Workshop: M's Gretsch

So, this Gretsch is actually this Gretsch (click here).

I'd sold this for a consignor but when it arrived at its destination both top braces had become unglued. It's very rare for me to have any sort of shipping trouble, so I was a bit shocked when I received the news.

Anyhow, I got those braces fixed up after the customer shipped it back, but she also wanted a combination pickup system installed, so I did that as well. I used a super-cool 60s Japanese-made DeArmond-style pickup (4k output) combined with a K&K Twin Spot transducer. The controls are tone/vol for the magnetic pickup and volume for the acoustic pickup.

I'd wanted to use some 50s knobs I had around but couldn't get them to fit right, so I used some StewMac ivoroid barrel knobs instead, which look very cool with the rest of the trim.

Due to string height over the body, the magnetic pickup had to be installed directly to the top. This also gives the pickup a richer sound since it's grabbing some body movement, too. The pickguard is now also mated to the pickup wing and top and so it won't wobble around or vibrate while playing (and thus interfere with the acoustic pickup, which is really body sensitive and will hate that kind of stuff.

These old thin Japanese DeArmond style pickups have a really nice clear, crisp tone. They're very similar to those oft-lauded "Gold Foil" Teisco pups that so many (including myself) love to death. They were used in all sorts of applications from electric archtop guitars to acoustic soundhole pickups to straight-up solid-body guitars. I've seen them used all over the place!

It was lucky that the customer asked for a pickup when she did as I'd just sold the 2nd of this pair that I'd gotten in a month or so ago. It also has the cute "Tempo" brand engraved in the top.

Ephemera: Welcome to Lap Radio (c.1935)

Part of me got a deja vu on this picture, so hopefully I haven't posted it before!

Aside from the nice guitars and the big grins, check this out: he's playing that lap steel through a tiny tube radio! There's a way so save a few bucks... and also only sound like a few bucks, too!

Still, I love it.

Ephemera: Young Dandy & His Tiple (c.1932)

So that's the sort that plays an all-birch Regal tiple! This photo is dated July 16th, 1932 on the rear.

And, ahem, I've love what you've done with those shower curtains!

Clippings: Painted Gretsch Uke (c.1926)

Curious -- anyone seen one of these? I'm overly familiar with that typical Gretsch uke design from the 20s (before the pseudo-Martin-y knock-off ones of the 30s through 50s) but I haven't seen one with a paint job that cool!

c.1910 B&J "University" Concert Parlor Guitar

This handsome guitar is slightly smaller than a Martin 0 with 13 1/4" lower bout and a more squashed body. It's branded "Univeristy" and sold through B&J (Buegeleisen & Jacobsen, a big instrument sales outfit), but my guess is that this is Chicago-made and Lyon & Healy in origin (whether that be made by Regal for Lyon & Healy... not sure?).

Update: On second thought, the body shape is pretty reminiscent of Oscar Schmidt designs, too.

The bracing, body shape, neck shape, headstock shape, and overall build remind me most of nicer Lakeside and plainer Washburn instruments which were both concurrent Lyon & Healy brand lines at the time. No matter the origin, though, this was probably a relatively pricey guitar for something "off brand" compared to Martin, Washburn, Gibson, or other more famous makers.

It has rather fancy detailing -- lots of purfling and inlaid stripes and lots of celluloid, which at the time was a novelty and seen as fancy -- and nicer-than-usual materials. The neck is Spanish cedar (as opposed to poplar or birch which most Chicago makes used), the top is solid spruce, the headstock has a rosewood veneer and the fretboard (under all that celluloid) is actually rosewood, too. The original bridge was rosewood as well but was cracked up. The back and sides on this appear to be stained birch as opposed to a fancier wood, though.

I'm glad I caught the last bit of sun for these front shots. It pulls out some of the nice well-aged-in looks of this instrument.

I'd purchased this guitar almost a year ago but let it sit for a long time because I was reluctant to start in on it. Some silly fool had poorly reglued (if you can call it that) the endblock so there was a lot of undoing to get started on repairing that and while it's structurally secure, it's not perfectly pretty down there. Other work included a new rosewood bridge and ebony pins, neck reset, seam repairs, center seam top cleats, fret level/dress and related fret work, general cleaning, and setup. I also drop-filled a number of pretty stable back hairline cracks.

Original bone nut and rosewood headstock veneer. This is your typical 1 3/4" nut.

While this was probably strung with gut or nylon to begin with it seems to have been used with steel most of its life without adverse neck effects. The belly-style bridge I installed lets this get strung up with extra-light (46w-10) steel strings which sound warm, sweet, and mellow on this box. It has a great tone for folky fingerpicking or blues and nails that sort of punchy but warm ragtime tone as well. It plays with spot-on 3/32" bass, 1/16" treble at the 12th fret action and the 24 1/4" scale makes it a quick reach.

The third dot is a replacement. Check out that cool yellowy-orangey pearloid -- really fun stuff. The frets are typical for the time -- lower than modern frets but still with a good amount of life left. Also note how this board is actually bound with additional celluloid. Pretty slick!

The three-ring rosette is really sweet! I love how this guitar is edged and bound everywhere with that faux-tortoise celluloid. It really grabs the sun nicely when this is out in it. Don't you love all that half-herringone all over the place?

The new rosewood bridge is compensated for good intonation. I used some nice ebony pins on this guy, too.

The sides have tons of scuffs and scratches and scrapes and finish wear but don't have any cracks.

The tuners are all-original except for two gears and machine screws which I had to replace as they were missing. They're lubed and work just fine.

The dark, almost black, finish of the back and sides gives nice contrast to the warmed in buttery-orange color of the top. See all those filled-in hairlines on the bass-side back? They're stable (there's 4 back braces holding them from getting worse) but that's typical dryness-over-time cracking.

The neck reset gave this back its proper angle and it's all good to go.

Pearl-dot original endpin. Here you can see some of the leavings of shoddy earlier work -- a tiny bit of lost binding, a tiny splintered-out bit of the side near the endstrip top, and slightly mismatched seams. Everything went back together nice and tight, though, so it'll be good to go for the future.

I wish I'd taken a "before" picture -- it was pretty funny -- someone must have attempted a "repair" minus any sort of clamps!

Here's the label in the soundhole.

c.1930 Regal "Custom Shop" Rosewood Tenor Guitar

Talk about your hard-luck cases! This tenor guitar would have originally been a model fancier than the usual "top of the line" Regal tenor guitar since it sports Brazilian rosewood back and sides and a mahogany (rather than poplar) neck. Most instruments in this grade this would bear the Regal "custom shop" or "custom made" label in the soundhole, since they were more than likely factory one-offs. Still, this fella fell on hard times and was most definitely abused over its life.

I decided to "go with the funkiness" while repairing it and despite its visual distractions, this is a serious instrument. I've had so much interest in this simply from my "coming soon" note that it was in the works that I've been a bit crazed in responding to everyone asking on it. The bottom line: if you're into playability and tone, this is a super instrument. If you want pretty? Well... this has it, but it's underneath the destruction!

Compared to the many other variants of Regal tenors I've worked on -- all birch, spruce over birch, and spruce over mahogany -- this has a lot more lush warmth on the low end but also the good focus and sweetness on the high end chime that I've gotten used to with these guys. It's pretty hard to knock Brazilian rosewood as a tonewood -- go figure!

The top has (amazingly) no cracks, though the washboard and dirt effect of many, many years of pickwear and poor storage definitely show. It also shows how well-loved this instrument was. I'm a huge advocate of these Regal tenors: the tailpiece design gives them excellent projection (this has gobs of volume and oomph), the build on all of them is lightweight, and the 12-fret neck places the bridge in the ideal spot for tone despite the small, slightly-larger-than a baritone ukulele body.

As far as work goes? Seam repairs, brace repairs to the top, hilariously replacement off-color binding on the bass side of the top (it's actually white binding from a totaled all-birch Regal tenor guitar that's been hanging out in my parts stash), a new tailpiece, bridge, and tuners (all older parts-bin stuff), some hairline crack drop-filling on the back, neck reset, fret level/dress, new bone nut, and setup.

Note here that some goblin cut the headstock veneer above the nut. Why, oh why? New bone nut.

The bound headstock veneer and pearl-inlaid Regal logo must have looked pretty spiffy when new.

Dyed-maple fretboard with nice pearl inlay. Note that the board is actually bound with rosewood and has a stripe inlaid down either side of the neck (fancy!). I should note that the fretboard extension glued-up just a tiny hair angled, but intonation is still good and it's still on-center enough one doesn't notice it.

Originally the zipper purfling would have been brightly colored in red, green, yellow, and black. See the funny contrast of the borrowed white binding and the original black? It was too tempting to use it on this guy since I had the tenor corpse laying about -- like a family member loaning an organ.

The bridge is bone on rosewood from my parts bin and sounds/looks great. The tailpiece is some sort of 60s electric guitar tailpiece that I had stashed in my bin. It was short enough to work and makes it easy to string this tenor, since it accepts ball (rather than loop) end strings so any guitar strings will work.

Note the edging on the bass side of the tailpiece: the purfling was missing so I backfilled it with some glue and sanding-dust to fill out the edge. It's "good enough for government work..." as it stabilizes the binding to the side, but not much better.

Here you can see that rosewood with the same sort of zipper inlaid backstrip. There are a number of hairline cracks on the back but they're all stable and good to go.

This originally would have had 2:1 or 4:1 geared banjo pegs but they were long-ago removed. I had these old ivoroid-buttoned friction pegs in my parts bin and they installed just fine. Guitar-style (right angle) tuners can be installed easily and will allow easier tuning, but don't look as right as banjo-style pegs on this instrument.

Heel cap, multi-ply binding on the back.

This little panel was replaced on the back at some point.

Plenty of scuffs, knicks, and scratches!

There's binding loss on the back around that replaced bit... and black was painted on to substitute.

I added a strap button along with the tailpiece to make this a bit more useful for gigging.

Currently this fella is tuned DGBE (baritone uke style) and sounds really good with that. I expect it'd also sound awesome in standard CGDA but would guess that the bass G in octave mandolin (GDAE) tuning might be slightly choked on this instrument -- good enough for recording and duo/trio use but not for jams.

c.1915 Supertone-style Fancy Flushfret 5-String Banjo

This is a spunover-rim, full-size (26 1/4" scale) 5-string openback banjo with a 10 1/2" rim. Originally this would have had regular frets, but since this instrument came to me with very low frets, I decided to grind them all down level with the fingerboard and convert this to a fretless/flushfret banjo (ie, where the frets are just intonation markers). Other work included new neck brace shims, a general setup, new bridge, new tailpiece and new buttons for the tuners (the original buttons were cracked).

For a long time I thought this type of banjo (similar, less-fancy models are often tagged with the Sears "Supertone" brand name and also the Bruno brand name) was made by Lange in New York, but now I can't say for certain that they were. I still think they are, but verification is made difficult by scant records.

Anyhow, this is one of the fanciest models I've seen, with inlaid celluloid up the wazoo on the fingerboard and pearl stars and a floral motif inlaid at the headstock. Overall the look is more 1890s in style as opposed to when it was more than likely made (c.1910-1920).

The plastic nut is unoriginal and the 5 friction pegs are actually 1960s/70s vintage. Doesn't that pearl in the headstock look nice? The fella I bought this from thought it was unoriginal, but I doubt that. I've seen similar on other openbacks of this same general make.

The inlaid "tree of life" with flowerpot motif on the board is lovely. It uses a grey celluloid for the stems and a white/creamy celluloid for the flowers. It really popped out after leveling those frets down flush and sanding, polishing, and conditioning the board.

The board itself looks like dyed pearwood (typical for the time).

The upper part of the flowerpot was added later by someone filling in some missing inlay and is of an incorrect plastic. Still, it's easy not to notice that.

The skin head is still in good shape. I'm inclined to think it's original but it may not be.

The rim hardware is about 1/2 original, 1/4 slightly older (1950s?), and 1/4 new from my parts bin.

These 1960s/70s friction pegs actually look the part of 1920s pegs, so fair enough! I added the black buttons to replace some cracked originals.

I'm pretty sure this is a maple neck under that finish.

Inelegant rosewood shims, but they work just fine and fit snug! I'm fairly lazy about making my new neck brace shims beautiful, since they're bound to get hammered up, anyhow. "As long as the shoe fits," ya know.

New No-Knot tailpiece and Grover bridge. The No-Knot will allow for gut/nylon strings, too, which would sound great on this as well -- but I like the interesting tone of the steel and fretless board on this guy.