Undocumented Loar Found

[Glassweb]

There will be a 1923 Loar F5 up for auction at Skinner next month. Not undocumented, but not much more known about it. More details to follow...

[Bob Simmers]

"I saw Lloyd himself get off a flying saucer with bigfoot riding a unicorn. They all had undocumented '22 F-5's! The hobbit who was with them was trying to get the wizard to conjour one up for him too!"
Someone needs to write a melody to these lyrics! This is definitely a bluegrass song.

[mandoman15]

sorry all for decieving you, i was told by the shop owner that the mandolin in question was a loar, hands down a loar f-5, i hadn't seen it and had i it obviously would have been easy to identify it as as an f-4 duh.... anyway sorry for all the excitement....

[Ken Sager]

As for truss rods, I don't think you'll see any before 1922, early ones are through the 1921 style inlays, for sure. And many of the early 1922's have nickel truss rod covers.
1921 models have the adjustable bridge as we know it, some have the early style, which looks like a solid bridge, with a saddle cut of it, held on with the posts and thumb wheels. Then, you get the aluminum top ones, with two thumb wheels as shown above. Then, soon enough, you get the regular, what we think of a Loar style adjustable bridge. All this in 1921.
But, I don't think you get any truss rods until 1922.
Ken

I have a late '21 A with truss rod and adjustable bridge. I don't have it handy so I can't give the SN, but I'll find it.

KS

[sunburst]

Not to worry, mandoman.
That's how you learn to be skeptical. I bet if that ever happens again, you won't believe it untill you see it!
There are still people finding "real" Stradivarius violins (made in Germany) every time you turn around.

[PaulD]

There are still people finding "real" Stradivarius violins (made in Germany) every time you turn around.

I thought all the real Strads were made in Romania and Korea.

pd

[danb]

I think assigning dates to the first truss rod is a little bit of guesswork. Honestly we're only using '22-24 as loar period by the signature labels, but should we use the date the plates were carved? The shipping date? if you see my point, we have a pretty good idea *roughly* where transitions occur, but so far no great evidence to tie to a calendar date.

I have a couple interesting pieces of paperwork though that do tie specific instruments to a date on old gibson letterhead. More of these are definitely sought!