In the 1950’s Italian manufacturers were cranking out accordions by the thousands. When Rock ‘n Roll came on the scene, many of these builders switched from accordions to electric guitars. Bartolini was one of them. When the electric guitar boom took off in USA in the early 60’s, Italy became a source to fill the appetite. Accordions were plastic covered, so many of these early Italian guitar were too, some with plastic bodies like this Avanti model.
Vintage 1960’s Bartolini Avanti Electric Guitar – white
Not much is known about them, but here is an excerpt from a Michael Wright article:
Avanti guitars were probably made by the Polverini Brothers of Castelfidardo for European Crafts of Los Angeles beginning in late 1964. Most early Italian guitars had either push-button or rocker controls adapted from accordions, but this is unusual with a fourway rotary select that let you choose each pickup individually or all at once. All in all a sensible arrangement. Whether the pickups are really humbuckers or single-coil is unknown, but they have that bright ’60s sound.
The Italian guitar boom did not last too long, as Japanese manufacturing took over the low end guitar boom in the late 1960’s and soon all the cool European guitars disappeared from North America.
Really amazing!
Quite the same with German Fasan guitars! I’m the happy owner of one of the first models, still working more than 50 years later! I just had to correct the neck, that had got a little curve (it has no truss-rod…). The pickups are still OK.
http://toscanoreinat.chez-alice.fr/fasan_rt.jpg
La chitarra in oggetto, marcata Avanti, è stata prodotta dalla Ditta Bartolini Alvaro di Recanati e non come scrive il Sig. Micheal Wright, dalla Ditta Polverini Bros di Castelfidardo. Se volete essere informati sulla produzione di chitarre della zona Recanati – Castelfidardo e sulle varie Ditte, collegatevi con il sito fetish guitars dove troverete risposte esaustive a tante domande. Saluti. Bartolini Alfredo
Our T3-Switch, one of several dozen upgrade products, would give this guitar an incredible palette of 35 unique pickup tones.
Comment peut valoir ma guitare baronet Bartolini alvaro
This was my first electric I ever owned.
To Alan Mackillop or anyone else who knows what about the master control switch and pots\ dials are used for on this guitar. The two control pots\dials are they volume and tone and do they work with any switch position on the multi rotary switch? Please email me at ecgitar@comcast.net. Regards, Frank Prato and add a comment on this page with your reply to the above questions. Thanks, Frank