”We continue our journey through vintage instruments with another very rare example, probably one of the rarest in the world, with a good chance that it may even be a prototype that never went into production.
Lorenzo
It happens, all too often, that in the endless production of Italian instruments in the Marche region, prototypes or specimens left behind in a small artisan production for demonstration purposes and never entered production, it was common in that crazy cauldron of ideas that were the Italian 60s and 70s, where examples of excellent design were “wasted”, often literally (later others looking for ideas would have taken advantage of them and we can see very recent examples also in the furniture and lighting production of well-known multinationals in the sector).
It seems that this Serrini Bros was produced by a company that dealt, as was typical in the Marche area, with accordions. The scarce news found on the web indicates the probable belonging of the brand to Randolfo Serrini who, on his return from the USA, founded the Lira company in Castelfidardo, maintaining commercial ties with his former partner Zoppi in Chicago.
The instrument has an irregular and slender design, quite atypical for the Italian production of the time, reminiscent of the works of Jim Burns and Neal Moser and, in some details, also Wandrè and Dean Zelinsky. Also present here is the typical keyboard for the selection of the combination of pickups that we find in most of the instruments of Marche production of the time, very similar to those that were also installed on some Japanese instruments of Italic inspiration. Also typical are the four single-coil pickups installed in pairs.
What particularly draws attention are the headstock, which becomes forked at the top, the beautiful irregular shape of the body with the two boldly thin and slender horns and the particular sunburst of the finish. There is also a tremolo with an unusual shape. Overall, an instrument with a pleasant aesthetic and a strong personality.
The owner of the guitar, the collector Gordy Ramz, bought the Serrini Bros directly from Australia in 2011 and very kindly sent us images, videos and the documentation in his possession, a post from 2008 found on a forum and from which it appears that the instrument was found in 2007 in a dump.
The instrument has been subjected to a thorough maintenance and is currently in perfect working order.
That’s all for now, we hope to be able to update the article as soon as possible with new and interesting information and perhaps even with the discovery of other instruments from the Lira / Serrini.
Some Serrini Bros. videos
