1930s Regal LeDomino 0-Size Flattop Guitar

Update 2019: This came back in trade, so I've taken new pictures and videos and updated the description.

Frankly, I love the sound out of these old Regals -- they're simply sweet-sounding, plainspoken, old ladder-braced boxes. Being Regals, they're built on the lighter side but have just enough stiffness to take close-to-modern gauges (I tend to stick with 11s or a lighter-middle 12s set) and tend to hold-up just as well as the Gibson Kalamazoo line of flattops.

This one is approximately Martin 0 12-fret size with a 13 1/2" lower bout and a Gibson-ish, 24 5/8" scale length. It's solid spruce over solid birch back and sides and has a poplar neck with black-painted maple fretboard. The original bridge was maple, too, but it was split and warped so I did not re-use it.

It now plays on-the-dot, has a cool magnetic/electric guitar-style soundhole pickup installed to get your blues on, and has those fantastic dominoes decals!

Repairs included: a neck reset, fret seating and level/dress, new belly-style rosewood bridge install, new compensated bone saddle and ebony pins at the bridge and endblock, cleaning, minor seam and brace repairs, and a good setup.

Setup notes: it plays bang-on with 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE action height at the 12th fret. It's currently strung with Martin Retros in 52w-11 gauges (I believe), but I had slightly heavier 53w-12 gauges on it when I initially set it up. The current ones are old but have such a good, woody, relaxed tone to them that I left them on. The neck is straight and the frets have good life left in them.

Scale length: 24 5/8"

Nut width: 1 13/16"

String spacing at nut: 1 11/16"

String spacing at bridge: 2 1/8"

Body length: 18 7/8"

Lower bout width: 13 1/2"

Waist width: 8"

Upper bout width: 9 7/8"

Side depth at endpin: 4"

Top wood: solid spruce

Back/sides wood: solid birch

Neck wood: poplar

Bracing type: ladder

Fretboard: maple, painted

Bridge: rosewood, compensated bone saddle

Neck feel: medium-big V-shape, flat board

Condition notes: it has average usewear throughout and a lot of pickwear to the treble side of the soundhole. It has some cracks in the binding over the fretboard extension and along the sides. All that is glued-up, however. The bridge is a replacement and has a belly-style shape because the initial owner of this instrument needed something a little more durable/grabby than a rectangular bridge for his busy live schedule. There are no cracks in the top but there's a large, long one on that back that opened-up from dryness last year. It was hastily filled and sealed and does not sit nicely-flush, but it's holding pat and good to go. I recently reglued a couple of seams and adjusted the saddle slightly, but that's all that was done since it left here in 2018. This particular Le Domino has the cleanest decals I've ever seen on this series of guitars. They pop.

It still has its original bone nut and "reversed" over-worm-shaft tuners.

I added side dots at 5, 7, and 9 even though there's a 10th-fret decal. The original frets were pretty rectangular before dressing but they do have good height and operate about like a modern medium-size fret.

The pickup is a nondescript Strat-style unit from my parts-bins, but I thought it had a great sound in this guitar -- sort-of like an old DeArmond from the '60s -- clean and bright and with a bit of kerrang. It's grounded at the bridge pins so the strings are properly grounded, too -- so it's ready to go for shows.

You can see a bit of residue around the edges of the bridge from where several attempts were made to reglue the original, split bridge. There's plenty of saddle height for action adjustments in the future.

This guitar must've dried-out a lot after it went home with its new owner because it came back with a long "ka-powed" crack on the back-lower-bout. By that I mean that it didn't completely separate -- there was grain left along the hairlines, but the two halves had settled up/down a little. It's filled and sealed and good to go, but isn't the prettiest, eh? Fortunately it's black-on-black...

There's a second, smaller hairline crack on the back that's tight and was repaired some time before me. It's remained stable.