c.1885 Bay State "Parlor" Guitar

Delicious! Another 1880s gut-stringer (well, Nylgut these days) ready to romp! This guitar was in some seriously unfortunate trouble when I got it... loads of seam separations, a neck falling off, a bridge that had pulled up and needed to be reglued, cracks all over... etc. Well, now it's up and playing again, and has that sweet, warm, rich, decently loud and sustained voice that I've come to expect from these little guitars.

Like most of these period instruments, this one was abused at one point in time with some steel strings, which caused the aforementioned problems, in addition to some bellying of the top, which my bridge re-glue has addressed somewhat. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) the damage was confined to a short period, because the original frets have barely any wear from steel strings. My guess? Someone strung it up with steel (it had the remnants of c.1900 ball-end strings on it), and in a matter of weeks or months the guitar was transformed to a wreck, and the player gave up.

One of the curious features of this particular guitar is the large inlaid MOP circle that was obviously hand-done and probably dates to the late 1800s. This kind of personalization was actually somewhat popular back then. Original ebony nut.

Detail of the pearl.

The fretboard is radiused rosewood with nickel-silver frets. The neck is a very thin (front to back, that is) v-shape, and the radius combined with this make an incredibly quick and comfortable classical neck -- not at all like our modern giant classical necks.

The spruce top was finished in an orange color that was popular at the time.

No binding, but a nice simple rosette. Note damage to the top of the rosette.

New bridge pins, but otherwise this guitar is 100% original. Fret-saddle on the rosewood pyramid bridge. This one reglued nicely after sanding.

Here you can see the elegant carving on the soft pyramids.

Back... note the "lightning strike" of the repaired center-seam crack. It was a biggie.

Original brass-plate tuners with bone buttons work just fine.

Back. I'm not sure of the back and side woods but they may be either stained plain maple or stained birch. The neck is certainly cedar and the top is spruce.

Side.


...

I polished up the working components of the tuners a bit.

Serial: 9 -- 17811.


And the label.