c.1920 Bacon Professional FF Banjo Mandolin

This is a customer's Bacon (Groton, CT at the time) banjo mandolin and it's in fantastic condition -- all original save the new rosewood bridge and a replacement Remo head. My work included a dowel reset, fret dress, and setup.

These Bacon Professional models (with full donut-y big tonering and double-wall rim with f-hole cutouts) are pretty rare and most date from the teens. The Groton mark on the dowel suggests, however, that this dates around 1920 or so, when the Groton factory opened for production.

As its name implies -- this is a professional sounding, playing, and looking instrument and has a projecting but sweet tone with excellent volume. The new heavier mandolin-style rosewood bridge helps, though, to add sweetness and less of a penetrating thin sound to the instrument.

Typical Waverly "cloud" tailpiece looks elegant, here. The scale on this is 13 7/8" and I'm using 32w, 20w, 13, 9 strings on it.

Bone nut, rosewood veneer on the headstock, and nice logo.

Gorgeous MOP inlay in the board (which is a dyed pearwood board).

Nice multi-lam veneers which give a really classy look.

Bound board and pretty hard maple neck.

Hardware is in gorgeous shape.

The funniest bit is that while the rim outside uses a plain-wrap maple, the interior uses this flamed maple.

Tuners work fine.

Really cool rounded heel.

I had to shim up the neck brace to get it to function correctly.

Here you can see the lip of the Bacon-signature tonering under the head.

A nice one and a lucky owner!