Zemaitis

Tony Zemaitis (1935–2002) was born Antanus Casimere Zemaitis in London to Lithuanian parents. He left school at 16 for a five-year cabinetmaking apprenticeship, found a damaged guitar in his family's attic, and was changed. By 1965 he had become a full-time self-employed luthier, working alone from his home in Balham — no factory, no production line, 8–10 instruments a year at peak.

The metal-front guitars emerged from a practical problem. Zemaitis was frustrated by electromagnetic interference and, while reading an amateur radio magazine, noticed that every unit had a metal chassis with its components mounted on it. He applied the same principle to a guitar body. The first metal-front went to Tony McPhee of The Groundhogs. The engraved version came about through Danny O'Brien — a shotgun engraver who was also a Zemaitis customer — who had been engraving headstock plates and suggested engraving the fronts too. When Ronnie Wood appeared on Top of the Pops in 1971 playing his metal-front Zemaitis, demand arrived. Keith Richards had his "Skull & Bones" five-string metal-front built for open-G rhythm work; Marc Bolan used one extensively. George Harrison was a customer primarily for acoustics, including guitars with heart-, star-, and moon-shaped soundholes. The pearl-front mosaic models arrived in the mid-1970s, using abalone tiling rather than metal as a top surface.

Zemaitis retired in 2000 and died in 2002. With his family's blessing, Kanda Shokai Corporation — which also owns Greco — continued the brand in Tokyo under the name Zemaitis International, with Tony Zemaitis Jr. involved and Danny O'Brien still engraving. Original Tony Zemaitis-built guitars are now firmly in collector territory. The Tokyo-made instruments are a separate proposition — well-made, but the context is different.