UPDATES: Palm Trees, Señoritas & Rocket Ships

[Michael Messer]

I have been meaning to do this for a while. Mark Makin regularly does updates to his book and posts them to his Palm Trees, Señoritas & Rocket Ships Facebook page. I think it would be a useful resource for MM Forum members and visitors, and a good safe place to store them if FB decides to have a glitch.

It will take me a while because there are a lot of posts, but I am going to start adding them into this thread.

Obviously, you are welcome to comment and ask questions about the posts.

Due to the way Facebook works, I am going to work backwards through the timeline, so the first posts on here are Mark's most recent additions.

All words are by Mark Makin, I am just copying & pasting from his Facebook page.

To ask Mark questions about anything in this thread, start a new thread in National Avenue

Shine On
Michael

[Michael Messer]

Every so often, an engraved National turns up with a unique pattern and different style of engraving. A single item like this poses problems - Was it engraved by an enthusiastic amateur after it was bought or is it an example of a 'new' engraver being tried out by the National company. The more instruments appear in this particular new 'hand' then probably the more confident we can be of a more long standing relationship directly with the National Company. One such example has turned up this week. We have known of only two examples of this particular 'custom' version of a Style 2. It is obviously by a different engraver to the normal Style 2s but as the first one (2074) is a 1930 instrument and the last one (3479) is 1934 - we can at least assume he had a connection to National of around 4 years. The latest one to turn up (2142) seems to be (rather satisfyingly!) a combination of the other two. It is a welcome arrival as it connects this engraver to a greater number of Nationals and makes him obviously a more important figure.



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

This item is not really of much musical interest but it is an important part of the story.

This mandolin appeared on ebay a few months ago. It is a typical Neapolitan type bowl back, lute construction from the late 19thCentury - a type that exist in many thousands.

What is interesting is that it was built by John and Rudy Dopyera in one of their very earliest woodworking companies when the family of immigrants from Slovakia had only recently located and settled in the town of Taft, California just North West of Los Angeles around 1910.

In conversation with Marc Schoenberger, he is convinced that there are many tell-tale signs of Rudy's handiwork in the way it is constructed.

It is not clear what the exact chronology of these early years were but this instrument seems to date to around 1918 and pre-dates the formation of the National company by around 5 or 6 years. The most interesting thing, of course, is the internal label/business card which is stuck under the soundhole.



Shine On
Michael

[Michael Messer]

Right then, what do you all make of this one?

This instrument shows exactly how random the manufacture could be from the various companies involved in a project from National, Harmony and Kay.

This Harmony built instrument is on Ebay at the moment. It is being sold as an 'El Trovador' - which it plainly isn't, yet I can understand why.

Let's start at the beginning, this is a 14 fret Z series, Harmony built 'Supertone' which as we know is really a Trojan sold through the catalogues without a Trojan logo. This one, however, has a flat headstock from an 'Estralita' but it also has a factory added 'El Trovador' logo (hence the confusion). To make the problem even stranger, it has a Harmony-added 'El Trovador' serial number of H152 which is consistent with the El Trovadors at this time.
So what do we call this thing? Is it an El Trovador with a funny body or is it a Trojan type with funny neck.

I am not even sure which factory it came out of. It may be National assembling various Harmony bits to make a saleable guitar - but why brand it as an El Trovador when it looks and acts nothing like one. Maybe it came direct from Harmony, after all they made the Z series Trojan types with parts brought in from National and sold out directly to Sears. But why would they put a National logo on it at all, they never normally did on this model.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.



Shine On
Michael

[Michael Messer]

This Triplate appeared on the market again this week in reverb. I originally posted this article 6 years ago - here it is again.

There is a picture of a letter from Don Young at OMI this time where he dates this to 1927. Obviously 30 odd years ago this was a viable guess - but we now know a lot more!!

"It is numbered A13 - one of a handful in a rare and obscure numbering sequence. These instruments have at various times been assumed to be part of the Chicago A series around 1936. Not so. They have been identified with the last German Silver instruments in 1935. Also not so. This one has a "Pat Pend" stamp which was used from early 1928 to the end of 1931 (even though the patents were issued in mid 1930!). It also has a stock Style 3 (variation 3) "fronds ascending" pattern (see PTARS page 23) which appears on instruments such as Roundneck S46 and squareneck 1387 - both dating to around June 1930 - which is when I think this instrument was made.
Interestingly, it has additional "wild rose" engraving added to the Style 3 pattern. The "wild rose" however is done by a different "hand" to the original Style 2 pattern used on other guitars.
Still, it is another very interesting, "Custom" item from those clever people - the Dopyeras!



Shine On
Michael

[Michael Messer]

In the interests of completism, perhaps I should include this rare and bizarre instrument. It has recently come to light again after vanishing around 1982 when George Gruhn and Tom Wheeler brought it to people's attention in his book "American Guitars". It appears to be a genuine Gibson build although the Gibson company has no record of its construction. Structurally, it is built exactly the same as a Gibson Southern Jumbo of the 1948-1952 period. The coverplate, cones and screens seem to come from the late 1930s. It has a trapeze Tailpiece with "Radio Tone" and lightning bolts engraved on it. It is set up as a square neck Hawaiian 7 string. Whether it was intended for production or was just a custom order we will never know. It comes from the period when both Gibson and Valco (National/Dobro) were both owned by the Chicago Musical Instrument marketing company so there were close connections between all the protagonists necessary to produce such a thing. Interesting eh? - After the fabled Gibson Moderne, it is certainly the rarest Gibson in existence!



Shine On
Michael

[Michael Messer]

This one appeared quite a few months ago. It is supposedly the prototype instrument for the National Aragon. The Aragon was an expensive ($175) large body archtop made by Kay with a National cone resonator. They were made from 1938 to 1940 in very small numbers (possibly 3 dozen or so). Only 13 have been located so far. This particular instrument is thought to have been made by John Dopyera in 1928 or 1929 and for many years had been circulating around the OMI factory in Huntington Beach. Over the years it has lost its neck. It is smaller than a factory issued Aragon but it is constructed in the same way with a flame maple archtop body and parabolic shaped wood coverplate cut from the top



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

Here is a newly discovered different version of the Wild Rose pattern on a 1927 Tricone mandolin. The more usual pattern is shown on the right. The earlier one is much thinner and more reduced. The double trackline is also much further inside the body. This new instrument has been almost destroyed. It is badly pitted, with a changed, very amateurish neck. The well has been cut out and a battery and small 8 inch speaker inserted to try and make it a portable electric. It has been hacked with tin snips and drilled with dozens of holes to act like a speaker grille on the back. The coverplate is missing entirely so we can't know if the decoration on the top would be different to the known version. What a tragedy for a VERY rare important instrument. I have illustrated it in a more or less original form.



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

We know that the Dopyeras were building 'National' banjos before guitars probably as early as 1923. They were usually traditional in design with varying degrees of ornamentation. The appearance of this instrument indicates that they were also branding some as Dobros. This must date to after 1928 (formation of the Dobro company) and it has an interesting, assymetrical right hand volute on the headstock which is almost replicated 40 years later in the headstock design of the Dopera Original anodized, coloured banjos made in 1968.



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

Here is yet another 'trade house' brand lap steel manufactured by Valco using the Supro Supreme guitar as the base model. This one has a lighter brown pearl overall finish and a rather complicated, decorated fingerboard with a sort of 'tree of life' design. The metal logo seems to be hand engraved so I would assume there were only a few issued like this during the mid 50s.



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

Here is a very early National Banjolele from around 1925/6. Others like this are known with the black edged dot markers and dark wood fretboard binding. What is unique about this one is the very early metal logo plate pinned on to the back of the headstock. Certainly, the National logo had not yet been finalised



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

Updating the lap steel pages. Here is a 1936 Dobro Cast lap steel with the longer fingerboard that was customised with fancier fret markers and a stencilled or sprayed side pattern to personalise it. It belonged to Eddie Bush, the steel guitarist with the Biltmore Trio who played from 1928 through the mid 30s at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

Here is a variant of the National 'Dynamic' - Model 1125 that was issued from the factory in this very non-standard Blue colour in 1955. Serial X55302. It seems to be unique for the moment.



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Michael

[Michael Messer]

Here is a new variant of the 1940s/50s National Aristocrat that features two of the vinyl covered 1952 era pickups. All the versions of the Aristocrat (with this exception) feature a small nickel covered neck pickup and the famous 'Bridgestone' piezo-type unit fitted into the bridge saddle itself. This was a forerunner of the unit fitted to the later ResoGlas instruments. Whether this guitar was made like this for sound reasons or just lack of availability of the bridge pickup is not known.



Shine On
Michael

[Michael Messer]

Thanks to Jack Needham for alerting me to this one that appears to have been floating around 'Reverb.com' for quite a time. I'm amazed nobody has picked up on what we have here. A few people have dismissed it as "naive" or an "amateurish engraving". - Not so!

National's very first guitars (triplates) were all hand made by Rudy and John Dopyera. From 101 up to around 190, each one has differing details - extra holes, strip grilles, mesh coverings, different fingerboards, engraving etc while they were refining what would become the definitive Triplate. By around 300, it was a more or less standard production instrument.

After the first 30 or so were made, (excepting a few guitars with custom, promotional engraving) National started engraving around a dozen with an early form of the Style 2 "Wild Rose" pattern.These stop at 145.
This instrument is 146! It is without doubt the first Style 4 Chrysanthemum to be made. It was made around September of 1927 and is possibly a year earlier than the next Style 4 squareneck(444) that we know about. Granted it is lightly executed in its style, but it is similar to 0157 and 0189 (round necks) which would have been made a few months later (end of 27). As fewer roundnecks were made, low serial numbers in these were made much later than the same numbers in the square neck range.

A Style 4 this early however, does mean that the "Acanthus/De Luxe" guitars were never really Style 4s as it now proves the finished layout for the 4 was already established way before the De Luxe was made! (The earliest of these being 260)

Now some details. It has brass screws and 4 sets of internal wood posts and thin metal pads of a style that was not used after 106. The metal grilles are a different metal and it has a simple dot marker fingerboard and plain mahogany head with an early decal. It features a normal tailpiece, not a stud tailpiece. This is probably original to the instrument as the previous run of 12 Style 2s have normal and stud tailpieces on an equal basis.
The Style 4 pattern is incredibly naturalistic and is a lovely piece of botanical illustration. It features only one large flower head with two buds engraved on the front. The next variant of this style which appears on roundneck 0157 (I suspect also by this engraver) features the same overall design but with 10 flower heads on the front.

This was followed by the 7 flower head Style 4 in 1928. Again, this was probably the work of the same man. The 7 flower Style is more usually associated with the "Tampa Red" Style 4.

Following these were the three slightly different variants of the familiar, production line, Style 4. The first, (by Mr. Williams) in 1929 was followed by a slight change to the pattern in 1933. It was modified for the last time just prior to the war in 1938.



Shine On
Michael