c.1925 Stromberg-Voisinet Venetian Guitar

Here's the standard guitar brother to the tenor guitar posted a couple posts below. It's seen harder times and I needed to do a neck reset, some re-repair of "repaired" cracks, reglue of the fretboard, cleaning, brace re-gluing (two are missing on the back), and a replacement of a missing bridge. When I got this it had a foolish-looking tailpiece and floating bridge setup. One of those really ugly 1960s jobs. The original bridge would have been a stained maple pin-bridge type similar to the one on the tenor two posts down.

I used a vintage 50s/60s (Kay also?) bridge from my parts bin that's a bit oversized and is (nicely) ebony. I cut it down a little on the top and used its original bolt holes with bolts on this guitar for reinforcement, then covered them over with MOP. Just like an old Gibson. The oversize bridge with big "tongue" keeps the top a lot more stable (these ladder braced old 12-fretters are inherently unstable) and the ebony with bone saddle provides loads of warm, sweet, pretty loud, and rich tone. I'm quite happy with it. Oh -- and it also covers over an earlier "repair" of crudded-up finish when someone tried to reglue the original bridge.

Oh! And as far as maker -- these were made by Stromberg-Voisinet (in 1931 changed to Kay as we know it now) in the early to mid 1920s. The body shape was later used for 14-fret archtop versions which became famous as "Kay Kraft" guitars. Many of those archies had necks with angle adjustment via a bolt inside... totally cool... but entirely different sound due to the different construction. Also -- they were bigger than this fellow.

Like the tenor, this guitar sports a solid maple back and neck, laminated birdseye maple sides (2 ply?), a quality solid spruce top, and loads of checker binding throughout. Bone nut and saddle, 1/2 the tuners are period replacements... MOP dots in a dyed-pearwood? maple? fretboard... overall nice specs. It plays like a champ and sounds like one. Makes a feller proud!

Gotta love the body shape. And while the tenor has a nice "sunny" yellowed vintage finish, this one has a nice deep buttery yellow/orange.

Ebony bridge. I'll be replacing these standard parts-box pins with some white ones with dots to match the trim.

The sun is really catching the birdseye on the sides in this photo.

Great tobacco sunburst back and sides. The flatsawn maple back gives a really nice impression on both this and the tenor.