August 11, 2025

Good morning folks,

    Sometime around 1975, yes, fifty years ago, I happened upon a bar near Charlotte beach on Lake Ontario. The sound of traditional Irish music was spilling out onto the street. I entered the bar to see a lad from Ireland on stage singing, playing guitar and also playing a large mandolin type instrument that I had never seen. I was so taken with the sound of it, that afterwards, I went up to the player and asked, "what is that instrument you have been playing?" He told me it was a Gibson mandocello…. the sound echoed in my brain. I became obsessed…I had the find a mandocello.

    At the time the most venerable musical instrument shop in the Rochester area was the Stutzman’s Guitar Center. It was only open on Saturday and the small shop was on Jay St. It was the folk boom and there were often lines of people waiting to get in the small showroom. The family had a home in Spencerport, NY where they did all of the work on their instruments and then brought them to Jay St. for the Saturday sale. After Eldon Stutzman passed, his son David opened a beautiful showroom on West Ridge Rd. where they sold, repaired and displayed some of the finest vintage instruments that one would ever imagine. When I walked into the showroom, I saw the most beautiful Gibson mandocello, not the teardrop shape one like the Irish guy was playing in the bar, this was an artist style with the scroll and the cut away! It was a Gibson K-4….the top of the line. I asked him if he would sell it, but he said it was part of the collection and he would only part with it, if I had something to trade that he wanted. Now this completely mystified me. I had no idea what a "trade" entailed, but he said it was the way he kept up his vintage stock. He told me if I found a pearl trimmed Martin guitar or a very fancy old Fairbanks banjo perhaps he would consider trading the mandocello. 

   And so it was that I went to work taking the names out of every magazine I could find such as Guitar Player, Frets, Banjo Newsletter, Music Instrument Classified and any other trade magazines that I could find. I copied the names of people listed in the classified section and sent a letter out to everyone explaining that I was looking for something interesting to trade because I wanted to obtain a Gibson mandocello. As circumstances would have it the Mandolin Bros. on Staten Island had a lower model Gibson mandocello and it was about all I could afford. I drove there and purchased it, but the whole world of vintage instruments had opened my mind. Over the course of time I started accumulate a great number of old instruments. Alas, I had bought an old house that needed more work than I anticipated and I had to sell my collection of instruments. I turned to that same list of people that I had created from the magazines and sent out my very first list of instruments for sale. The sale garnered me enough money to fix the roof on my house and I had a bit left over…. so of course I immediately bought more interesting instruments. Looking back on things I have to publicly thank Dave Stutzman for giving me the idea of trading in instruments and finding old vintage things and starting my career!

   Fast-forward to today, and I am one of the major vintage dealers in the country with an international reputation for high quality American fretted instruments. And I still have a love for old instruments. Last Monday I sent Ryan Yarmel to Portland, Oregon to buy a collection of mandolins. There were several F style mandolins, some A- styles and this beautiful K-4 mandocello in the pictures. Now, in the course of conversation, Ryan asked the fellow, who was selling the collection, because he was no longer able to play, where he obtained most of his instruments. He said he kept good records, and he bought the mandocello from Stutzman's Guitars when he lived in Rochester, New York! The exact instrument that inspired Bernunzio Uptown Music has now come home. 

With peace,

John Bernunzio 

This instrument was made in 1924 but not shipped until the early early 1930s according to the Gibson records. It is a really rare K-4 mandocello with adjustable bridge and truss rod from the time when Lloyd Loar was directing production. We are so proud to have it in our store.

In addition to the mandolins and banjos, this beautiful Gibson L-7 arrived at the doorstep. It’s a bear!