through the fretboard -- these fretboards are so thin that it's difficult not to cut through. I am, however, concerned about the fact that a lot of the frets are blatantly in the wrong position. Some of them are visibly not parallel and in a couple of places, the fret spacings actually increase rather than decrease towards the soundhole. So, I have asked Jon to make a new ebony fretboard with correct fret spacings. The current one is rosewood, but I prefer the look and feel of ebony and as I'm sceptical that the current one is original, I don't feel overly bound by what's on it.

Martin

[onthefiddle]

Hi everyone,

Sorry to be so quiet lately! I spent several weeks visiting friends and attending a wedding in Canada. My timing turned out to be just about right for Martin to drop off the Vinaccia - the day after I got back. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif It was nice to meet Martin at last! He also brought his Ceccherini and Rinaldi for me to see - the Ceccherini is a particularly nicely made instrument.

As Martin said, the fret positions on this Guiseppe Vinaccia's current fingerboard are visibly out, measuring fret spacings simply confirmed that most of the less obviously unconventional fret spacings are also out! I share Martin's scepticism as to the originality of this fretboard.

Of course it was not necessary for me to cut the fingerboard in two - it has already been cut into about nineteen pieces (it's an eighteen fret fingerboard). I simply removed the ninth and tenth frets, then released the piece of rosewood between them. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Jon

[Martin Jonas]

Seven weeks after I dropped the Giuseppe Vinaccia off with Jon, I was able to collect it again two days ago. He has done a great job with the repairs/restoration on a number of large and small issues that we agreed on after lengthy discussion:

1) Repairing the top cracks in the lower bout and adjacent to the fingerboard. The two prominent cracks in the lower bout (as in the photo above in this thread) had clean edges, luckily, and are now for all practical purposes invisible.

2) The separation at the edges of the soundboard was not just an open glue seam, as I had originally thought, but a crack along the line of the purfling channel a few millimetres in from the soundboard edge. Much of the rest of the purfling had an incipient weakening in the same location, so Jon used underedging along the weakened areas, and now they are structurally solid.

3) We decided the existing fingerboard was a dead loss because of the erratic fret positioning. So, Jon made a completely new ebony fingerboard. The old fingerboard had round fret markers, but as we didn't know whether that one was original in the first place, we decided the instrument would look nice with the crescent/ellipse/elongated diamond markers that many Vinaccias have. Previously it had 18 frets, but the gap between 18th and the soundhole was big enough for a 19th fret.

4) Previously, the instrument had mismatched tuners. They were of the right period, approximately, but were different in look and design from each other. Jon happened to have a matching set from about the right period that fitted the existing holes, so he swapped them out.

5) New bone nut and new compensated bone saddle, repaired and refitted bridge, and setup with new Lenzners.

Altogether a sterling job from Jon, and a rather larger effort (and financial outlay) than I had hoped for when I bid for the instrument (althogu roughly what I was expecting after first seeing it in the flesh).

So how is it now? Because of the new fingerboard, nut and saddle, the playability and intonation is that of a good new instrument: just the right amount of neck relief, sounding cleanly and intonating accurately all the way to the 19th fret. With the string tension just having gone back on, the top and neck joint may need some settling, so Jon will do the final setup tweaks in a few months time. At the moment, the action is 2.5mm on G and 1.7mm on E (much the same as my Ceccherini), but that may be lowered by half a millimetre eventually.

I'm reluctant to say much about the tone at this early stage: Lenzners need a few days to settle in anyway, and the instrument probably hasn't been played for a few decades. My Ceccherinis both developed dramatically over a period of months, and I expect the Vinaccia to do the same. What I can say is that it already has a complex, rich tone, with good balance across all courses. The volume is a bit more subdued than on my Ceccherini, and it can't match its soaring trebles on the tremolo (but then I've never heard another mandolin soaring like the Ceccherini). It is, however, punchier and meatier. Lots of promise of improvent there, and I hope and expect that it will come along nicely. In particular more prominent trebles would be nice. We'll see.

By a weird coincidence, I took it along to an ensemble rehearsals yesterday and was told by one of the other mandolinists that he had an identical-looking Giuseppe Vinaccia maple bowl at home. He had picked it up a few years ago at a car boot sale for five Pounds and had no idea that these might be collectable or more desirable than, say, a de Meglio, Suzuki or Tonelli (all of which are in our ensemble as well). I understand his GV isn't in a good condition, but he'll bring it along next week, so I'll get a look and take some photos. Maybe I shouldn't have told him that these may be worth something...

Here are some photos after restoration.

Martin

[Martin Jonas]

And the side, showing the new fingerboard and the action.

Martin

[Martin Jonas]

And the back, with the new matching tuners and the trademark Vinaccia MOP triangle.

Martin

[vkioulaphides]

Beautiful, Martin! And, great job, Jon!

It is a sheer delight to see a quality instrument land in the hands of an appreciative owner, and restored by a skilled luthier.

Thumbs up!

http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Eugene]

Very nice! Congrats to you, Martin, and kudos to Jon for such an absolutely beautiful job.

[Eugene]

...And please pardon my simultaneous-typing, near-perfect redundancy to Victor.

[Jim Garber]

Ditto from me as well. I love the look of that maple bowl. I am also happy to hear that Jon did a sterling job and in record time. Too bad we are too far away.

Jim

[vkioulaphides]

It's not redundancy, Eugene; its telepathy! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I absolutely LOVE that understated beauty...

[onthefiddle]

Thank you Martin, I'm glad that you are happy with your Vinaccia! And thank you to everyone else for your kind comments.
For those who are interested, I took some photos while I was working on Martin's Vinaccia, with the intention of using them on my (currently rather bare) website. I'll let you know when I've put the page together.

Jon

[guitharsis]

Very nice! Congrats Martin and Jon.

Doreen

[Jim Garber]

Jon:
I, for one, am very interested in seeing those photos of the work in progress.

Jim

[Eugene]

Ditto.

[NYClassical]

beautiful! congrats

[onthefiddle]

I have just finished putting a web page together with some photographs taken during the repairs to the soundboard of Martin's Vinaccia.

You can find it here! (http://mandolinrepairs.finelutherie.com/)

I would like to thank Martin for the use of some of his photos.

Jon

P.S. No peeking at my html Jim! It works at least!!!http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Bob A]

Very impressive job of work. Both parties are to be praised for their devotion to the Cause. And the opportunity to see inside one of these instruments, and to watch the repair unfold, is rare and enlightening.

[Jim Garber]

Jon:
A wonderful job. I would imagine that it would be much easier to take the top off in this case in order to fix the cracks. I know that some guitar restorers are able to repair cracks thru the soundhole but would you think that it would be more difficult to do so since the soundhole is much smaller? Is it possible to fix and cleat those cracks without removing the top?

Nice to see a pic of Martin as well.

No criticism on the site. It works and communicates well.

Jim

[onthefiddle]

Thanks Bob & Jim!

Whenever I put one of my pages through an html validator it sniffs at it, then turns its nose up declaring my page to be "invalid/proprietary html". I test my pages with IE, Firefox, K-Meleon and Opera however, and they do work!http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

It would of course be possible to repair the cracks in the lower bouts without completely removing the front, though perhaps not quite as effectively.

It would have been impossible to have effectively repaired the cracks running through the soundboard alongside the edge of the purfling without removing the front, as the cracks were occurring in the area where the front and ribs join. Simply rubbing glue into this crack from the outside would have left a very large part of the pressure on the soundboard being borne by a weak end grain to side grain joint, which would have inevitably failed.

As I was removing the front anyway to do the underedging, it made sense to take advantage of this and use the more effective technique for the cracks in the lower bouts.

One possibility that may perhaps exist uniquely for mandolin/lute family instruments may be to partially release the front from the ribstructure and apply the technique used in the lower bout cracks from the outside. This could only possibly be done where the front of the instrument is unfinished, and no matter how careful you were would probably require some retouching, so I'm not completely convinced. It may be worth a try at some point though.

Jon

[Martin Jonas]

Thanks to all for their comments and good wishes, and thanks to Jon for putting the page up with the in-progress pictures. I'm busy playing the Vinaccia in, and listening to its tone developing. There certainly have been some changes over the past few days. I may also have to experiment with different picks. At the moment I use a .88mm Jim Dublop nylon guitar pick, which is what I'm happiest with on the Ceccherini. The slight softness in the pick makes for a more rounded tone, which suits the Ceccherini with its naturally pronounced trebles. The Vinaccia is not short of roundness, but may need the trebles enhanced, so I'm thinking of going with something harder and more pointy.

I know that Jon uses a small Pettine shape pick on his Vega, and that's maybe something I should try. I also have some German Wolle rubber picks around. They are unfinished, so I would need to sand the tip into shape. I seem to remember there was some discussion on how to do this. Does anybody have any practical advice on working these rubber picks? Symmetrical tips or bevelled?

Martin

[Jim Garber]

I would not use a rubber pick if you want to enhance the trebles. I like the John Pearse heavy jazz picks. Evidentally JP uses some old formula plastic. My other favorite is the TS pick that came with my DeMeglio. You may need to experiment and of course YMMV.

Jim

[jasona]

Beautiful mandolin Martin and nice repair work Jon!

[Martin Jonas]

By a weird coincidence, I took it along to an ensemble rehearsals yesterday and was told by one of the other mandolinists that he had an identical-looking Giuseppe Vinaccia maple bowl at home. #He had picked it up a few years ago at a car boot sale for five Pounds and had no idea that these might be collectable or more desirable than, say, a de Meglio, Suzuki or Tonelli (all of which are in our ensemble as well). #I understand his GV isn't in a good condition, but he'll bring it along next week, so I'll get a look and take some photos. #Maybe I shouldn't have told him that these may be worth something...
One week later, and indeed he did bring his Giuseppe Vinaccia along to the next rehearsal. #Unfortunately, I forgot to take my digital camera along. #This was a strange experience, as indeed this GV is very, very similar to mine. #This one was dated 1893 (five years older than mine), same maple bowl, same bowl design (except for an additional rosewood strip around the edge of the skirting), same purfling, same soundhole surround, same bridge design. #The only notable differences are a slightly different scratchplate shape (less bat-wing like), the common Vinaccia pegs at the tailpiece instead of a metal tailpiece and a headstock which has the frequently-seen little cupola button in the centre. #The great similarity of this one to mine makes it interesting to compare the things that I know are non-original on mine: the tuners and the fretboard. #The tuners on this GV are virtually identical to the tuners that Jon found for my GV, much more so than to the tuners that Jon took off mine. #So, Jon's choice appears to have been spot on. #The fret board is rosewood, and had elliptical markers of the same design as this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7349349397) GV (but only four of them, not six). #The style we decided on for mine is a bit different, but both designs are frequently seen on Vinaccias and may well be interchangeable. #In any case, it's not the plain dot markers that mine had originally. #Interestingly, this fretboard also has the little "widow's peak" at the soundhole end of the fretboard, overlaying the purfling. #So, that appears to be original.

The owner of this GV is a hobby luthier himself; no pretensions to professionalism, but he has built his own bowlback from scratch (an admirable and rather unconventional instrument which is the one he plays in our ensemble) and he has made a number of car boot sale purchases and attic finds playable in the past. #As he wasn't aware of the status of the Vinaccia name, and paid very little for this one, he had no particular ambitions on restorations other than making an unplayable wreck playable again, rather than preserving authenticity. #He is well on the way towards achieving that goal -- I gather that the soundboard had similar problems around the purfling channels as mine, and was largely detached around the edge, together with a fair bit of distortion and open seams in the bowl and skirting. #His approach to this was rather more robust than Jon's. #He did manage to get the soundboard flat again and firmly attached at the edges, but sacrificed much of the purfling in the process. #He has also refinished the entire soundboard and bowl in high gloss. #I understand that the existing fretboard was unusable (I don't know in what way, and whether it was because of fret placement as on mine), and he is going to replace it with a new one and a new nut. #Once that is done, it should be playable (the neck is just fine), even if not particularly authentic.

Quite a coincidence, in view of the fact that none of the other Vinaccias I've seen have been all that similar to mine!

Martin