A beautiful 1921 A.Stathopoulos bouzouki

And its unique "cedar" soundboard?

Last  year,  I had the privilege to secretly follow the journey of a beautiful A.Stathopoulos bouzouki and its restoration by the hands of the master luthier Tasos Katsifis

Its owner, a good cyber friend of mine, and  classical orchestral player by trade, gave me information regarding his Stahopoulos bouzouki journey and its astonishing revival by the luthier.

He found and purchased it from EBay, more than two years ago , in a very bad condition.
For more than a year the bouzouki was "sitting " unloved at his house in Athens, and approx. few more decades by its previous owner, as he had mentioned to me.






Adorer of the old Rebetiko era,  and after an intense research he decided to restore this historical instrument in an attempt to keep all the original parts and save "by miracle" its cracked, with missing part, but very unique soundboard.




Examining closer this A.Stathopoulos  soundboard, someone can easily notice the unique look in the grain of the wood. It is very hard to determine exactly what type of wood is being used,  but it's not the usual spruce.
Someone would say that it's closer to cedar and contains much more rosin than spruce.

Accordingly to its owner,  it probably comes from a piano harmonic soundboard. After a research he contacted, regarding early pianos, he found only one French maker that used cedar on their  sound boards in the mid-late 1800s.

The final result  to revive such a beautiful bouzouki by saving its unique soundboard, awarded  his attempt

You can enjoy its sweet, nostalgic, and unique crisp sound  played by the talented hands of Eugenios Boulgaris 

Comments

  1. Thank you! That certainly was worth the restoration job.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Chris
    Soon I will update this post with the visual results of the restoration by the luthier
    Frankly the work he did saving the original soundboard is exceptional

    ReplyDelete

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