Help identify an old bowl back mandolin

[Isd5793]

Hi wondering if you could help identify a mandolin. The label is ripped but it says frank ______ and sons silver______ mandolin west New York New Jersey
https://m.facebook.com/isaiah.desent?ref=bookmark

[Isd5793]

[QUOTE=Isd5793;1333977]Hi wondering if you could help identify a mandolin. The label is ripped but it says frank ______ and sons silver______ mandolin west New York New Jersey
[url]

http://imgur.com/GsscZL8
http://imgur.com/SAib63V
http://imgur.com/w5BEQVp

[Jim Garber]

Maybe this helps... more convenient to post pics here.

Unfortunately those are pretty fuzzy pics. That is an interesting looking mandolin.

i would think this might be a mandolin that was imported to a store in West New York, NJ. The store may have put their own label in it.

In any case, it is doesn't resemble much anything I have seen in the past.

BTW the bridge is located way too low on the body. It prob should be on the soundhole side of the fold in the top. I doubt it will intonate correctly where it is right now.

[Michael Lewis]

Research Frank Converse instruments.

[Jim Garber]

Research Frank Converse instruments.

Hmmm... could be, but Converse was a well-known banjo player and wrote method books in the minstrel era. Possibly he had a store but I doubt he built mandolins (or even banjos), maybe just sold them

[allenhopkins]

Well, "Frank B. Converse" shows up in the Mugwumps index as "New York 1884-1898," which sounds pretty close geographically and time-wise. He also patented a banjo tailpiece design, which he assigned to another maker; this Mugwumps discussion of banjo tailpiece designs states that banjos built by Stratton and Buckbee were marked "Converse" and distributed by someone named Hamilton Gordon. Here are some pics of a mandolin marked "The Gordon" and sold by Hamilton Gordon in NYCity -- but it doesn't look like the OP's mandolin.

[Jim Garber]

I did see that listing on mugwumps but that lost was originally all banjo makers. Of course, there is some overlap and it is quite possible that the label said Converse but it is also likely that it wasn't and also that it was not made by Converse. I get the feeling that Converse was more the player and teacher and that he had others make banjos for him with his name on them. Same might go for mandolins, tho I am not sure if he had anything to do with West New York, NJ (across the river from New York City).

Anyway, we might be barking up either the right tree or the wrong one. Who knows?