Steve Martin's Lloyd Loar F5

**Willie** · Nov-15-2012, 8:28pm

I`m with Tom...I use a tuner to start the set and if I feel that I need to tune along the way I do it by ear, sometimes I ask the guitar player to give me a chord that is the same as the note that I want to tune to...I have used tuners and then strike a chord and it don`t sound like it is in tune so I mostly tune by ear, after over 50 years of playing I should be able to do this, one would think...I never leave the tuner on the headstock....

Willie

**grandcanyonminstrel** · Nov-15-2012, 11:04pm

Originally Posted by f5loar

Greg Rich did get to see many original documents while working for Gibson. I can remember around 1985 being in Charlie Derrington's office at Gibson in Nashville. Greg Rich and Jim Triggs were there and we were talking about Loars. The janitor was in there cleaning up and he spoke up and said while he was working his last days at the Kalamazoo plant cleaning up around an office he found a piece of paper behind a file cabinet which looked important so he kept it. He then brought the paper in for us all to see and it was the hand typed specfications for the making of the first F-5 complete with corrections in Loar's handwritting on it. Charlie was pretty excited to see this that day. He made a copy for me to keep. It answered many unknown details about the first F5.

Tom:

This piece of old Gibson paperwork complete with Lloyd's handwritten notes on it is in the F5 blueprint of mandolin #73992 drawn by the late Ted Davis that the Guild of American Luthiers sells. It is located on the second page with the detailed photographs, right under the specs for the virzi. This blueprint has been used to build thousands of great instruments over the years. I don't know what ever happened to the original, but Ted showed it to me in his shop before he passed away, laughing and telling lots of stories. 'Wish he was still around to tell us more....

j.
www.condino.com

**f5loar** · Nov-15-2012, 11:44pm

Ted got it from Darryl Wolfe and Darryl Wolfe got it from me and I got it from Charlie Derrington the day he first got it. I know Darryl had a copy of it in the F5 Journal Vol. III 1999 along with notes about the Loar sheet.

**Verne Andru** · Nov-16-2012, 11:29am

Originally Posted by f5loar

Ted got it from Darryl Wolfe and Darryl Wolfe got it from me and I got it from Charlie Derrington the day he first got it. I know Darryl had a copy of it in the F5 Journal Vol. III 1999 along with notes about the Loar sheet.

Since it's already been put into the public domain, any chance you could post a scan of your copy?

**f5loar** · Nov-16-2012, 2:26pm

If you will send a certified geek or a teenager over to my house to upload it for me then sure.

**Verne Andru** · Nov-17-2012, 12:05pm

Can't swing a geek but if you PM me your address I can send you a self-addressed-stamped envelope you can use to send me a photocopy and I'll take it from there. Or something like that.