I bought a pig-in-a-poke about a month ago from an ebay seller. The instrument photos are here (scroll down a bit after opening the page): ebay listing.
I was prepared for anything, but when it arrived, it looked pretty nice and potentially repairable, even by a klutz like me. I did repair it and it does play halfway nice and it looks quite good all cleaned up (I did leave the head as-received). Birds eye maple rim, flame maple five piece neck.
So here's the deal. If I am going to play it, I want to know what is "Eko". I have dug pretty deep on the internet and what I keep seeing concerns Eko stringed instruments made in Italy starting in about 1959. I think they started with guitars, then in the late sixties expanded to include mandolin, banjo, etc. The best I have heard about their quality is maybe 'unremarkable'. And the pictures of the mandolin-banjos they produced are nothing like what I have, at least the ones I have seen.
Now ... I am almost positive this instrument was made in the USA. The hardware is all non-metric and all the main dimensions come out nicely in inches instead of cm. And I think this instrument is older than the 1960's. It is solid, nicely built. Sounds decent (for a mandolin-banjo). The case looks just like cases provided with instruments from the 1920's and 30's. The instrument looks and plays a lot like my Vega Little Wonder from about 1915 and much, much better than my noname (probably Oscar Schmidt) from the 1920's.
Was there a musical instrument company in the US (or maybe Great Britain) using the "Eko" name before the Italian company was founded? If so, any info about them would be appreciated.
FWIW, I attach a photo of the peghead of my "Eko" and a peghead of one of the Italian "Eko" mandolins. Note that both logos are in script and both are underlined, but they are quite different.
My Eko
Italian Eko
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