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Is said logo silkscreened, a decal, or cut out of the top layer of the headplate?
Any reason to believe that the tailpiece base and tuners are not original?

Thus far this thread has concerned...

Oh, there are gift shops in Athens that sell nothing but items made from olive wood. There is no question of its commercial value. I do not know about its suitability for instrument making, however,...

Fascinating.

ha!

Well, I recently sold a '65 and as i said above, I think the one now with my luthier is also a '65 but I'll have to double check when I get it back. It is weird how the truss rods come and go...

Had a 1912 K1 here for a bit that wanted even lighter C strings. Finally settled on 62s.

Well, OK, but that's kind of misleading with respect to this model. I don't believe I've ever seen a Batwing earlier than 1965 or later than 1974. So those tuners might well have been used for the...

The 0099 is a lot number, I think. Date stamps would be either F-xx (first half of the year) or S-xx (second half of the year), right? I've never seen a W-xx.

We know this was made in the USA...

Well, for standard tuning I usually go with the D'Addario gauges: 32-22-14-10. I've used the Martin tenor set as well, but that apparently is no longer available. I think the C in the Martin set was...

Hey, I'm selling a vintage National Style 1 tenor tricone (but keeping my Style 2!) that I've always strung for CGDA. Buyer wants it set up for GDAE. Those of you playing Nationals in GDAE, what...

That's a very cheap African harp of some kind, related to the kora.

Kora seems like an instrument that would be fun to learn, but I've bought one or two on eBay that turned out to be cheap...

Sure it ain't an Eastwood?

I dropped off a couple of mandolins with UPS today. I have one customer in St. Louis who asked me to hold off, so I won't ship that one until Saturday (St. Louis will be back to normal next week).

A bunch of L&H instruments playing together have this particular shimmery overtone series to them ... it's quite a thing to hear, even on tape. That is what Goichberg was going for, I'm told, both in...

Lyon & Healy Style B or C is within your price range and does well in an orchestra setting. But a vintage Gibson also works just fine. I did a handful of symphony gigs over the past 3 years with a...

Yes, not a job for people who don't like surprises.

Bridge looks like 1950s; the pickguard might be that old too. Not sure about the tuners. Headstock is splitting, pieces of binding are coming off, inlay is missing ... it would be a fairly ambitious...

Gotcha. Yeah, it would be cool to have a Vulcan harp on which the knobs actually did produce a drone effect over which you could play a melody on the strings ... like having a tambura and a sitar in...

Bert Deivert (blues mandolinist in Sweden) has one ... I wonder if he's posted any videos with it.

How do we know whether this one is playable or not?

No kidding. Anyway, I though Gandalf had one of these in the Harry Potter movies.

https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/115267490

192019

I dunno. Tipping cows seems problematic enough. If you get started on luthiers, who knows what might happen?

I went to a custom saddlemaker and had him stitch on a new cover for a case handle. It wasn't exactly cheap but he did a great job.

I borrowed a Hamlett mandola to play at my brother-in-law's funeral a while back ... lovely instrument.

Hm, admittedly my experience with Martin 2-15s is limited, but my friend Edd has an exceptionally nice one that sounds great, whereas I've never much cared for the tone of the Martin oval-hole...