Monteleone’s Grand Artist guitars are inspired by his mandolin-making years and feature an elegant scroll on the bass-side bout. Photos by Vincent Ricardel
Taking a stellar
instrument in your
hands can be a bit overwhelming—
especially
when it’s a masterfully
built piece of high-functioning
art. For starters,
you don’t want to ding
it, drop it, scratch it, or
do anything that might
cause its owner pain or
expense. Secondly, and
possibly even more powerfully,
you might not
feel worthy of such an
instrument.
Among the instruments
likely to cause such
a reaction, those built
by John Monteleone
up the anxiety ante
considerably—like, to
heart-attack level. But
despite the jaw-dropping
beauty of his instruments,
Monteleone
insists his central goal is
always to make his guitars
player friendly. From
his early incorporation of
side sound ports (which
has since become much
more common among
high-end builders) to
his use of a tailpiece that
can be minutely adjusted
to ease string tension,
Monteleone’s archtops
are a player’s dream come
true in spruce and maple.
Sounding Off
Early on, Monteleone
was concerned that
the archtop had been
pigeonholed as a jazz-only
guitar. “That idea
never sat well with me,”
he says. “I knew it was
capable of much more
than that, and if I could
bring it into an arena
that was more friendly to
the broad application of
guitar, then I’d be going
in the correct direction.”
Monteleone grew
up in Manhattan in a
family of artists, craftsmen,
and engineers, so
his background suited
him well in his conquest
to expand and develop
the archtop guitar. He
spent several years working
for his father on
blueprints, generating
different kinds of objects
and things from paper to
reality. It was interesting
work, but Monteleone
felt he was searching
for something else. “I
wasn’t quite sure what
that would be, or if it
was even possible to find
a direction that I really
was going to align with,”
he remembers.
Monteleone makes 17" and 18" versions
of the Grand Artist scroll-body. One
client calls it “The Terminator” for its
aggressive tone, “yet it can be as mild
as you want it to be,” Monteleone says.
In a classic quest to
find himself, Monteleone
took off to backpack
through Europe, where
he hitchhiked, slept out
under the stars, and
dreamt about the future
over a period of months.
He knew he didn’t want
to spend his life working
in his father’s pattern
shop, but still wasn’t
completely sure how to
craft the rest of his life.
Then it hit him.
One day he was
listening to the radio
while working, and a
show came on featuring
Stan Jay and Harold
“Hap” Kuffner from
the Mandolin Brothers
in Staten Island. “They
were entertaining live,
and they were fielding
questions about instruments,”
Monteleone
says. “I think I called in
to find out more about
a certain mandolin—a
Gibson mandolin that
I had seen in a store.”
Monteleone had already
built some instruments
as a hobby by that time,
but says, “I had no idea
you could turn it into a
profession or a business.”
He decided to go
meet Jay and Kuffner,
who had just started
their now-famous business
of buying and selling
vintage instruments
and were, unbeknownst
to him, looking for
someone to repair them.
Fortunately, Monteleone
happened to bring along
two flattops he’d been
building and ended up
getting the gig. “With a
smile on my face I drove
home that day with a
Gibson Bella Voce banjo
to re-neck as a 5-string.
Also on the backseat of
my Volkswagen bug was
a pre-war Martin 000-45
and a D-28. What more
could a starry-eyed guitar
geek want to spend the
rest of his days with?”
While he was working
on rare instruments
at the little workshop in
his house over the next
few years, Monteleone
learned a few tricks of
the trade from legendary
mentors such as
Jimmy D’Aquisto and
Mario Maccaferri. “I was
very lucky to have that
experience,” Monteleone
says. “Everyone has their
own building styles, and I
admired Jimmy’s talents. I
know they’re not my own
talents—and vive la difference!
That’s great, everyone
should have their
own signature on things.
Same with Maccaferri. I
did some work with him
purely on a friendly basis,
not as a business arrangement,
because I just loved
the man. I knew that his
approach to building was
not my own, but I could
appreciate it.”
Even so, Monteleone
says D’Aquisto and
Maccaferri influenced his
luthiery in the same ways
that master musicians
influence aspiring musicians.
“These things play
into your own development
of how you think
about sound, about tone,
about construction of
the instruments, too. I
wasn’t necessarily going
to follow their examples
exactly, but things do
play into your cards at
some point.”
Despite having
such close working
relationships with two
of the 20th century’s
most famous builders,
Monteleone says his
main design philosophies
came from his hands-on
experience working as
a repair tech. “You’re a
problem-solver when
you’re doing this—you’re
fixing something, you’re
righting something
that was wrong. Or
something happened
to the instrument that
was not the fault of
the design.” Because
of that, Monteleone’s
guitars are a product of
his reverence for vintage
instruments, as well as
his desire to improve
projection, tone, and
playability, but not
to turn a guitar into
something it’s not. “In
design and construction
of instruments, there’s
a lot to be learned from
others. Some of these
guys I still hold in high
regard, and in some
ways, you wouldn’t
want to change [what
they pioneered].” But
in other ways, he says
he found certain design
aspects called out for
change. “Not just to
change it for the sake of
changing something—
that’s not a good reason.”
Monteleone says
such changes are warranted,
however, for the
betterment of functionality
or user experience.
“The basic design
of my instruments, the
foundation, is something
that is easily identifiable,
and recognizable
as the instrument we all
know, as opposed to a
spaceship, or ‘What the
hell is that thing?’”
LEFT: The 25.4" Blue
Comet uses Indiana curly red
maple harvested from the
Hoosier National Forest for its
back, sides, and neck. RIGHT: Several internal
inlays of turquoise and mother
of pearl run around the interior
of the guitar’s sidewalls.
The Train: A Vehicle of Inspiration
In addition to his Four Seasons models, luthier John Monteleone has done several themed guitar projects. Here,
he shares the inspiration for his Train series, which is currently in progress.
I have been intrigued with
trains since I was a child.
I still have a few sets of
these trains. Not unlike
many other young kids,
my interests were also
drawn to the guitar, if not
a variety of other musical
instruments in my particular
case. But for me, the
train was about imagination.
There were many
other fascinations with
trains, including the deco
design and style elements
of the great train era. It
could be seen in the trains
themselves, inside and
out. The architecture and
design of the great train
stations are still with us,
the ones that thankfully
managed to survive.
I came to realize that
many of us guitar players
share this childhood activity,
and there are many
train enthusiasts out there
who collect and have a
passion for the subject.
The trains that I focused
on were the more famous
ones that ruled the iron
rails from the 1920s into
the 1950s. They were
known for their land speed
and luxury of design. Before
the jet plane replaced
them, they were perhaps
the most popular method
of getting from city to city.
Trains were a main
method of transportation
for musicians, entertainers,
and bands. Many
songs have been composed
about the subject
of trains—inspiring musicians
to sing songs about
them and the places that
either took them somewhere
or took their “baby”
away. The blues was a
natural inspiration for a
train song—Jimmie Rodgers
as a case in point. I
love those songs.
It seemed to me a
natural connection from
the guitar to a musician
to a train. The next
progression would be the
inspiration of the train to
a luthier. I could easily see
how certain elements of
design could be incorporated
into the guitar
design. The danger is,
of course, to exaggerate
and allow the design to
get out of hand. Keeping
a balance of design
and allowing the guitar
to be the vehicle is the
challenge at hand. At all
costs, it has to be a guitar
that plays up to optimum
standards, first and foremost.
After that, we can
proceed to embellish.
I leave it up to the
observer to decide what
he or she sees in the designs.
One can, however,
see on the headstock
that I use the front of the
train for inspiration. There
is an interpretation of the
headlight mounted in a
bronze casting of deco
design that might be seen
on some of these trains.
The trains that I have
chosen as my subjects for
inspiration of guitar design
so far are the [Central
Railroad of New Jersey]
Blue Comet, the [Atchison,
Topeka and] Santa
Fe Super Chief, the [London
and North Eastern
Railway] Flying Scotsman,
the [New York Central
Railroad] 20th Century
Limited, and the [Seaboard
Air Line Railroad]
Orange Blossom Special.
There are, of course,
other models under consideration
but these train
guitars are presently in the
works and they are each
intended as one-of-a-kind
presentation pieces.
—John Monteleone