Vintage Mandolin - 1930's?

[sonofdave]

Hi There

I'm currently looking at restoring my grandfather's mandolin and wondered if anyone here can give me any clues to its age and make. I have a photo of my gf playing this dated 1934 but I'm unsure whether he bought it new or inherited it.

Any help and advice greatly appreciated.

Best Regards
Tim

[MikeEdgerton]

That patent number comes up all over Amazon UK as ORIGINAL PATENT APPLICATION NUMBER 26489 FOR IMPROVEMENTS IN STRINGED MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.: Ewald (inventor). That points you towards a country of origin, perhaps the UK. Where was your grandfather from?

[sonofdave]

He was from Alfreton / Normanton area of Derbyshire. Born 1910

[MikeEdgerton]

I'll go out on a limb here and say the mandolin is of UK origin. Hopefully someone else has seen one of these.

[sonofdave]

Thanks Mike. Forgive my ignorance on this but does the shape and era suggest a style? ie. A-4

[houseworker]

Ewald Glaesel was an instrument maker from Markneukirchen, Saxony. The DRGM number suggest that this was manufactured in Germany (possibly by Glaesel) and certainly no earlier than 1892. DRGM stood for Deutsches Reichs-Gebrauchsmuster (or colloquially after the Nazis came to power 'Dirty Rotten German Muck'). Since it carries an English patent number it was certainly intended for sale here.

[MikeEdgerton]

No. That shape became quite common after Gibson introduced it in the early 1900's. The tuners would probably place it in the early 1900's if it was American made, in the UK I don't know when they switched over to the more modern style tuners. It may be impossible to identify the maker but someone should be able to date it within a decade or so.

[MikeEdgerton]

I doubt it was made that early. It's good to see someone has more infomration on the builder. The patent for improvements on stringed instruments appears to be a hardcover book and readily available for sale.

[houseworker]

I doubt it was made that early. It's good to see someone has more infomration on the builder. The patent for improvements on stringed instruments appears to be a hardcover book and readily available for sale.

I wasn't intending to suggest that it was, only that the DRGM numbering scheme ran from 1892 to 1945, which precludes any possibility that it was made outside that window.

For interest, the English patent application dates to 1896, which narrows the possible dates very slightly!

[houseworker]

The tuners would probably place it in the early 1900's if it was American made, in the UK I don't know when they switched over to the more modern style tuners.

Given that Germany was the source of a good number of the 'modern' style tuners used in the USA, there's no reason to suppose their home produced instruments were out of step with US tastes. I'd guess this mandolin is pre 1914.

[Jim Garber]

sonofdave: can you post some pics of the inside of those tuners without the covers and the headstock from the back?

[sonofdave]

V. Interesting... thanks for the thoughts!

[sonofdave]

Jim: Sure, will do over the weekend

[Laney777]

Hi sonofdave,
Did you find more information on this mandoline? I had a shock seeing the picks because I own one that was definitly made by the same manufacturer. I bought it for about 60€ from an English lady living in Spain on Ebay. i Did quite some work on it (took off a thick layer of ugly varnish and repaired a crack on the back you still can see.
It didn't have those beautiful tuners like yours has, and since the original ones missed some knobs I changed the tuners and the mandolin stays well in tune now. it has a lovely ringing tone and looks very nice.
How's your mandolin doing?

[sonofdave]

Apologies for long (very long!) delay in update - I've finally decided to restore this for my father's 70th birthday.

Here are a couple of photo's showing the tuners:





In the meantime if anyone has anything to add on the history of this mandolin I'd love to hear.

[sonofdave]

I also found a spent string packet in the case - perhaps this where he originally purchased it from?

[Anglocelt]

I have seen a few of that style on sale in the UK and have a couple myself. They come in many decorative variations on a standard theme of teardrop shape rosewood (or rosewood effect) body with, usually, an unvarnished spruce top. Although quite cheaply made they tend to have lasted well with straight necks but often splits in the rosewood backs. They often come with 'Royal Neopolitan College of Music' labels which are probably spurious because, as sonofdave says, they were made in Germany. The patent date of 1896 makes sense as this was near the start of a big mandolin craze in the UK which lasted about 20 years when large quantities of both Italian and German instruments (sometimes masquerading as Italian) were imported as domestic producers struggled to keep up with demand.