c.1940 Regal Squareneck Hawaiian Guitar

This guitar came by way of a customer who bought it and didn't realize it was a squareneck! Oh well! So he's got some trade-in value at the shop and now I've fixed this fella up and set it back on course to do its job: play some sweet Hawaiian/old country tunes outdoors in a mellow way.

It's totally a catalog-style, student-level instrument with solid birch throughout and a faux-mahogany grain paintjob with painted "purfling." It's braced like other parlor-size Regals with transverse ladder bracing and it has a warm, sweet, woody tone to it with a definite midrange flavor and "rolled-off" treble.

Work included bolting the neck to the body, regluing the fretboard extension, new tuners, new (vintage) endpin, new bridge pins, saddle rebuilding (I may yet just swap it to a big fret saddle), light seam and crack repair, and setup. It also has a big new bone nut.

Update: I did swap the saddle out to a fret saddle -- tone improved and it's way more stable. Pic below.

This bridge is both glued and screwed to the top from the factory. It has a tiny bit of lift on the rear edge but it's not going anywhere.

I love how the board itself is actually wider-grain rosewood of that medium-orange color Regal seems to have had a lot of in the 30s/40s.

Tuners were missing so I added these Asian-import Kluson repros. They're nice tuning for the money.

The little "dot" of non-matching color hides the entrance hole for my bolted neck reinforcement. There's a big hex nut to tighten it up on the inside. This simple neck "set" is perfectly fine for this sort of instrument which would otherwise likely wind up having structural problems (not to mention tone problems) if it were picked up and strung up for any length of time without the neck properly snug to the body.

There are a few tiny 1" or under hairline cracks on the lower bout sides that are absolutely no issue.