1920s Oscar Schmidt Stella 0-Size Guitar

Country-blues players, in particular, are very enamored of these cool old 1920s Oscar Schmidts. They have a woody, chunky tone to them with a lot more warmth than the other ladder-braced guitars from the time so they hold-up well with a "thumping" attack. Many other brands of ladder-braced guitars sort-of flatten-out if you hit them too hard but these just keep giving. This one has a nice decalcomania-style "rosette."

It's solid birch throughout the body, has a poplar neck, and ebonized maple fretboard and bridge. It's original save for saddle, bridge pins, endpin, and nut. The scale length is a hair over 25" or so.

This is a customer's guitar that was in for a neck reset, fret level/dress, new nut, some minor brace and seam repairs, and setup work. The neck joint (supposedly a dovetail but more like a butchered tenon) was especially bad so despite its being glued, I also have a couple of bolts hidden up at the inside of the neckblock. As usual, the bridge saddle slot and pinholes needed to be filled and all recut as the saddle position (from the factory) was far from where it should have been. It has a new bone saddle and ebony pins, too.