Raffaele Calace List

**kof20012** · Sep-08-2010, 4:41pm

Hi there,

Anyone have the raffaele calace family list where i can see what they selling of him?

best regards,
kof20012

**vkioulaphides** · Sep-08-2010, 6:44pm

I believe that their catalogue is on the Calace firm's website, as a PDF you can download. Otherwise, I think I recall that Jim Garber already has that document— perhaps the latest one available, if not the current one. Nice folks, the Calace family...

Cheers,

Victor

**Jim Garber** · Sep-08-2010, 7:15pm

You can download some catalogs with photos of the various models on this page: Calace download page. The price list you have to write to them for.

**Bill Foss** · Mar-18-2012, 11:53am

Originally Posted by Jim Garber

You can download some catalogs with photos of the various models on this page: Calace download page. The price list you have to write to them for.

There's a Calace model 15 on the classifieds. I've been playing Italian tunes on an arch top Gibson style instrument, and I've been interested in getting a Neopolitan style instrument for a while, but I know little about them. Are the current Calace's considered to be excellent instruments? The one in the classifieds is going for $1700, is that a reasonable price?

**Jim Garber** · Mar-18-2012, 8:08pm

In the 2007 price list I have (the last one I received) the Style 15 went for €1150 which is currently $1,514.50 USD. Of course, you also have to pay shipping etc from Naples and I am not sure what the current price is direct from the shop. You could email them and they usually send it . If you get it I would apreciate an update to my woefully out of date one.

My friend Victor plays a less fancy model which he bought direct from the shop a few years ago. I think the set up was not perfect but it is a good quality instrument once it was adjusted.

Hopefully others will chime in here.

**wundo** · Mar-19-2012, 5:24pm

Eastman bowlbacks are about $1600, so the Calace seems reasonable to me.

**vkioulaphides** · Mar-20-2012, 7:06am

Originally Posted by Jim Garber

My friend Victor plays a less fancy model which he bought direct from the shop a few years ago. I think the set up was not perfect but it is a good quality instrument once it was adjusted.

Indeed, I play a 2004 second-from-lowest-end Calace, and am 100% happy with it. Also true: the "factory setup" was rather... *ahem*... disreputable but, once adjusted, the instrument has worked like a dream.

I would not go as far as to call this a "great" mandolin, having seen, heard, and played far finer concert-instruments. Then again, I am hardly what anyone would call a great mandolinist, so there is a certain harmony, a certain symmetry there...

My Calace and I "balance" in our basic, workaday competence.

Jim would know far better than I what the going prices for vintage Calaces would be at this time...

Cheers,

Victor

**brunello97** · Mar-28-2012, 9:50pm

Ah, beware of Greeks bearing gifts, playing pool or evaluating their own mandolin-playing skills. I have heard, Victor, from VERY reliable sources just how well you play. (And some day hope to share that experience.) That is the "balance" I admire you for: your modesty and your artistry.

Mick

**vkioulaphides** · Mar-29-2012, 6:55am

Why... thank you, Mick

yet there's no false modesty in my comment, either. I have heard enough brilliant mandolinists to simply know where I stand— on a rather lowly rung.

Besides, as I venture into yet another of Carlo's workshops this coming weekend, said reliable sources may have to adjust (downwards, that is) whatever esteem they hold my playing in. Both my composing career and the inexorable flow of bass-playing engagements have limited my mandolin-playing even more than ever. It would be fair to say that, at this point, 99% of my mandolin-playing is simply in the course of proofreading my own works for our beloved instrument. I have no regrets.

Back to Calace, and to those Greeks

an instrument is called "organo(n)" in Greek, thus an "organ", a part of a whole, or an instrument to some further goal, a means to an end. Unpoetic, perhaps, but substantively true. Yes, a musical instrument is also a work of art, in and of itself; it's "core function", however, is that it is used for something: making music.

So a healthy, robust young Calace— set up to the player's liking, and certainly better than the absurdly sloppy "factory-setup"

— would be a good bet for many, happy years of plucking. All this, needless to say, IMHO. I know (i.e. have corresponded with) the Calaces, I like the family, but I certainly don't sell on their behalf. Caveat emptor, and all that...

Cheers,

Victor