Turtle Guitar - very strange ...

[kmmando]

Anyone know anything about this strange instrument - maker, country, vintage?

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/seized/objects/turtle_shell_guitar.aspx

cheers Kevin

[Dan Hulse]

No I don't, but it reminds me of some charangos I've seen made out of armadillo shells. (A charango is a small South American guitar like instrument, traditionally made with the shell of the back of an armadillo. Many are now made with different types of wood. It typically has 10 strings in five courses of 2 strings each, though other variations exist.)

[Dobe]

The original "Ovation"; I'll bet the Tortoise shell binding was easy enough ! :grin:

[Spruce]

I saw one identical to that for sale in the Philippines...

[MikeEdgerton]

This a totally misleading and fairly inaccurate description:

"Turtles are protected as an endangered species under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). This guitar features a sound box made from a rare turtle shell."

I won't go as far as to say I could ID the shell but all turtles are not protected under CITES. This could be a legal instrument.

[Spruce]

This could be a legal instrument.

That saw-tooth edge kinda points to it being a Hawksbill, which would make it illegal...
But I ain't no expert... ;)

I saw that turtle guitar for sale in '84, and could have brought it home--legal or not--as I was traveling with the US Air Force...
I was also offered a bag of 500 TS guitar picks for 100 bucks in Japan on that same trip... :disbelief:

[Kevin McELvanney]

A bit off topic but didn't Kirk Douglas make something similar in 20,000 leagues unde the sea?:)

[mrmando]

Guy in my band had one of those ... but he wasn't very good about keeping tempo.

[Graham McDonald]

Probably from the Pacific somewhere, as Bruce says he has seen one for sale in the Phillipines and I have seen several in shops/museums out here. Our National Museum has rougher one than that, but with some some historical connection (that I can't remember). They tend not to be particularly good guitars...

cheers

[D C Blood]

Not to hijack, but also shown in the same museum, an auto harp used to smuggle heroin...
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/seized/objects/autoharp.aspx

[almeriastrings]

This a totally misleading and fairly inaccurate description:

"Turtles are protected as an endangered species under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). This guitar features a sound box made from a rare turtle shell."

I won't go as far as to say I could ID the shell but all turtles are not protected under CITES. This could be a legal instrument.

This is a museum in the UK, so they are using the word "turtle" in the British-English sense to mean sea turtle (all of which are indeed protected under CITES). In the US, the word "turtle" is used in a much wider sense, to include not only marine species, but freshwater species (which in British English are known as "terrapins") and even to some terrestrial species, such as Wood turtles (Clemmys/Glyptemys insculpta) and Box turtles (Terrapene species). To confuse matters further, our Australian friends call their freshwater turtles/terrapins "tortoises"! Which goes someway to explain why we zoologists retain a fondness for Latin names.. anyway, this is indeed the carapace of a Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) which is critically endangered through exploitation such as this. It is fairly standard practice for UK Customs and Excise (and in the US USFWS) to loan out confiscated items for educational purposes. You may see such exhibits in airports from time to time, to alert travellers not to purchase and attempt to import such items.

[Didge]

Anybody else wishing this was a legal guitar? I despise poaching and animal cruelty, but that's a pretty cool looking instrument...

[Bernie Daniel]

Guy in my band had one of those ... but he wasn't very good about keeping tempo.

Was he he slow and study?

[Bernie Daniel]

Probably from the Pacific somewhere, as Bruce says he has seen one for sale in the Phillipines and I have seen several in shops/museums out here. Our National Museum has rougher one than that, but with some some historical connection (that I can't remember). They tend not to be particularly good guitars...

cheers

I do not think that shell it is a hawksbill -- rather I think it most likely is one of the loggerhead sea turtle species. The sawtooth edging mentioned by Spruce also looks like what on might see on a Kemp's Ridley sea turtle but the three center plates are too large and prominent. Both the NOAA Fisheries Commission and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have agreed that the date for protection of loggerheads under the Endangered Species Act status for the various loggerhead sea turtles should be extended -- and I expect it will be -- if it has not already happened.

[foldedpath]

Anybody else wishing this was a legal guitar? I despise poaching and animal cruelty, but that's a pretty cool looking instrument...

Aside from the legalities, it's not a practical design for an instrument that will get used for more than a few years. I once had one of those "tourist charangos" that I bought in Mexico a long time ago, with the armadillo shell back. It lasted just a few years before the top cracked, because the wood top aged and moved at a different rate than the shell in my air-conditioned home.

The obvious counter-argument is Ovation guitars, but that's a case where at least one side is stable over time. Shell and dermal bone (armadillo shell) changes and dries at a different rate than wood, as it ages. And even Ovations aren't immune to cracked tops over the long-term, due to material differences.

There's a reason why all-wood instruments last so long. All the materials are aging and moving around due to ambient climate changes at the same rates.

[allenhopkins]

Not to hijack, but also shown in the same museum, an auto harp used to smuggle heroin...

From the Autoharp description:
This instrument was seized at London Airport. A Customs Officer became suspicious when the passenger arriving from Pakistan couldn't play it. He noticed the harp was unusually heavy and sounded strange. When it was opened heroin was discovered inside.
This object is not currently on display.

So: an overly heavy, strange-sounding Autoharp that the owner can't play -- how is that different from any other Autoharp? Other than the heroin...

And my armadillo-shell charango's holding together fine; it's the only instrument I own that has ears. And hair.

[kmmando]

Gosh, fascinating! The fittings - tailpiece and bridge on the one I have seen are identicla to that in the impounded by UK Customs one, which point to it being by the same maker somewhere - the Pacific seems an interesting lead! Ceratinly a conversation piece, and goodness knows how it ended up in a junk shop in Scotland! A bit cold to swim here!

thanks for all the replies!

[JeffD]

From the Autoharp description:
This instrument was seized at London Airport. A Customs Officer became suspicious when the passenger arriving from Pakistan couldn't play it..

.

Incentive for smugglers to practice more on the instruments they carry.

[Cornelius Morris]

As with many things, the Greeks did it first. Here's a tondo (center) of a shallow cup found at Delphi. It shows the god Apollo holding a tortoise-shell lyre. Note the shell pattern; it's a typical Greek tortoise found all over Greece even today.

Hard to tell from the picture if the tuners are worm-over or -under.


71615

[almeriastrings]

As with many things, the Greeks did it first. Here's a tondo (center) of a shallow cup found at Delphi. It shows the god Apollo holding a tortoise-shell lyre. Note the shell pattern; it's a typical Greek tortoise found all over Greece even today.

The "Greek tortoise" (Testudo graeca) does not actually occur in Greece. Linnaeus named it because he though the scutes resembled the cracks on an ancient greek vase. Two land tortoises occur in Greece: The Marginated tortoise (Testudo marginata) and the Hermann's tortoise (Testudo hermanni). I suspect the lyre depicted is a very crude representation of the Marginated tortoise.

[Cornelius Morris]

That distinction is good to know (I didn't realize that there were two tortoises in Greece, neither named "Greek") although in the Greek countryside I have seen live tortoises, and the occasional empty shell, which have markings vivid enough to suggest what the painter of this cup may have had in mind in the 5th century BC. Nice bit about Linnaeus thinking about cracks on vases. You learn something on this forum every day, sometimes even involving mandolins.

Thanks, almeria.