1920s Weissenborn Style C 0-Size Flattop Guitar

Update 2019: this guitar's back in-shop so I've updated the photos, added a new video, and updated the description where necessary.

If you want to dig into the net, there's much information to gather on the enigmatic Hermann Weissenborn and his intriguing guitars. He mostly built long-bodied, often hollow-necked Hawaiian (raised-strings) guitars from koa -- much like his counterpart, Mr. Knutsen. When I found out a customer had shipped me a Style C Spanish-necked Weissenborn to work on I grew immediately excited. I'm a huge fan of antique Hawaiiana instruments and one of the instruments I most regret selling is an Oscar Schmidt "Hilo" of similar vibe to the more-usual Weissenborns.

Anyhow, the maker's guitars are rare under normal circumstances and the Spanished-neck variety are even harder to find. This one is almost at the top of the food chain, too, with Style 3 (in Weissenborn "Spanish" lingo that means Style C) elements that include fancy rope binding and to-die-for flamed koa. The body is roughly 0-sized and it has a longer-than-usual scale (25") for the time. The body's also pretty deep at the endpin and average at the heel which gives it a bit more bloom than you expect at first.

It has x-bracing under the hood and the tone is sweet, warm, woody, and relaxed. It has that "koa sparkle" on the high and it has a clean, mellow low with lush mids. You can hear in the clip how the notes pull-off the pick nice, easy, and accurately.

It came in pretty darn-good shape but needed some overhaul to make it playable. The neck angle was good as-is and the action almost OK, but the fretboard had a gentle s-curve down its entire length which made the playability terrible.

My least-invasive solution to the problem was to pull the frets, not plane the board, refret with medium stock, and then level/dress the s-warp out via the top of the frets. This is something I do with pearloid-fretboard guitars, too, as there's not an easy way to level the board on those. This leaves frets lower in some places and higher in others, but a level plane on the top of them. It also cleaned-up the radius of the board, as in some places the board had a 14" radius, in others a 20" radius, and in others somewhere in the middle. I pressed the new ones in on a 16" radius and that worked well.

After that the original aluminum-rod saddle was relocated to a compensated angle and the B-string area compensated as well. The pinholes at the bridge got a fill/redrill to clean-up the bridge plate area, too, and after work was done -- voila! -- she plays perfectly and sounds excellent. So...

Work included: a refret, saddle-slot relocation, and a setup. Action is spot-on 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE at the 12th fret and it's strung with 47w-10 gauges. It could probably go up to 11s if you use slack tunings, but I like to be safe with unreinforced necks on old, historically-significant instruments like this one.

Scale length: 25"

Nut width: 1 7/8"

String spacing at nut: 1 5/8"

String spacing at bridge: 2 3/8"

Body length: 19"

Lower bout width: 13 1/2"

Waist width: 7 1/4"

Upper bout width: 9 1/4"

Side depth at endpin: 4 1/8"

Top wood: solid flamed koa

Back/sides wood: solid flamed koa

Bracing type: x-braced

Fretboard: ebony

Bridge: koa? or rosewood?

Neck feel: medium C-shape, flat board

Condition notes: replacement frets, modified original saddle, but otherwise all-original. The finish is in superb shape and it just glows. There's the usual weather-check and some minor scratching, scuffing, and whatnot... but this thing's grain lights-up like an army of candles. It pops and it's a thrill to look at (and play).

It comes with: a good hard case.

Gorgeous, am I right? That koa is seductive.

The top has x-bracing with a central "ladder" brace through the middle of the X. I suppose that makes it star-bracing...?

The board is ebony and the dots are pearl. The rope binding is lovely, no? Note how close old Hermann kept the string spacing to the edges of the frets. You have to play pretty accurately on this guitar.

If preferred, I could swap-out the nut for a replacement with more inboard string-spacing and stow the original nut in the case.

A small bit of pearl is missing on the big diamond... but check out the riot of decorative elements on that board...

Intonation is slightly flat up the neck, but that seems to have to do with slightly-uneven fret spacing.  It's not obvious, though. Changing this saddle's location to a compensated line means that it's a lot more enjoyable to play past the 5th/7th frets.

The neck has a medium-large soft-C/V shape and is made from mahogany. Note all the wear and tear -- what was going on, here? A mark at the nut on the fretboard seems to say that this wore a Hawaiian-stringing extension nut for a long time, so maybe this is from some support for the neck during performance in Hawaiian position?

These are original Waverly tuners.