Making Music

A Benedetto Guitar

Savannah has always been a town of music. Johnny Mercer was born and raised here. Tom Turpin was a revered ragtime music composer was born here. King Oliver of big band fame spent his final years here. We have a world class Music Festival. The list of our contributions I have already spoken about in some early blogs in June 2016. But Savannah has also become the town of musical instruments. We have three companies that make the instruments the stars play. Benedetto is one.

When he was young Robert Benedetto made a guitar out of wood scraps and even cut-up the kitchen table, his sister’s bed, and a bookcase all for the sake of his art. The making of guitars. This would be the start of a legendary career as a guitar luthier (a stringed instrument maker). In a sense to work with wood was in the blood. His father was a cabinet maker.

He was inspired by an experience he had of watching instruments being made at the Gretsch factory in Brooklyn. He would choose for himself a Chet Atkins 6120, the signature instrument of Gretsch, which he played in his early career musician. In 1983 Benedetto studied violin lutherie. It is said he was the only archtop guitar maker ever to do so.  This would greatly influence the guitars he made. Today, he has personally handcrafted nearly 1,000 instruments, including 500 archtops.

From 1999-2006, Benedetto had a licensing agreement with Fender Musical Instruments to produce his models in a small, controlled manufacturing environment. After this stint he was ready to work for himself. So in 2006, Benedetto joined forces with Howard Paul to create Benedetto Guitars, Inc, in Savannah, Georgia. In 2015 he went into semi-retirement. The job of making the guitars has fallen to Benedetto’s longtime apprentice, Master Luthier Damon Mailand as Production Manager. The same workbench that Benedetto used is used today by the luthiers of Benedetto Guitars.

It was said of Benedetto: ‘Bob Benedetto is the foremost builder of archtop guitars in the world. With tools that had belonged to his grandfather and tools that he made himself, he started making guitars entirely by hand (in 1968). He rose to become the standard bearer of a tradition of hand craftsmanship that threads its way back through the work of John D’Angelico, Orville Gibson, Lloyd Loar and even further to the centuries-old reverence for artistry and craft that is so much a part of the Italian and Italian-American heritage.”   Tom Wheeler, Renowned Guitar Historian, Author of The Guitar Book; American Guitars; The Stratocaster Chronicles; and a former Editor in Chief, Guitar Player Magazine. It has also been said ‘I can think of no two people in the history of lutherie who have done more to increase appreciation for the archtop guitar than Bob and Cindy Benedetto.” Randall Kremer, Smithsonian Institution.

What was once a rambunctious young guitar maker has created a long tradition of guitar making that continues here in Savannah.
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Robert Benedetto in 1960's playing his musci