Truss rod cover is upside down![]()
Bushings replaced with 6-sided thingies. The fern itself has greenish pieces in the middle just like 76547
Truss rod cover is upside down![]()
Bushings replaced with 6-sided thingies. The fern itself has greenish pieces in the middle just like 76547
The same little harp wingus is on the truss rod cover..
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Nice Back
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75884 is a new addition to the Journal and the archives!
This one has the original fingerboard and pickguard
Tuning pegs from 2 different tuner batches! Treble side (left) has 3 screws, bass side (right) has 5
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Beautiful flowerpot, and another upside-down truss rod cover!
Another nice back. Heavier curl on the left.
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All of these pictures come courtesy of David Bonsey of Skinner, Inc. They are both up for auction on May 8th 2005 in Boston, along with a nice F-style Mandolin and Mandola
75884 looks like the previous owner had a little trouble figuring out where the strings were.
Nah, it's a distressed model!
2012 Ford Escape
Fender Medium Guitar Pick
3 Cats & 1 Worn-Out Dog
OK, Jamie Wiens did some check-up on a theory that came from either Bruce Harvie or Jamie.. we'd been chatting that the cleary visible discrepency in the grain widths of the bass & treble side of John Reischman's Loar (often discussed here) was possibly caused by the cut of the wood..
This photoshopped picture sort of shows it, black line showing what I see as the grain orientation on the bass side..
If you're a photoshop jockey, try sliding the middle adjuster on "Adjust levels" and you can see the grain edges appear/dissapear more clearly than I was able to show here..
By the way, that's the top of the bass f-hole, picture taken from roughly the scroll...
I was wondering if anybody has an idea about the number, or percentage, of existing Loars that have Virzi's--I guess what I'm wondering is what percentage were originally made with Virzi's, and how many Loars are out there with them today. Anybody got any idea?
It's safe to say the majority of the '22 and '23 do not have the Virzi as in '23 you had to pay extra for it but in '24 the Virzi was included no extra charge so the majority of the '24 do have it since most customers at the time did not know what it was and since it was not extra cost why not have it. I've not counted the actual count of '24's that have had it removed but there are dozens.
Some were factory removed when customers complained.
A quick unscientific scan of the archive shows me
89 Loars marked as having a virzi originally
80 Loars with Virzi s/n known
19 "virzi removed" notes in F5s..
3 "virzi removed" notes in H5s..
259 Loar-signed instruments total
212 F5 Mandolins
22 L5 Guitars
18 H5 Mandolas
6 K5 Mandocellos
327 F5s total (loar signed and otherwise)
470 instrument records in the Loar period
The certainly "take the edges off", my take it's it's similar to hearing an instrument miked up and using light compression. You lose volume on the "spikes" or the parts where the instrument is "hot", but you do get a very nice even separated tone. Takes the "Bark" off a bluegrass chop in my opinion, but gives you a nicer melody note in the bargain.
Dan you need to say of those 89 with Virzi how many are '24's and '23's.
8 1923s, 80 1924.. (not sure how I had 89 in my count last time)
I'm dying for some new "Loar Pics of the Day"...
Dan?
Well that's the trouble with these things, there's only a finite amount of them
Maybe we'll have some new ones soon from the Skinner buyers..
Check the Ronnie McCoury thread on Gen Mando
Darryl G. Wolfe, The F5 Journal
www.f5journal.com
This
March 31 1924 Fern F5 #72541
is currently for sale at Larry Wexer's page
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Man, that is gorgeous. And ONLY $150K. Wonder what Ronnie's new acquisition put him back...
That's a steal at that price. Minty Fern Loars are few and far inbetween. It's the old "go find another one" logic.
I know of others for sale but not near that cheap.
Do Fern Loars command a premium? If so, why? How many are there?
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