1950 National National Neck Hearts Resonator Excellent, Hard, $5,995.00

This is the wildest, and by far the coolest, metal-body resonator guitar we’ve ever seen, bar none. Here’s what we’re told, by an expert on this stuff, and what’s also fact: Surmise (almost surely accurate): In the 1950s, the most important music store in Paris, Magasin Paul Beuscher, was having problems with regular wood acoustic guitars they were sending to the various French colonies, those in Africa drying up from heat and those in South America expanding from humidity. Their solution was to have the Selmer Company, which made saxophones and other horns, make copies of metal-bodied Nationals, with regular wood necks, for export overseas. Apparently, the bodies did fine over there but the necks didn’t fare so well. This particular guitar’s body does not exactly match any of those, but its F-holes, which are unique in shape and contour, are dead-ringers, something that no manufacturer can ever easily duplicate from another’s. The heart-shaped soundholes though are what really got me; how can you not fall in love with this guitar? Now for fact: The neck was made by the current National Company, right here in California, probably twenty years ago or so, and installed by, well, we have no idea. An owner of National at that time tells me that back then they would often sell complete necks to stores and repair persons, so that is probably what occurred here. This neck, as you can see, is absolutely fabulous and the prefect match for this body, which is all-brass under its nickel plating btw. It is of beautiful maple with ebony fingerboard, and with its Pearloid peghead veneer and Ivoroid binding and fingerboard position inlays, I’d say that someone had a great sense of balanced form. And now, for its volume and tone…….. AHA!!!!! There is so much of both that all I can say is that they surpass even the fabulous show-look of this guitar. In a nutshell, it’s a blow-away knockout of a most terrific and unique resonator guitar, in every way. All set up here in our own workshop, with new National’s best spiral cone, and ready to go. $5995 w/hsc.