Mauro Liberatore was born in 1958, near Pescara, Italy. Mauro Liberatore's family immigrated to Canada, when he was 2 years of age. Influenced by his older brother who played the electric guitar and living face to a music store in Montreal's Little Italy district, Mauro developed an interest in music early on in his adolescence. Like a lot of urban schoolboys his age, Mauro was fascinated by the music Beatles and Led Zeppelin and would listen to their LPs for hours on end on the old living room phonograph. Like his brother, he was also musically talented and played drums in his brother's band.
With his innate talents for music, fine arts, woodworking and "fixing things", the teenage Liberatore used to make guitars out of pots and pans and other objects he would find on his walk's to school and the music store's garbage bin. He constructed his first functional electric guitar, the "psychedelic union jack", at the age of 15.
Following 3 years of formal studies of fine arts and graphic design in local Montreal college, Mauro decided to embark on a career as a luthier in 1977. He did his apprenticeship at a then locally renowned guitars shop called Harmonilab (then owned by Robert Godin, of Godin guitars fame). There he learned the tricks of the trade, met some big names of the local music and music business scene. Also, in this period, Mauro expanded his repertoire of instrument-crafting to include the electric bass, violin and cello.
After a brief venture in owning a music store with his brother, Mauro decided to "go solo" and opened his own luthier shop in the downtown Montreal's artsy district, the Plateau in 1985. There he made repairs and took orders for his handcrafted instruments. Mauro developed a strong reputation for making very-high quality instruments. His electric guitars were particularly celebrated as being sturdy, stylish and having the very solid necks. Most owners of a Liberatore instrument will agree that after having played one his guitars or basses, it is very difficult to go back to playing assembled shelf instruments...the difference is that starkly noticeable.