When You're A Guitar, Nobody Knows Your Name

[Brent Hutto]

I'm selling off my acoustic guitar, an incredibly nice Taylor. I use it for maybe 2% of my guitar playing, it's worth more than every other guitar I've ever had combined and I don't like to take it on long-weekend trips because I'm worried it will get dinged, damaged, lost or stolen. It also has pickups/preamp that I've never had any use for since I'm just a living-room player. So by all rights its replacement ought to be a nice $200-$400 Asian-built git-box that I can take whereever I want with no worries. Ideally a smaller body than the almost Dred-sized Taylor 414 and maybe even a shorter scale length just for comfort. Lots of candidates out there, well made guitars at very reasonable prices (espcially used).

But that makes entirely too much sense. Where's the fun in being sensible. So I decided to go retro and get one that's not only inexpensive but pre-dinged as well! Yesterday I purchased a lovingly restored, pre-war, no-name, all-mahogany 000 from a guy on one of the acoustic-guitar forums. It's a real beauty that's been put back into possibly better than new playing condition with a planed-and-leveled fretboard, bone nut and saddle and a neck reset to give it a proper action. But since it literally has no maker's label or name on the headstock it was incredibly cheap, I'm basically paying for the cost of the restoration. Here's a few of the seller's photos (low resolution, sorry)...






I love the retro, bracket-mounted pickguard although as a fingerstyle player I generally regard them as ugly nuisances. And it looks from these pictures like an outstanding piece of 'hog on the top (it is two-piece, you just can't see the join line in the pics). Rosewood fingerboard and bridge that for all I know may even be Braz and it has the original frets which were reinstalled after the fingerboard was planed.

And the real bonus is a 1-13/16" nut, string spacing at the bridge of 2-5/16" an an old-style fat, round neck. It's like a fingerpicker's dream geometry! She's a real throwback, a genuine short-scale, wide-chunky-neck, triple-naught with a ladder-braced mahogany body. No cracks, original finish. I'm sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for it to arrive because it sounds too good to be true. Cool factor off the charts in my book. Probably made by Harmony or similar during or before WW-II.

I'm going to name it Norma Desmond.

[Brent Hutto]

Closeup of the body

[lostpick]

Very WISE decision...
You played a good game...
I would buy vintage and predinged too
for a low stress, take anywhere box..
You probably got maximum tone for buck too

ENJOY

[Telarkaster]

Very nice Brent!

[RomanS]

Wow, that's sweet!

[CDKopf]

I love those old flat tops - I like how the pickguard is mounted. I have an OLD 40's Kay that resembles that one that I restored and I may do the same thing - thanks for the idea!!

[CDKopf]

Here's my old Kay - they look like brothers!! Web jonnievisit&txgiving 10000.jpg

[Stuco]

That's really a cool old guitar. If the guard gets in your way, just remove it and put it in a safe place.

[Tim Armstrong]

"I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille...."

Very, very cool, Brent!!!

Cheers, Tim

[Brent Hutto]

CDKopf,

The previous owner, who had it restored, and his luthier speculated that it may in fact have been a Kay in all but name. If not, it was definitely in the Harmony/Regal lineage. Back then they could afford to toss what would now be great pieces of wood into plain-vanilla factory guitars no problem. Some were real lookers!

[Brent Hutto]

Originally Posted by Tim Armstrong

"I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille...."

Very, very cool, Brent!!!

Cheers, Tim

And hopefully I'm very unlikely to end up face down in a swimming pool over this.

[aunchaki]

I had a similar dilemma (not quite in the same league as an under-played Taylor). I have a Epiphone Hummingbird that I bought new. It's glossy and ding-less. I needed to take a guitar on a mission trip, checking it (in a HSC) on an airplane. I didn't want to risk my beloved Epi. So, I bought a used Takamine 12-string (got a super-cheap price at GC). I paid so little for it that I was comfortable flying with it and exposing it to the world.

The problem is that the Tak is now my favorite guitar. I could replace the Hummingbird for less that I paid for it new (they dropped the price last year). I don't think I could replace the Tak, even for 2 or 3 times what I paid for it!! So, my "junk" guitar has become my dream guitar!

Yours looks fabulous!! Nice score.

[Brent Hutto]

Well I picked her up at the post office this afternoon. Lovely guitar, just like in the pictures except smaller. I haven't had much chance to play 000-size acoustic guitars, most stores only have Dreds or other 16-inchers in stock. That inch less lower bout and inch less thickness looks and feel like much more. In fact the guitar shipped in a Dred-size chipboard case and it looks tiny in there surrounded by packing material.

So how does it play, you may ask. A few observations after tuning up and playing for like 20 minutes:

--Now I know what "punchy" means. This is not a sweet sounding guitar like, for instance, the Taylor 414 I just sold. The trebles are articulate and clear but sound dry with no overtones but the midrange just Woofs if you strum hard and then rings and rings with a loverly strings-and-wood tone.

--The action is a little higher and stiffer than my Taylor, to say the least. I'll need to be more correct with my left-hand finger placement. If I don't put it right behind the fret, it doesn't sound. And I don't have to worry about pressing too hard, shall we say.

--The neck is chunky, as the seller described it. What he did not describe is that it's a chunky vee shape. On a Fender we've call it very much a "hard V" profile. And very chunky. I think I like it but I'm not sure yet.

--It's an odd combination of responsive and laid back at the same time. I get the feeling of being in control of the sound but it doesn't really come right out and sing unless you give it some real right-hand ooomph. It's like with my normal (Tele-style) fingerstyle approach the guitar is closed-off and just all midrange humming as opposed to open singing. But then dig in a little and there's plenty of interesting voice in there.

--So my conclusion is this will be best used for alternating bass, thumb and three finger more or less Blues style playing. It's easy to go ahead and dig in on that stuff and it sounds good. I don't think it's going to do as well with the slow, sweet, quiet fingerstyle things that I try to play on my Tele. But then again I didn't get this to be my main guitar, just a change of pace from the Tele that will travel well.