Vintage F4 Anomalies

[John Kasley]

I purchased this lovely F4 from Gryphon a few years ago and love it's appearance, tone and playability. However it has a few anomalies that I'd like to get some expert opinions on.

The serial number is 22127 and the FON is 2438. According to Joe Spann's guide this FON gives it a production date of 1913 (Gryphon had it listed as a 1915 but that was before Spann's guide was published).

• According to everything I've ever read on the subject, the tuner buttons should be Handels, but these are not.... although they look old rather than recent replacements.
• The second anomaly is the cutout of the pickguard to expose the entire oval soundhole. On close inspection, this looks well done rather than an "amateur" job.
• The third anomaly is "1920" inked onto the label.
  
  Considering these three anomalies I conjectured that the instrument might have been returned to the factory in 1920 and the tuners replaced and the pickguard modified and someone wrote 1920 on the label.

Unfortunately I don't have any information on the instrument's provenance. Richard Johnston thought they acquired it from an estate sale but he didn't have any insight beyond that.

The last anomaly is the heavy wear pattern below the tailpiece. I'm thinking it might have been caused by suit buttons or cuff links but I have to hold the instrument pretty awkwardly to come up with a position that would replicate that wear.

Any ideas?

[hank]

Maybe the trail of a south paw.

[sunburst]

Tuners could have been replaced, anybody could have done it, but you could be correct that it went back to Gibson in 1920, because those would be "period correct" for 1920. Anyone could have cut the pick guard. I suppose they thought it was "blocking sound" from coming out of the "sound hole", but apparently they figured the fingerboard extension wasn't blocking enough sound to cut it off too. (Imagine all the extra sound that can rush forth unencumbered around that side of the fingerboard now!)
Hank could very well be correct that the wear near the lower point was caused by a "southpaw".

[pfox14]

Have never seen a pickguard with that kind of cutaway. The tuners don't look original to me. I suppose it could have been redone at the factory in 1920. Anything's possible.

[houseworker]

I can only concur with the earlier comments, and say that those tuners are spot on with the ones on my 1920 F4. There's at least one F4 from the same batch as yours pictured in the archive.

I also thought the wear characteristic of being played by a southpaw.

[f5loar]

The wear down there by the TP would have come from a left handed player using a right handed mandolin. Many lefties do it that way. The 1920 looks more added by the owner than the factory to me. He could have bought it used in 1920 also.

[pickngrin]

Are those pick scratches on the bass side of the soundhole? That would support the southpaw hypothesis.

[Jack Roberts]

I'm just thinking, I have an almost identical F4 (the Jeanette Greene mandolin in the post above) and I wonder if a left handed player would have found it easier to play with the cut out at the sound hole. Maybe that's why the mod was done that way?

I have a dark theory about the tuners. That is definitely a 1915/1913 mandolin, and it would have the Handels. I'm thinking someone along the line swapped them when it changed hands in the past.

Note also that the label was filled in by the same person who signed Jeanette Greene's.

How does it sound? I've played a lot of F4s at Gryphon but I don't remember playing that one.