Just off the Handel tuners thread on Post A Pic, and the tuners ARE plastic ,not bone, and 1st appeared on the Gibson mandos very early. Is this the 1st use of plastic on string instruments? I bet Charlie D knows a bit about this...What about binding use...Kerry
There was a general change around 1920. I am not exactly sure when celuloids became available.
Handel tuners are not 'plastic', some of them are a white bake-lite material, some are ivory, and some are bone.
M
...but most "Handel" buttons were ivoroid, a celluloid. #Celluloid was registered as a trademark in 1870. #I don't know its first appearence in musical instruments, but tortoise-colored celluloid was definitely replacing the shell of hawksbill turtles in the later 1880s. #Real tortoise shell had virtually disappeared from musical instrument construction by the beginning of the 20th c.
Anyone else care to chime in?
Most of these things are probably best answered in books, like Longworth's Martin history.. I am a technician, who pays some attention... Mike was an historian, who paid attention.
Figure whenever it says Martin did something, the other's had been doing it at least 10-15 years.
M
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