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Post by Noah Miller on Aug 29, 2019 10:00:57 GMT
Huh - I certainly didn't notice that! The serial is S5558.
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Post by Noah Miller on Aug 28, 2019 16:15:29 GMT
Yes - a Tele would be the guitar I'd compare it to. I'm just surprised because I've played a number of the cast Electric Hawaiians and they're all pretty warm and mellow.
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Post by Noah Miller on Aug 28, 2019 16:04:31 GMT
Yeah, someone put a lot of effort into this. I've seen a number of National-Dobro electric one-offs or prototypes from this era, and it's impressive how many have cast aluminum parts. This plate was used in at least one other guitar but never made it into mass-production. I saw an electric Style 1 square neck recently with a specially-cast bridge/brace/pickup-holder that was probably a one-off part. Between making the pattern and the actual casting, that must have been a laborious and expensive process for just a handful of instruments.
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Post by Noah Miller on Aug 28, 2019 11:29:51 GMT
I just acquired this. The serial dates to 1934. The pickup/bridge plate looks identical to the one on tenor N419, but it was crudely painted silver and the pickup is a single-coil. Everything inside and out looks original save for those "lovely" tuners. The guitar came set up with a nut extender, and I think it spent its whole life as a lap steel because the frets and board are nearly perfect. However, the neck is straight and the angle is good. The pickup is pretty hot and much brighter than I expected based on my experience with the cast-aluminum lap steels. It looks like the cover plate was nickel-plated after the pickup cutout was made; I don't see any raw brass on the edges.
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Post by Noah Miller on Mar 14, 2018 22:07:55 GMT
Out of curiosity, I just measured my squareneck Style 4. The nut to 12th fret distance is 12 7/16, which indicates a nominal scale of 24 7/8. However, the bridge rests just a hair over 25" from the nut.
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Post by Noah Miller on Mar 14, 2018 22:02:12 GMT
Interesting; I guess I chalked up a 0.1" difference to sloppiness - especially since the bridge on either model can usually slide that far with the tension taken off.
I shipped the guitar out for an overhaul today, so I'll have to measure it when I get it back.
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Post by Noah Miller on Mar 14, 2018 20:59:00 GMT
Very nice guitar. As per the “tricone style headstock”, does it have the same scale length as a tricone, or the scale length of the single cone Nationals? I'm confused. Every old National resonator I've come across had a 25" scale regardless of the number of cones.
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Post by Noah Miller on Mar 12, 2018 12:17:15 GMT
That's a slightly later one with a decal logo. Interestingly, though, it appears to have white dots in the fretboard extension.
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Post by Noah Miller on Mar 10, 2018 1:48:39 GMT
I'm not picking anything up with a magnet. The rod in my '30s Style O was magnetic; I assume they're all steel rods?
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Post by Noah Miller on Mar 10, 2018 0:22:20 GMT
Yup, they're definitely replacement screw caps from when the neck was taken off. I'm hoping they can be replaced with wood that can be painted to match the board.
Paris is a bit impractical for me, so I gave Marc Schoenberger a call in California. He suggested a couple of things that I don't think my normal restoration folks have experience with, so I'm going to send him the guitar. I guess I was never really comfortable with adding a stiffening rod, for exactly the reasons Michael mentioned.
Now that that's settled, I'm interested in any historical info you guys have. Any idea how many were built with this configuration?
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Post by Noah Miller on Mar 9, 2018 21:07:00 GMT
I just came into possession of a wood-bodied Triolian; from reading through Mark Makin's book, it looks like a very early one. It has flowers instead of the hula girl, a stenciled logo, and no primer under the paint. Unfortunately, it also has a replacement cone and biscuit, and the neck has bowed significantly. I strung it up at low tension into an open chord and it was amazingly loud as a lap steel, but I'm not sure if it can be made playable for fingerstyle without major surgery. The neck has already been off at least once, but it's the relief rather than the angle that's the big problem. I doubt that heat-straightening will completely remove the bow. Would it kill the value of this guitar to remove the board and insert a stiffening rod of some kind? I'd have it done professionally, of course, but I also don't want to desecrate a piece of history in the eyes of the guitar market. I'd be perfectly happy to keep using it Hawaiian-style with a nut extender. Also, I noticed that it doesn't have a "PAT APLD FOR" stamp like many other wood-bodied Triolians. Does anyone know what patent number this refers to? Presumably, this guitar was built before that patent application was filed.
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Post by Noah Miller on Jun 19, 2017 13:26:38 GMT
Those definitely were holes in the casting, and they were plugged with what looks like solder. I'm guessing they were somehow necessary to support the two halves of the mold.
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Post by Noah Miller on Nov 20, 2016 23:40:30 GMT
I'm pretty sure the originals were Grovers, but none of the Grovers or Waverleys currently in production fits the same screw holes. I ordered a set of the Golden Age open-gear Kluson replicas because they just about fit one of the holes and they look reasonably period-correct.
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Post by Noah Miller on Nov 20, 2016 13:49:36 GMT
I received the guitar on Friday. No surprises as far as condition goes - the coil is busted, but the magnet is strong and the pot is scratchy but functional. I'm exploring a couple of options for a re-wind. I wasn't able to remove the paint layer chemically, but I did chip off a bit and there is a layer of something underneath that's soluble in acetone (I assume it's lacquer). It seems to have been dyed red by the paint, so I'm not sure what color it was originally. No indication of gold paint on the top, though. I've handed the steel over to some luthiers who have done great restoration work for me in the past; they're going to strip the paint and give the whole body a new coat of clear lacquer. There are no extra screw holes by the tuners, but I'm having a hard time finding a new set that will fit the existing ones. A few other things I've noticed: - The jack is located on the side of the body. I know some of the early Dobro steels had them located on the side at the tail, but not in this position.
- The frets are much smaller than normal National frets. They look like the the hyper-small mandolin frets that Gibson used on my 1907 A-3.
- The fretboard is finished; they probably sprayed the whole instrument after it was attached.
- They initially mis-drilled the holes through the tailpiece. In the picture of the pickup, you can see where they went into the body by mistake. There are a couple of tapped holes inside the body, apparently from previous attempts to attach the pickup.
- The back cover is made of particle board rather than aluminum.
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Post by Noah Miller on Nov 16, 2016 14:20:41 GMT
I started a thread about it on the Steel Guitar Forum as well, but I'd love to hear any input you guys have. This is substantially different from any other cast-aluminum National steel I’ve seen, to the point that I am pretty sure it’s a prototype: He are are some major differences between it and production versions: 1) The body has two “horns” that transform it from the usual teardrop into the National “shield” logo. 2) The headstock, which is an open A-frame on production steels, does not have a cutout. There is an indentation in the middle, probably to save on aluminum, but the point at the bottom suggests that it’s decorative and was never intended to be cut out. 3) The volume pot is located in an unusual position. While the pots did move several times between 1935 and 1937, they were never located north of the pickup. Interestingly, there are two bumps near the tail where the pots would eventually be located; it’s possible that these are unavoidable casting marks and that National eventually moved the pots there as an easy way of covering them up. 4) There is no serial number. Along with the early-style fretboard, a few additional discrepancies suggest that this steel is not a later whim but predates all production models: 5) “Pat pend” is embossed into the body below the bridge. The design patent was applied for in September of 1935 and granted in January of 1936, so it’s highly unlikely that National would bother to add this text after they had built many steels without it. 6) The pickup is quite different from any production model, and I would call it a more primitive design. Production steels had a conventional coil located at the ends of a horseshoe magnet, while this steel’s coil is wound like an early radio antenna – without a bobbin and wrapped in paper. This suggests that it was built before the merger of National and Dobro in 1935, since the later National pickup was apparently developed from the Tutmark/Stimson design used by Dobro as early as 1933. Right now the steel is in transit (these pics are from the seller), so I’m not sure the extent of the restoration that will be needed. That, uh, “unique” paint job will have to go, as will the hodge-podge of replacement tuners. The seller described the pickup as untested, which is often Ebay code for “tested and non-functional”. I'll know when it arrives.
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