1890s Washburn 111 "New Model" Parlor Guitar

This fella arrived as a down-on-its-luck, many-times-repaired, funky old box. Almost immediately folks were asking after it while it hung out in the "waiting" racks because it's cute and has pretty rosewood on the back and sides. I put it off in favor of other projects, though, because it can be quite time-consuming to work-around other repair jobs from the past.

Now that this guitar is fixed-up, though, it's a lovely little couch-buddy, folk-strummy, fingerpicker-centric, nylon-strung instrument. It's got a very warm, sweet, mellow sound. When it was built around 1900 or so it was intended for gut/classical strings, so that's what it's using now. While some of the x-braced Washburns from the time handle very light steel (10s) alright, this one definitely would not. It's lightly-built!

The journey to repaired was fraught, though, due to both a lot of funky old repairs and a damaged neckblock/upper-bout area. I reinforced that a lot and then all of the other repairs fell into place around that. It's all tidied-up, now, though, and ready to roll.

Repairs included: a lot -- a neck reset, neck block repair and reinforcement with a big brace/neck block extension for the upper bout, minor brace and seam repairs (re-repairs, really), crack repairs, a fret level/dress, side dots install, bridge modification (bridge is not original and likely '40s or '50s -- it had a classical-style block rather than the period pin-style loading when it arrived), small pieces of replacement binding, and general cleaning and setup work.

Top wood: solid spruce

Back & sides wood: solid Brazilian rosewood

Bracing type: ladder (transverse)

Bridge: rosewood

Fretboard: ebony

Neck wood: mahogany

Action height at 12th fret: 3/32” overall (fast, spot-on)
String gauges: medium-tension nylon classical

Neck shape: medium V

Board radius: hair of radius but essentially flat

Neck relief: straight

Fret style: low/small

Scale length: 24 1/4"

Nut width: 1 3/4"

Body width: 12 1/4"

Body depth: 4"

Weight: 3 lbs 4 oz

Condition notes: where to start? I think I mentioned all the problems above, but to sum up -- there are a lot of old "repairs" that were re-repaired and some of the old "repairs" are obvious with a mirror in the soundhole -- small amounts of extra bracing or oversized cleats, glue-trails here and there, and whatnot. The biggest change has been a big supporting block/brace of mine that's glued-up to mate to the neckblock to reinforce that whole area of the top. It works like a charm. As far as unoriginal features -- the bridge is a replacement but looks vaguely period now that we've tweaked it a bit. The tuners are original, however.

More: there are various repaired cracks on the top, back, and sides and anything that's need it has had cleats fit for stability's sake. The finish is original throughout but shows wear and tear via playwear, scratching, nicks, and dings all over. 

It comes with: sorry, no case.