Reconsidering the Benedetto Americana | An Inquiry That Began with a Pencil Note

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Re-reading the words “Americana Prototype” in the record of Manhattan Custom #30393.

There is an intriguing pencil notation in Robert Benedetto’s handwritten production log.

The serial number is #30393, an 18-inch Manhattan Custom built for Tom Van Hoose in 1993. It is recorded as a non-cutaway instrument with X-bracing and no pickup, a three-inch body depth, and a 1 11/16-inch nut width.

Those two words were penciled beside the specification entry.

On the color pages of Making an Archtop Guitar, the guitar is presented as the AMERICANA. The typeset production log in the same book also calls it an “Americana model prototype.” Yet when the instrument itself appeared on the market years later, its label read Manhattan.

One guitar thus preserves two names: Manhattan and Americana. When I first wrote about it, I concentrated on how this 1993 prototype might connect to the visually different Americana of the Savannah period.

Perhaps that reversed the proper order of inquiry. The first question should be why #30393, built as a Manhattan Custom, was described as an Americana prototype.

Three Descriptions of #30393

It is useful to separate the three surviving descriptions. There is no basis for dismissing any one of them as an error; each may describe a different aspect of the same guitar.

Handwritten production log

The primary entry reads “Manhattan Custom.” Beside it, in pencil, is “Americana Prototype.”

Typeset production log

Along with the Manhattan Custom specifications, it explicitly states “Americana model prototype.”

Label inside the instrument

“Model: Manhattan,” “No.30393,” and “For my friend Tom Van Hoose.” Americana is not mentioned.

“Manhattan” on the label may identify the model on which the guitar was based when it was built, while “Americana Prototype” may be a later designation assigning a different meaning to the completed instrument. Read this way, the two descriptions do not necessarily conflict.

It is not known whether the pencil note was present before construction or added after completion. We cannot conclude that the guitar was planned from the outset as an Americana experiment. A special Manhattan made for Tom Van Hoose may instead have been classified afterward as the starting point for an Americana concept.

At First, I Thought of the Super 400

The specifications of #30393 first brought the Gibson Super 400 to mind.

It is an 18-inch, non-cutaway acoustic instrument, and it was ordered by Tom Van Hoose, author of The Gibson Super 400: Art of the Fine Guitar. It was natural to assume that the order referred to the Super 400.

The detail that gave me pause was “X brace.” The Super 400 I had in mind was the later, parallel-braced form. An 18-inch non-cutaway with X-bracing seemed closer to a D’Angelico New Yorker.

Re-reading Ken Parker’s essay on bracing corrected this picture. The original Super 400 introduced in 1934 was X-braced; around 1940 Gibson returned to rail braces, commonly called parallel braces. The X-bracing of #30393 was therefore a point of contact with the early Super 400.

I had overlooked the obvious fact that the Super 400 changed over time. My mental image was the familiar later version. Van Hoose, by contrast, traced the model from its birth and studied its internal construction.

I own five copies of The Gibson Super 400: Art of the Fine Guitar: the hardcover, one paperback, and three signed by Van Hoose. (Madness.)

I thought I had once read the book nearly to pieces, yet I had never properly absorbed the X-bracing of the earliest Super 400s. The number of books one owns does not necessarily correspond to the depth of one’s understanding.

Parker’s article also includes an interior photograph of a 1939 Super 400N and credits Tom Van Hoose as the source. The guitar had been restored by Marty Lanham after being disassembled because of flood damage.

Van Hoose did not study the Super 400 only through outward appearance and published specifications. He examined the internal construction of actual instruments and preserved that evidence.

The Benedetto Seen by Tom Van Hoose

Van Hoose’s book contains a chapter titled “Competitors of the Super 400.” Alongside Epiphone, D’Angelico, Stromberg, and Gretsch, it discusses Robert Benedetto’s 18-inch Supreme.

He regarded it as a genuine competitor to the Super 400. Benedetto was not presented merely as a builder borrowing Super 400 design cues, but as a maker working at a comparable level in the field of large archtops. Van Hoose also noted Benedetto’s use of both X and parallel top bracing.

The book compares a 1941 Super 400N with a 1947 D’Angelico New Yorker: the former parallel-braced, the latter X-braced. Van Hoose understood the two 18-inch guitars from the inside as well as the outside.

There is therefore little reason to force #30393 toward either the Super 400 or the New Yorker alone. It is better understood first as an 18-inch acoustic archtop that Benedetto composed on a Manhattan foundation for a client deeply familiar with both traditions.

The completed guitar retains the visual economy of the Manhattan. A large non-cutaway can leave the area around the pickguard looking empty, but #30393 is naturally balanced. It borrows the dimensions of an older large archtop while remaining visually Benedetto’s own work.

Not Simply a Copy of D’Angelico

In Making an Archtop Guitar, Benedetto recalls noticing a narrow reinforcement strip along the center joint of the top and back while repairing a D’Angelico. He tried the same method early in his career, but abandoned it once greater jointing accuracy made it unnecessary.

He did not merely copy a form. He tested an idea, determined its function, and then decided whether it deserved to remain. The same approach suggests that #30393 was not a reproduction of an earlier guitar, but Benedetto’s integration of classic 18-inch elements into his own design.

From Manhattan Custom to Americana

Paul William Schmidt wrote that D’Angelico model names functioned more as guidelines than strict specification categories. Instruments carrying the same model name could differ in body dimensions, depth, bracing, neck, and plate graduation according to their purpose and customer.

That description cannot simply be transferred to Benedetto. Still, in custom building, a model name and the specifications of one instrument do not always overlap perfectly. There is nothing inherently strange about an instrument based on the Manhattan Custom but exploring another idea being called an Americana Prototype.

The fact that #30393 was made for Tom Van Hoose remains significant. He was a scholar of large American archtops who knew both the Super 400 and New Yorker. It is difficult to regard the combination of an 18-inch body, non-cutaway form, X-bracing, and no pickup as unrelated to the identity of the customer.

When I ordered a Buscarino Virtuoso, I expected the flagship model to allow wide freedom, but its specifications proved relatively fixed. Later, when I commissioned a 16-inch custom from Benedetto, I was impressed by how he considered each request. The distance between model definition and custom specification varies considerably from builder to builder.

My own experience cannot explain an exchange that took place in 1993. Even so, the surviving record fits better with a Manhattan Custom born from Van Hoose’s commission and subsequently regarded as an Americana prototype than with a finished production model planned from the beginning.

Different Americanas Sharing One Name

The Americana name returned during the Savannah period. This later model had a 17-inch body, Venetian cutaway, parallel bracing, and a pickup. Almost none of its principal specifications match #30393.

I once found this difference deeply puzzling. As someone particularly fond of non-cutaway archtops, I wondered why the same name was given to a guitar that inherited none of the prototype’s concrete specifications.

But if #30393 is assumed to have been a direct proposal for production, the later guitar is bound to look inconsistent. Perhaps what survived was not its 18-inch body or X-bracing, but only the Americana name. Or perhaps an older name was simply reused for a new model. The surviving sources do not decide the matter.

In 2023, three Centennial Americanas were built as tributes to the centenary of the modern archtop guitar. They were 17-inch, three-inch-deep non-cutaways, with features such as violin-style tailpieces and slender fingerrests that referred to 1923 design.

These guitars were not recreations of #30393 either, and Benedetto Guitars did not describe them as reproductions of the Americana Prototype. The 1993 guitar was a prototype emerging from a Manhattan Custom; the Savannah Americana was a practical electric model; the 2023 instruments were commemorative works looking back at history. The role of the same name changed three times.

“Americana” may not have been a design name fixing dimensions and construction. It may instead have been a name applied, at different moments, to Benedetto’s changing interpretation of the American archtop.

It Really Existed

After years of seeing #30393 only in a book, I suddenly encountered it on the market—the guitar I knew from the frontal photograph in Making an Archtop Guitar.

The listing showed its sides, back, headstock, body depth, and even the label through the f-hole. A guitar remembered as a single photograph seemed to become three-dimensional for the first time.

Of course, its publication in the book had always proved its existence. Yet seeing its present form on the market produced a different sense of reality. Its price also seemed close to the market level of a Manhattan, rather than treating it as an exceptional Americana prototype.

A floating pickup and output jack, absent when the guitar was built, had been added. The production log states “No pickup,” so it was presumably electrified at some later point.

The label read:

Americana does not appear. AMERICANA in the book; Manhattan in the instrument. Its appearance on the market confirmed once more that #30393 was a guitar with two names.

What the Pencil Note Left Behind

No decisive testimony survives to explain why #30393 was called Americana.

What can be established is that an 18-inch, non-cutaway, X-braced Manhattan Custom was built for Tom Van Hoose; that “Americana Prototype” was added to its record; and that the book presented it as the AMERICANA.

It is not enough to call the guitar a recreation of the Super 400, or simply a Benedetto close to the New Yorker. It is better understood as Benedetto’s own 18-inch archtop, created between a client who knew both great traditions intimately and a builder who had learned from the structures of actual instruments.

The later Americana inherited none of its concrete specifications. The name nevertheless survived and received a different role in each period. Its beginning was not a formal catalog model, but two words penciled beside the record of a Manhattan Custom.

Those two words should still remain in Robert Benedetto’s log, in the form of a small pencil notation.

Sources and References

1. Robert Benedetto, Making an Archtop Guitar
   Limelite Press edition, 1994; Hal Leonard edition, 2018. Consulted for the color-page feature on #30393, the typeset production log, and the discussion of D’Angelico repair work and center-joint reinforcement.
2. Thomas A. Van Hoose, The Gibson Super 400: Art of the Fine Guitar
   GPI Books, First Paperback Edition, 1995. Consulted for the development of the Super 400, comparison with the New Yorker, and “Competitors of the Super 400.”
3. Paul William Schmidt, Acquired of the Angels
   Second Edition, 1998. Consulted for D’Angelico model names, variation among individual instruments, and changes made for customers.
4. Frank W. M. Green, John D’Angelico: Master Guitar Builder: What’s in a Name?
   Centerstream Publishing, 2008. Consulted for Benedetto’s foreword (p. 5) and the account of D’Angelico repair work (pp. 52–54).
5. Robert Benedetto original production log, Serial #30393
   Confirms “Manhattan Custom” and the penciled notation “Americana Prototype.”
6. Author’s saved documentation from the Reverb listing of #30393
   Used to confirm its later appearance, added pickup and output jack, and label. Listing images are not reproduced here.
7. Ken Parker, Etude: Arched Plates: Bracing the Top
   Consulted for the X-bracing of early Super 400s, the transition to rail braces around 1940, and interior photographs of an instrument owned by Tom Van Hoose.
8. Benedetto Guitars
   Centennial Americana 1 of 3 and TWINS!. Consulted for the purpose and specifications of the 2023 instruments.

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About the Images

Images of the book page and original production log were photographed from materials in the author’s collection. Images referenced from the official Benedetto Guitars website include a source link or credit. Reverb listing images were consulted to identify the instrument but are not reproduced here. Copyright in the images and text remains with the respective rights holders.

This article is based on public sources and materials in the author’s collection. Robert Benedetto was not interviewed for it; statements about design intent are interpretations limited to what can be supported by the available evidence.