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Category
Makes
Condition
Price
Colors
Found 18 matches
1963 Harmony Stella H922
$675
Stella (Harmony) H922 12-String 1963 | $675 | (VBG#2001) Beginning about 1940 the Harmony-made 'Stella' was about the only mass-produced 12-string guitar available. The 1940 catalog shows the image of an H922 twelve, but it has the rounded lower bout, unlike the H922 offered here. The square-ish lower bout began to show up in catalogs in the later 60s, so our guess is that this example,...
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~1967 Harmony Stella H912
$750
Harmony Stella H912 12-String c 1967 | $750 | (vbg #1718) By the mid-sixties and the emergent folk boom, Harmony upped its 12-string production and refinements with the model H912. This iteration of the twelve string line included a flashier red-burst color scheme, a Gibson-esque pick guard, and an adjustable truss rod! We've offered a good number of these over the years and this is among...
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~1915 Lyon & Healy Jupiter
$750
Lyon & Healy 'Jupiter' c 1915 | $750 | From the outset, we'd like to share that this old catalog guitar is one of classic success stories for vintage guitar hunters. Found by a friend at a local flea market, we got it into playing shape again and it turns out to be one of the nicest sounding and easiest playing of its ilk that we've encountered, and we do a lot of these. It comes up aces on...
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~1915 Oscar Schmidt Sterling
$1,595
Sterling (Oscar Schmidt) Grand Concert c 1915 | $1595 | The Schmidt factory in Jersey City, NJ, produced a lot of guitars branded 'Stella', but also made a lot that were rebranded by jobbers. This example is labeled 'Sterling', and is the brand of Hafner & Sutphin in Philadelphia, a music store that opened in 1911. Based on the tuners, braces and label, this guitar likely dates to the...
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~1920 Bruno The Vernon
$1,850
C. Bruno & Sons "The Vernon" c 1920 | $1850 | C. Bruno & Sons were ninteenth and twentieth century 'jobbers' who purchased instruments from various makers and resold them through different retail outlets such as catalogs and music stores. The Vernon was a particular line of Bruno-labeled instruments during the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Its difficult to date this example. ...
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~1935 National Style 1
$1,350
National Ukulele Style 1 c 1935 | $1350 | Vintage National instrument catalogs list ukulele offerings almost from the beginning of National instrument production, and were produced in several of the 'regular' National lines such as the painted Triolian and plated German silver models. Very few have surfaced. This example dates to the mid 1930 based on its serial number cross-referenced with...
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~1946 Gibson L-50
$1,350
Gibson L-50 c 1946 | $1350 | (vbg #1955) | A nice players instrument of a popular, and iconic, Gibson archtop acoustic guitar. Solid maple back and sides, carved spruce top, Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, mahogany neck, bound top and back, functioning truss rod, and retains its original pick guard and tuners! A great value and work-horse guitar then, and a great value and work-horse...
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~1897 Washburn New Model
$750
Washburn guitars, manufactured by Lyon & Healy in Chicago, were marketed aggressively in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In fact, the company claimed to be the largest manufacturer and importer of musical instruments in the world. The claim was 100,000 instruments made annually! Pleijsier, in his book on Washburn prewar instruments, states that a close examination of the...
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~1938 Dobro Old Kraftsman
$2,275
Dobro Old Kraftsman M32 c 1938 | $2275 | Beginning in the mid to late 1930s, Dobros branded Old Kraftsman were produced in Chicago by Regal, for sale via the Spiegel catalog. These steel-bodied guitars became known as 'fiddle edge' Dobros due to the crimping of the edges rather than a welded seam as found on a National resonator. The segmented f-holes and two-rows-of-rectangles cover plate...
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~1968 Dopera's Original Model 30
$1,450
The Dopyera brothers, Rudy, Ed and John, have an long and convoluted history of producing resonator instruments, spanning the 1920s through the 1970s. In the late 60, John and Rudy began what would eventually become OMI, overseeing the production of banjos and metal bodied guitars under the "Dopera's Original" brand. The brothers had lost the rights to the Dobro name in a sale to Mosrite. ...
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1955 Martin 00-17
$1,750
The 00-17 had been around as a Martin catalog offering almost twenty-five years when this example was produced. It conforms to the specs of a typical 00-17 with mahogany body and neck, Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, bridge and head stock overlay. Top and back are unbound.
The body measures 14 3/8" across at the lower bout. Scale length is 25". The neck measures 1 11/16" across at the...
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~1970 OMI Dobro Model 36
$1,575
OMI Dobro Model 36 c 1970 | $1575 | In 1967 the Dopyera brothers formed a new resonator instrument manufacturig company called Original Music Instruments (OMI). The workshop was in Valinda, CA, and a number of high-grade instruments were produced over the span of a decade. This example likely dates to about 1970, based on decal and features, and could be called a Model 36. The steel body...
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~1932 Oscar Schmidt Sovereign OM
$1,575
Oscar Schmidt Sovereign Orchestra Model (OM) c 1932 | $1575 | A few years after the death of Oscar Schmidt, the man, Harmony guitars, of Chicago, had purchased Schmidt's guitar factory in Jersey City, NJ. Around this time, C.F. Martin began the transition from the slotted headstock, 12-fret instruments, to solid headstock, 14-fret OM guitars. This move by the slow-to-change Martin factory...
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~1946 Regal Junior Jumbo
$775
Regal ‘Junior Jumbo’ c. 1946 | $775 | The Regal company in Chicago produced scads of guitars throughout its almost one-hundred year run. This example came to be known as the ‘KG11’ shape ‘big bottom’ Regal, based on its body shape which echoed the Gibson ‘Kalamazoo’ KG11 of the 1930s. This shape first appeared with Regal about 1935 and continued into the 50s with various iterations and...
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~1960 Kay Jumbo Flat top
$375
Kay has a long history of making guitars for 'Everyman'. This example, from c. 1960, is just that .. a big guitar on a budget, affordable by most. Listed in Kay catalogs as "Master Size", the body measures 17" across at the lower bout, which makes it a big boomer.
The body is spruce ply on top (ladder braced), and birch ply on sides and back, all finished with sunburst. The binding is white...
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~1938 Kay Aloha National Studios
$250
Aloha National Studios was similar is scope to the music schools that sprung up in the first quarter of the twentieth century, such as First Hawaiian Conservatory and OAHU. They didn't manufacture guitars, they simply had guitars rebranded, mostly by Kay in Chicago, and then sold them to students who enrolled for guitar lessons. OAHU is very well known, and many examples exist today. The Aloha...
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~1933 Oscar Schmidt Floral Decalcomania
Call
In the throes of the Great Depression, many guitar makers altered their manufacturing to weather the hard times, some more radically than others. The Oscar Schmidt Company, in Jersey City, NJ, introduced a line of guitars produced from less expensive materials, but gave them a glitzy look to attract buyers in these grim times. These instruments were cataloged as 'Decalcomania', and the guitars...
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~1897 Unknown Buckbee style Open back
$450
Open back five-string banjo in the Buckbee style. The neck is nicely carved into a soft 'V' and is made from walnut with a thin veneer fingerboard. The rim is spun over with 38 brackets. The four head stock friction tuners appear original, and the fifth string friction tuner is a replacement. The rim measures about 10 3/4" and the scale length is ~ 25 1/2". The fingerboard measures ~1 1/4"...
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