c.1935 Regal All-Birch Tiple

This is also a customer's instrument in for repair. It got a bridge reglue, new saddle, fret level/dress, neck reset, some hairline crack repairs, tuner lube, and setup. It plays and sounds great and the conversion to a tailpiece-style setup means that it gets the most out of its small soundboard and is much-more tuning stable than it would have been as a pin-bridge instrument.

This instrument has seen some attic storage, it seems, and the top has a bunch of tiny hairline cracks that I've drop-filled for stability. None were long enough or far enough from braces to bother cleating, though.

The slotted headstock and original tuners look great. Rosewood nut.

The frets needed only the lightest dressing and leveling to get them in good shape. This instrument seems as if it wasn't played much.

This is the original bridge which originally had a classical-style "tie block" rear to it. That block had been reglued before and was 100% unstable. I chopped it off, reprofiled the bridge as much as I could (it had some cruddy cutting to it beforehand), and then added a slot for a new, taller, bone saddle. The benefit of using a wide saddle is that I could also compensate the string slots a bit, too.

This bridge also got a reglue while I was doing work.

The tailpiece is actually simply a tailpiece cover for a banjo that I drilled-out to make stringing the 10 ball-end strings that come in a GHS tiple string pack easier.

The back and sides have no cracks. Note that the entire body is solid birch while the neck looks like poplar to me.

Here you can see how I've repurposed that parts-bin tailpiece cover.