1925 Oscar Schmidt Stella Hawaiian Guitar Koa Natural Koa, Very Good, Hard, $975.00

Throughout the Hawaiian music 'craze' in America, many manufacturers produced guitars to capture the ready buyers of all things Hawaiian. The Schmidt factory in Jersey City produced this Hawaiian beauty around the mid to late 20s, most likely. It's a Grand Concert-size guitar, measuring 14 9/16" across the lower bout, with a 26 1/2" scale length. The deep body is made entirely of Hawaiian koa, adorned with snappy 'rope' binding. Inside is a green label with "Hawaiian Guitar Manufactured by Oscar Schmidt Jersey City NJ". The neck is mahogany, with a Brazilian rosewood overlay on the headstock.
We've only cleaned the fingerboard and adjusted the action, but the guitar came to us with an extensive repair history. It's had a neck set, rosewood fingerboard replacement, new frets, new Brazilian pyramid bridge (compensated), a repaired bridge plate, and two top cracks along the fingerboard extension glued and a support brace glued underneath. The top shows some compression distortion, which is typical of many of the ladder braced OS guitars. What all this adds up to is a really cool vintage guitar in tip-top playing condition. The action is set at 6/64" and the guitar plays very easily. With the long scale (tuned down one whole step) and koa body, the guitar produces a rich, ringing harmonic tone, dry but a bit punchy, with lots of thump in the bass. A great blues box. Comes with an older 60s hard case. Please check the sound clip provided.