Cantonella Archtop, 1930s

Description

An archtop guitar made in the 1930s, most likely in Schönbach or vicinity thereof and intended for export. It features quite a peculiar design involving an angled upper part of the top, which allows to combine a ladder-braced, non-carved solid spruce top (slightly concave in both directions) with a tall archtop bridge. As the build is a bit closer to gypsy-jazz guitars rather than more conservative L5-like guitars, the sound also reflects this. The fretboard is very prominently radiused, one would say almost cello-like. Tha hardware (including the elaborately routed bridge base and trademarked short tailpiece) fully corresponds to another know model from this time – a laminated L5-like archtop also present in our gallery.