Loar's Mando/Viola 70321

[siminoff]

Wolfbane… The tunings were publicized along with various announcements of his mandoviola, not in his notes. I really don't remember how that instrument was tuned when I got it - I was much less concerned about how it was tuned and more excited that I had found the instrument that was in the "workbench" photo. The electric viola was not tuned up to pitch. His F5 was moderately out of tune when I got it, but not slacked, and a few strings were broken. His August Diehl viola was also moderately out of tune, but not slacked; the bows were slacked but needed re-hairing. (The string tubes with his name written on the side, still have new viola strings in them.) There were actually four discovery times: 1-mandoviola with electric viola and musical saw; 2-August Diehl viola; 3-keyboard instruments/amplifiers/books of notes; and 4-F5 with electric pickup. And you are absolutely right about it being "quite the afternoon" - I still savor the memories, and I'm glad to be able to share the excitement and information with you all. Roger

[Timbofood]

So Roger, how does the saw sound?

[JeffD]

You're correct. Only one person was ever going to get that user name.

[William Smith]

We are all very blessed with this knowledge, Kudos to Roger and Dawg. can one just imagine talking with some widow about her long gone husband and showing massive interest !she mentions "by the way" I have all his crates he packed up! would ya like to see whats in em?, If thats how the story goes remember kindness goes a long way!

[siminoff]

Bluegrasser78… I was very close with Loar's widow Bertha until her death in 1998 (first meeting her in 1975); she had a sister in South Carolina, but no local friends or family. The time with her and the stories she shared were wonderful. (I had the pleasure of bringing both Mike Longworth and John Monteleone to meet with her, and they too enjoyed the experience - but that's another story.) Actually, I never pressed Bertha about Loar's instruments and focused more on ensuring that she was well taken care of. I spoke to her almost daily. After she broke her hip in 1990 and went into a nursing home, I took over custodial care and financial responsibility for her, paying her bills - what little there was of them - and so on. (My son Mark lived in Santa Monica - a nearby town to where Bertha lived in Englewood, CA - and he would often go over to change a light bulb, move something for her, and similar.) One day I went to her house (which was not yet sold at the time) to pick up the mail and there was an invoice from a local storage facility for "three crates." When I went over to visit Bertha, I asked her what the invoice was for and she said "I don't know, I just get the invoice so I pay it." (I'm sure glad she did!) So I called Mark and asked him to get the crates and bring them to Bertha's garage (which turned out to be a back-and-forth ordeal because he needed her signature, etc.). Anyway, I think I stopped breathing when Mark called me to tell me what was in the crates. -- Now you know how "the story goes." …. R

[Timbofood]

It's so important to honor and take care of elders! Blessings on you and your house Roger! There are too many instances of neglect.

[j. condino]

..I firmly believe rims sets and tops and backs layed around unfinished but with FON's to indicate what they were for and for tracking costs and inventory

Anyone that has worked in a production setup or instrument factory can tell endless stories of mind numbing days when you make up parts for the next few months- hundreds of partially worked neck blanks, fingerboards, rim assemblies.....factory work is factory work, regardless of the company or end product. Often the overstock will wind up lost in a backroom until someone remembers it or it is dragged out a few years later.

j.
www.condino.com

[Andy Hatfield]

sounds good while Tyler's playing it!

[William Smith]

Life has truly blessed you Roger. And its great that you took care of her in her final days, anyone should hope for some kind of kindness like that in the twilight years,when so many old timers are simply put forgot about! And I bet the stories she told were amazing! she was pry in awe with the interest that you had after so many years in Loars studies/experiments. Would've been a treasure to unearth all them goods/notebooks after 50 years or so. All that history by a modern genius well a head of his time, pickups in the mid 20's etc...Simply Kool,

[mandolino maximus]

It's so important to honor and take care of elders! Blessings on you and your house Roger! There are too many instances of neglect.

One instance of neglect is "too many." That said, I wouldn't assume that every lonely elder necessarily got that way by way of the irresponsibility of others. After seeing off the grandparents and a couple of friends by way of old age, nursing home and hospice, there is one couple closely related to me that are now proving that human beings who are petty, selfish, arrogant, mean and drive friends and family away get old and worse too. And no, it isn't dementia or alzheimer's. No automatic pedestals and no blanket condemnations.

[Glassweb]

Mr. Siminoff... you are a mench and I mean that in the best of ways... good on ya!

[Scott Tichenor]

Some of the images of the instrument in question (and others) in this thread can be accessed in higher resolution form from the University of Iowa database that has a wealth of early Fisher Shipp information and pictures of Lloyd Loar. We've shared these links and images off and on for years now. There are other bits of interesting mandolin information in this database if you want to dig around and spend some time searching.

[William Smith]

Now this may be a dumb ?! Maybe its been answered but I've always been curious and into the history of everything. So here it goes Is there any recordings that Loar made in the teens up till the 30's? You'd think he would, there were recording devices back then? He was considered a virtuoso talent on many instruments. Like Roger said in a way it would've been something to "hear" what Loa was doin with a pickup on his F-5! I just find it odd I can't find any recordings. Dave Appolan even had recordings, some real old and while Dave was a fantastic player, I think he got terrible tone out of his F-5's on some recordings.

[danb]

...

are there any recordings that Loar made

...



I've often wondered that perhaps we just haven't found them. Seems like the odds were fairly good! There's a good list of well-known players from back in the day, it would make for an interesting library of congress search. I'm not sure quite what's involved in that, anyone here a library science specialist or knowledgeable on those matters?

[Martin Jonas]

Greetings fellow lovers of Loar lore. I borrowed this unique instrument from it's very knowledgeable custodian (at the time) to see how it would sound on a recording. I tuned the instrument (as I thought it was intended) to CGDAE (low to high) and recall that due to the scale length I had to use the very thinnest of E strings (.009 I believe) and still broke a few during the process. The results were issued on the Warner's LP Dawg Grass/Dawg Jazz (currently out of print) and more recently on Dawg Plays Big Mon. Here are the results of this experience!

Great recording!

For what it's worth, I also own a 10-string of similar 1920s vintage and similar 16"-ish scale, but much more modest pedigree: an anonymous German waldzither. These are normally 9-string and around 18" scale, but mine is 16" (41cm) and has an additional bass string (originally a free unfretted bass), making it a 10-string:



I reconfigured it to five double courses and tuned it to the same tuning as on Dawg's recording, CGDAE, using 0.008" d'Addario singles on the top E. Tuning up to pitch is a bit nerve-wracking but it does work with that tension and keeps its pitch with strong tone. It's very handy sometimes to have a combined mandola/mandolin.

Martin

[siminoff]

I concur with Dan on this; I'm confident there are - or were - recordings of Loar. The use of electronics was a very important focus for him and there is no question in my mind that he would have pursued recording. (Wire recording dates back to the late 1800s and was very much in use in the 1930s - so the technology was there for him to use.) He was scheduled (cataloged) to teach electronics and recording in 1944 at Northwestern University in addition to his regular Physics of Music class (but unfortunately his last class was in the summer of '43 before his death that September). He was feature editor of The Collaborator, a weekly student magazine of the American Television Laboratories. So… clearly his interest was there, and recording means were available to him, and it is very hard to believe that he didn't take full advantage of it. I just hope that when we do find it, it is salvageable. …R

[William Smith]

My thinking exactly Dan, there has to be some somewhere!, maybe in some archives somewhere? Also back in them days as advertisement didn't little groups get air play in some of the towns they were going to perform in? Loar played with many "Gibson" type groups and by all of the instruments that he was photographed playing on. I'm sure he was no slouch so to say. I'm very curious to all this "what would a "Loar" sound like in Loars hands/ Maybe someday time will tell. It sems every year more and more Loar instruments surface from the unknown.

[Jim Garber]

I would especially love to hear what he played on his musical saw.

[mrmando]

I would especially love to hear what he played on his musical saw.

"Working on a Building," perhaps.

[Scott Tichenor]

I emailed Neil Gladd who worked archiving music for the Library of Congress for a long time as his day job in addition to being editor for the now defunct Mandolin Quarterly. Here's part of his reply about the possibility of a recording by Loar:

----------------

I did... (worked archive music for LOC) until 1998! I vaguely remember reading in one of the mandolin magazines from the teens that Loar was seen coming out of a recording studio, but they must have never been released. MAYBE the masters exist in one of the record company vaults. I'll try to remember to look it up when I get home. I may know what year it was, at least...

Neil

[Timbofood]

This is so, so cool!
I wonder what tunes he may have "cut" too.
I will go stand in the corner now.

[CES]

This is awesome...appreciate everyone's input! Would love to hear recording's of Loar as well...wonder if there are any orchestra recordings out there he may be heard on, though, I guess, it'd be difficult to pick him out of the crowd in that setting...

Dawg, Roger, etc, thanks for posting. These are experiences and knowledge that we don't need to lose...

[Bluetickhound]

If there are extant recordings, lets hope they have been preserved in.a way that they can be remastered... I magine the buzz in the acoustic music world a Lloyd Loar CD would produce!!

[CedarSlayer]

Chicago in the 30's is an interesting time. Depression, Gangsters, Dillinger, Jazz and Blues. There was a large shift in the racial mix at the time, so the musical melting pot was at one of it's peaks. If Loar was seen at a studio, it could have been as a technical expert or he could have been making a touch of extra money as a session musician. If this the case, then there may be a lot of music recorded with Loar playing.

Someone should analyze samples of his instruments for unique qualities, (As if that hasn't been done already ) and then check Chicago area recordings for those musical signatures.

Bob

[delsbrother]

Do you mean Inglewood? If so, that's a tough part of town. How did Loar's widow end up in Inglewood?

The chances that Loar instruments could have possibly ended up on Storage Wars is... chilling.