Raffaele Calace No.38 Folk Classical Guitar (1950s)

Rafaele Calace was an Italian mandolin, lute and guitar player, as well as being a very well-known composer in the early 20th century. His father and uncle build the Calace instruments from their workshop in Naples.

Calace toured Japan at the beginning of the 20th century and introduced the mandolin and other string instruments to the Japanese audience.

The Japanese audience was so fascinated by these new instruments that the Calace family could not keep up with the demand for their instruments.  Hoshino Gakki who previously bought the rights from Salvador Ibanez to make copies of the Ibanez guitars also bought the rights to make one to one copy of the Calace instruments.

This guitar is a perfect replica of the No.38 Calace guitar.  

It's a folk classical guitar whose tonal characteristics suit as an accompaniment instrument to the mandolin, violin and voice.  Preferably played with a pick this guitar sounds like a guitar you'd hear from "the Sound of Music", the song "moon river" from " Breakfast at Tiffany's" or something you'd hear from the movie " The God Father".

The unique sound is characteristic of the bracing system used in the guitar. It uses ladder-style bracing which is used for mandolins, while typical Spanish style classical guitars use fan bracing.

Each bracing system has its own tonal characteristics, it just depends on the type of music you play, and quite often it depends on the songs you play.

Like most of the folk nylon guitars from the 50s-70s, this guitar was built to take both nylon strings and steel strings.  So the action (the gap between the strings and the frets) is set up for steel-string for ease of play, which means nylon string will buzz a little unless you raise the action by changing the saddle. 

Changing the saddle is as easy as cutting a piece of chopstick and replacing it with the steel-string saddle.  It just happens that the width of a chopstick gives you the perfect action for the nylon strings. How convenient!!!!

Specifications:

Top: Spruce

Back & Sides: Mahogany

Neck: Mahogany

Fretboard: Mahogany

Scale length: 643mm

Nut width: 45mm

Action: 2.0mm on the first string and 2.5mm on the 6th string at the 12th fret