1930s Galiano (Oscar Schmidt-made) 0-Size Decalcomania Guitar

A customer of mine sent this cute, decal-adorned, old Galiano in a long time back. It didn't need serious work but it needed the usual. Suffice to say, this year has been extraordinarily-busy for me, so it got stuck way back in the repair queue. I finally finished it off on Wednesday morning and it's been settling-in since then.

I've worked on a lot of old Oscar Schmidt-made guitars and this same model several times. They're really popular in the old-timey/country-blues community for a reason -- you can lean into them aggressively like a more-modern, x-braced guitar and they don't compress or "zip-out" despite their ladder-braced build. They just get louder and ballsier while still retaining the woody, folksy, rootsy voice they're known for.

This one has a solid spruce top over solid birch back and sides, two ladder braces on the lower bout, and the usual 25" scale length. It dates from the late '20s or early '30s. The neck's big, v-shaped, and has wide spacing -- perfect for a fingerpicker.

Repairs included: a neck reset (it'd already had a "reset" with a broken bolt that was not quite great, but I fixed this), fret level/dress, side dots install, saddle-slot fill/recut, new bone saddle, relocation of the bridge pin holes, seam repairs, minor crack and brace repairs, and a setup.

Setup notes: the neck is straight, the frets have good life left in them, and action is spot-on at 3/32" bass and 1/16" treble height at the 12th fret. Strings are 52w, 40w, 30w, 22w, 16, 12 -- like a set of 12s but slightly lighter on the wound strings.

Scale length: 25"

Nut width: 1 7/8"

String spacing at nut: 1 9/16"

String spacing at bridge: 2 1/4"

Body length: 17 7/8"

Lower bout width: 13 1/4"

Side depth at endpin: 3 1/2"

Top wood: solid spruce

Back & sides wood: solid birch

Bracing type: ladder

Fretboard: ebonized maple/pearwood?

Bridge: ebonized birch?

Neck feel: big V-shape, flat board

Neck wood: poplar

Weight: 3 lb 3 oz

Condition notes: it has an old repair to a tiny hairline crack on the back and a tiny one near the fretboard extension on the top. Some of the mismatched seams are a little overlapping on the back but not obvious. There's the usual wear and tear to the finish throughout. It's all-original save the new bone saddle. Because of the broken bolt inside the heel from the previous reset job, I had to predrill and install a bolt in the lower portion of the heel myself to make sure my neck reset would be firm over time. I couldn't remove the neck itself so it was a "shimmed-back" reset job via the top of the neck joint.