1930s Oscar Schmidt Stella Decalcomania Tailpiece Parlor Guitar (B)

This is an Oscar Schmidt model I've worked on several times in the past and bears their "Stella" brand -- meant for their more down-market instruments. As you might know, these were famously used by all sorts of early steel-string blues, country, and folk musicians back in the '20s and '30s and for good reason: they were cheap when they were made, have a great woody/gutsy sound, and have a lot of volume. Compared to competitors' instruments, they're built a little heavier and so can take the thwacks of a flatpicker or the bangs of a heavy-handed fingerpicker and dish it out without a "compressed" sound.

This one's bare-bones but looks great. It's solid birch in the body with a tailpiece/floating bridge setup, poplar in the neck and has an ebonized-maple fretboard. I've done a whole bunch of work to it and now it's playing nicely and ready to go.

Let's also not forget: the decals! They're in good order and the metallic-backed soundhole rosette pops well in "stage" light.

Repairs included: a neck reset, refret and level/dress to effectively remove warp in the neck, a new rosewood (compensated) bridge, various seam repairs and re-repairs of old seam repairs, replacement back braces (I use flat/strapping braces to replace missing back ones on these rather than shaped/tall ones), new bone nut, replacement (period) tuners, cleaning, and setup.

Setup notes: action is bang-on quick at 3/32" bass and 1/16" treble at the 12th fret. Strings are gauged 50w-11 and that's the heaviest I'd use for standard (E-to-E) pitch tuning. 12s would be fine for slackened tunings. The frets are lower near the nut and a little higher in the middle of the fretboard because I was avoiding the job of of planing the board to remove warp as it kills the patina-factor. It feels nice, so this is a pretty professorial comment, anyhow...

Scale length: 25"

Nut width: 1 7/8"

String spacing at nut: 1 5/8"

String spacing at bridge: 2 1/8"

Body length: 17 7/8"

Lower bout width: 13 3/8"

Waist width: 7 3/4"

Upper bout width: 9 3/4"
Side depth at endpin: 3 1/2"

Top wood: solid birch

Back/sides wood: solid birch

Bracing type: ladder (two & bridge-plate-brace on lower bout)

Fretboard: ebonized maple

Bridge: new rosewood, compensated

Neck feel: big soft V, flat board

Condition notes: this has a tiny area of fill on the lower-bout-side near the endpin (pictured) where there was missing wood, several very tiny (1" or less) tight hairline cracks on the back-lower-bout, mismatched seams on the back/side joints (not dramatically, but some creep -- this due to sloppy old repair work which has been fixed-up), there's a smaller chip-out to the top wood on the lower-bout-top near the tailpiece, there's wear and tear to the fretboard's finish, the nut and bridge are replacements, and the tuners are period but replacements. There's general finish wear and tear and some spotting/finish muck-up here and there throughout. Overall it looks pretty decent, though.