c.1925 Regal "Grunge" Tiple

This one soldiers on despite its rugged life -- serious playwear on this tiple abounds! This one required a neck reset, crack repair to the top, fret dress, installation of a mandolin-style tailpiece, new nut, etc. It plays great and sounds great. It's just a hair mellower and warmer than my own Regal tiple, which has more of an aggressive tone, but is otherwise an identical model.

For those not in the know, a tiple is an Americanized version of a South American instrument, in its new form a 10-steel-string tenor ukulele-sized instrument, with the most darned beautiful sound this side of a really well-played Hawaiian guitar. It's traditionally tuned ADF#B like a uke in the 1920s, but nowadays most folks tune to GCEA. Strings GC&E are in octave tuning while the A is in unison.

Wood on this is a spruce top, cedar or misc. hardwood neck, and flamed mahogany back and sides, with (previously multicolored, now faded) herringbone binding and soundhole rosette, bound front and back with black celluloid.

I love the slotted-style headstock. Makes for rather longer string change but gives it that old-fashioned air. The tuners, despite being grungy, operate just dandy.

MOP inlay in the "ebonized" maple board.

Here you can see the distinct ribbing caused by a lot of pickwear at the 12th fret and on down.

Nice trim!

This original bridge was starting to look a little bit worse for wear and in fact has a tiny hairline at one edge of its string retaining block. Hence my installation of a mandolin tailpiece, with the strings anchoring to it and then passing through the bridge, much like you'd see on a bandurria. This arrangement gives you the mellower tone of a pin-bridge style setup with the tension release of a tailpiece setup. I personally think most tiples benefit from being converted over to this setup... they're often "stuffed up" sounding with all the tension pulling towards the neck block rather than down on the body.

Original tuners -- they don't look nice, but they work nice. Fair enough!

Here you can see some of that figure in the mahogany. When new, all of this would have glowed a warm reddish-amber color.

Here's something interesting: either the V-neck was carved down to be slimmer or there's just quite a bit of wear on the neck. I'm not sure either way, but it hasn't warped so the slim profile seems to work just fine.

There are a few shallow (not-through) hairlines on the back, but they're secure and hard to see.

...if I only had a cover! But with tailpiece covers of this period ranging in the $30-40 range, a fellow can live without it.