JOE YANUZIELLO GUITAR MAKER
The first-glance response to Joe Yanuziello’s flagship electric guitars tends to be, “Aw, now isn’t that cute”. His hand-made archtops, flattops, mandolins, resos, and acoustic Hawaiian lap steel guitars have long drawn gasps of awe and wonder but, these days, it’s his electrics that are commanding the most attention.
Look closely and you’ll uncover much more about these guitars than their 1950s catalogue-inspired lines and pickups might imply. The $6,000-plus price tags are the clearest-cut clue that there’s more than meets the eye here, and the outright quality of the workmanship should reinforce this inkling. The made-in-house hardware and plastics, the bespoke pickups, and the chequerboard or tortoiseshell binding, it all combines to declare these guitars something different, something special. Yet for Yanuziello himself, it’s always been, first and foremost, about the music that will be made with them.
“Once I’ve turned the idea in my head into a three-dimensional object with a life of its own,” he says, “the big reward is having a musician use that instrument express themselves. Playing a part in another artist’s expression is fulfilling and personal, and hopefully the instrument is inspiring for them as well.”
BOY IN THE ’HOOD
Joe Yanuziello was born in Toronto in 1952, and experienced the kind of optimistic post-war urban North American upbringing of the 1950s and 1960s that seemed so richly able to prime young craftsmen for eclectic careers. It was Yanuziello’s family
