Giannini Brazilian Classical Guitar

I bought this guitar in August 1985. It was my 5th guitar at the time. My first was a cigar box guitar that my father made for me before I was 6 years old. Later in about 7th grade, Mom and Dad gave me a child's student acoustic folk guitar, wire strings--very similar to the First Act kids guitars you can get at K mart and Walmart these days.

In my junior year I bought an electric guitar and an electric bass to play in two different bands, The K and R Rangers (Country), and Thief of Hearts (Pop). After High school I continued to play in various ways and that helped pay for some of my college and rent.

Just before I went to college I bought this Giannini. This guitar was priced at $600, but since the music store was going out of business and being repossessed by the bank, I got it for $110.

It looked funny, but when I took it off the wall to try it out, I loved it right away. I eventually sold the electric guitar and the electric bass. But I still have the Giannini, and it has gone through some hard times.

This Giannini is an AWKN 6 Brazilian "Craviola" style Classical, full size. 2 piece spruce soundboard, 19 nickel frets, bone nut, bone bridge. The body is pitched at low E.  I don't know what the rest of the woods are. The Craviola body style originated in the 1970s.

 I've replaced the head gears and tuning pegs twice over 25 years.The problem was my handling of the guitar and moving too often.

 There are 5 layers of varicolored wood purfling around the front edge of the body.

 The sound hole is in the Giannini Brazilian style, the rosette is a complicated pattern made with at least 4 different colors of wood cross cut very fine, with multi layered purfling inside and out. This is not a decal.

You can see the Model is AWKN 6 and the serial number is 10/0, a proof guitar.

 The bridge has the same 4 tones of wood in 7 lines of purfling along the back edge of the bridge.

 If you look carefully on the bottom left side you can see a very well done repair. In the fall of 1986 I fell asleep with the guitar in my dorm loft. I rolled over, it fell 8 ft and broke. My chemistry professor knew a luthier in Mankato who was able to do a brilliant job fixing it and charged me less than $40.

If you look closely you can see small inset mother-of-pearl fret markers on the top edge of the fret board. There are none on the face of the fretboard. The neck broke away from the heel sometime in maybe 1998. Probably moving damage. I don't remember. Mary took it secretly to a friend in Mankato who is also an excellent Luthier (David Begalka) and got it put back together for me for Fathers' Day that same year.

I've taken this guitar all over the US, from Atlanta to Seattle. It's been through a lot, and it still plays great.