i was reading an article on loar and it mentioned him building mandolins with his own company, vivitone. were they any good or are any even around today? i know loar wasn't nearly as famous as now, but why do you never hear about these? (besides the fact that the loar F5 kinda oversyhadows everything else in the mando world)
Wes
"i gotta fever...and the only prescription is more cowbell!!"
'87 Flatiron A5-JR/'25 Gibson A-JR
Pictures crop up occasionally.. and I've seen one or two instruments on ebay.. Roger Siminoff would probably be a good person to ask!
I think there are some pics at emando.com
Vintage Instruments has some pics:
Skinner had several ViviTones in an auction last year, IIRC. I bid on some, including an electric violin, but they all went for more than I was willing to pay. They seem interesting for historical reasons, but everyone I've heard from who has played one says they aren't very good.
Fiddles
Arches F4 / Newson F5
Crump B1 / Old Wave GOM
that is completely different than a gibson. did V-Tone make anything similar to the F5 (or F style?)
Wes
"i gotta fever...and the only prescription is more cowbell!!"
'87 Flatiron A5-JR/'25 Gibson A-JR
No "F" styles. What you see is what you get.
Banana has several along with some ViViTone guitars. They're odd, but really fascinating.
I helped to restore Loar's personal solid body electric viola which Roger Siminoff sold to Hank Risan. That one, I have to say, sounds just incredible. It may be one of the best electric fiddles on the planet.
One for sale here.
Jim
Jim
My Stream on Soundcloud
Playing lately:
Brentrup A4C -- 1915 Frank Merwin Ashley violin -- 1904 Embergher Type 3 -- 1937 Gibson L-Century -- 1939 Gibson L-00 -- ca. 1890s Celebrated Benary Banjo -- 1985 Monteleone Grand Artist Mandola
back detail on one I saw friday at intermountain in salt lake city
Detail of the soundhole with 2x4 top bracing and 2, yes 2, soundposts. 1/4" thick celluloid pickguard. I was laughing with Leonard and Kennard about Loars possible involvement with the gibson F5 master model design. He must have inhaled lots of something after leaving the kalamazoo plant! My swiss had more muenster tone and gouda volume than this farwood......
While I'm no Loar historian - I have to agree with Mr. Bussmann on this one. As hard as I try I can't reconcile Loar's involvment as an acoustic engineer in both the F5MM and the ViviTone.
I realise he may have been seriously hindered by non-compete contracts when he left Gibson, but I just can't imagine how these ever got created with him in the building (or the ViviTone garage for that matter).
Now back to playing my '24 Gibson...
Mike
1916 A-0 Pumpkintop Paddlehead
1924 A-1 Blackface Snakehead
1968 FG-140 Yamaha Guitar
1992 48K Franz Sandner Fiddle
www.FreePickin.com
I'm intrigued by the figure of the wood used for the back: it looks to me like the Vivitone may have spruce both for the top and the back. Maybe that's related to the use of soundposts, in an attempt to couple the top and back and make both oscillate.
Martin
With those f holes on the back, his main market may have been pregnant women doing in utero musical training. The few experiments I did using both spruce tops and backs made for very unfocused fundamentals, maybe I shoulda installed a few soundposts in each one......
On the Vivtone mandolins I have a few thoughts. The first is that sound Loar was looking for had nothing to do with the sound we associate with his F5's today. I doubt Lloyd was looking to make it bark. The second is that Vivitone was a startup company and he was probably trying to find a way to build his instruments faster and cheaper. The third is that there seemed to be a little of the snake oil salesman in the man (read some of the advertising copy from that era regarding the Gibson mandolins). Maybe he figured he could make up what the Vivitone lacked in content by putting the right advertising spin on it. That's not an attack on his character, it's just an observation based on the state of advertising for business in general at that time. Finally, he might have seen the mandolins as a short lived part of the business with the electric instruments being the future. They were simply a stop gap until the real products could be introduced.
Just trying to picture this scene - you plugged it in and played it through an amp?Originally Posted by (oldwave maker @ July 12 2006, 00:58)
Have you heard Bob Dylan's new album?
Creative people run out of ideas all the time. Or they continue having ideas but they never catch on or stand the test of time. Heck, no one even cared about the F5 until 25 years after Loar. You can't win em all.
Warn me next time before you do that (and I'm a Dylan fan)
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