1920s The Vernon (Regal) Spruce/Mahogany Tiple

A local customer dropped this off for repair and it has been in her family for a few generations, it seems. It's a prototypical Regal tiple from the time with spruce over mahogany construction, but it lacked its original bridge and, unusually, it has cream binding rather than black. The colors in the purfling are not nearly as faded as usual and you can still see the strong green, yellow, and red coloring in it. It has a "The Vernon" badge at the headstock but it was made by Regal in Chicago.

I reset the neck, Max leveled and dressed the frets, and Ancel made a new floating bridge and compensated saddle for it. We had a spare mandolin tailpiece from the same era to fit to it. The tailpiece load works far better for these old tiples than the "tie block" load they generally have, though you do have to source the proper gauges for them in loop ends or learn how to pop the balls out of ball-end strings.

We set these up for GCEA tuning at ukulele pitch but with octave-down strings on the GC&E courses. Standard tiple tuning is a step up from there, but that confuses modern ukers. It's roughly the same size and shape as a tenor ukulele.