1934 Gibson-made Carson Robison Model 926 Flattop Guitar

"Huh", you say, "didn't you just post this?" Yeah, but this one has white bridge pins. It's about in the same condition as its stablemate, too, with only one smaller hairline crack (fixed) on the upper-bout rear and all of its original fittings save saddle and endpin. Gibson made this KG-11 variant with Carson Robison branding for the Montgomery Ward Recording King line in which it was called a Model 926. Most of the Carson-branded Kalamazoo-style guitars are KG-14 variants, and this model was only sold for a couple of years, it seems.

Work included a neck reset, fret level/dress, bridge reglue, new bone saddle, side dots, cleats/repair to that one back crack, cleaning, and general setup with 50w, 38w, 28w, 20w, 15, 11 strings. Action is on-the-dot with 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE height at the 12th fret. The neck deflects ~1/64" under tension which is normal for an old Kalamazoo and, for all playability purposes, straight. Tonally, I can't tell much difference with this guitar and its near-identical sibling also in the shop -- by which I mean it's got that ladder-braced snap and bite, but with a bit more of a folksy/mellow lower-mids voicing that lends itself to old-timey flatpicking as well as fingerpicked country-blues/ragtime styles.

It has normal KG-11 specs with a 1 3/4" nut width and 1 9/16" string spacing at the nut and 2 3/8" spacing at the bridge. The scale is 24 13/16" and it has a medium-to-big soft-V neck profile. The lower bout is 14 7/8" across and the depth is 4" at the endblock. The factory order number is 1209 (best guess -- it's faded) at the neckblock, which means a 1934 build.

Like its twin, this guitar has an off-center top seam that's located at the bass side of the bridge. As I mentioned in the other post, it may be a 3-piece top but it's very hard to tell visually because of the pickguard and sunburst. This guitar shows a healthy amount of usewear and playwear but is still pretty clean for its age.

Materials are normal for a KG-11 -- solid mahogany back, sides, and neck with a ladder-braced solid spruce top. The fretboard and bridge are rosewood, the nut is original bone, the saddle is bone, and the pins are original celluloid. The endpin is ivoroid from the '20s and from my parts-bins.

The frets are the usual, small, low, Gibson stock from the time.

I lightly-sanded and then buffed-up and sealed the original bridge while doing work on it. It also got some string-ramping behind the saddle for good back-angle on the strings.

Here's that repaired hairline crack on the rear near the neckblock.

Here's the cleat that covers it.