1920s Oscar Schmidt-Made Tiple

A customer of ours sent this in ages ago. It's an Oscar Schmidt-made tiple from somewhere in the mid-'20s. These often have branding like "Wizard" or "Bruno" or the like on them and I've seen them in at least 3 or 4 different brands just in the shop. They have a distinctive body shape, tend to have nicer appointments (multi-ply binding) than a lot of the competition, and their necks feature a faster, more comfortable profile and slotted headstocks which make restringing much easier.

I gave this one a neck reset and Ancel finished the job by fitting a bespoke bridge to replace the broken original one. Said new bridge has only 4 bridge pins but slots to mount the appropriate number of strings (2-3-3-2 in 4 courses) in each pinhole, just like on old Schmidt Stella 12-strings. I find that not having 10 individual pins on these bridges means that they tend to not want to explode from dryness cracks and the like.

It also got a compensated bone saddle and Ancel set it up to play bang-on and fast. Like most of these, it has s solid sprue top with ladder bracing and solid birch back and sides. The neck is poplar, the fretboard is rosewood-like, and the new bridge is rosewood.