1890s Haynes Parlor Guitar

This is a beautiful (and wrecked-up, in some ways) old Haynes-made guitar from the 1890s. Its owner had been waiting ages for us to work on it and I wound-up doing some horse-trading with him that let him get the work done for a song, essentially, heh heh.

The body had numerous cracks, loose bracing, many seam woes, and other stuff going on (the ugly crack fill jobs are not me -- they were there when it arrived). I fixed all of that, fit a new Madagascar rosewood bridge, and reset the neck. Sarah leveled and dressed the frets, Jose did a little more fixing of the frets (they were wonkily-set into the board and some had sprung), and then he finished my bridge work by routing the saddle slot, drilling pinholes, and setting the whole fella up. Lastly, I fit a K&K pickup to it and kitbashed a soundhole-mounted volume pot for it from a random, hardware-store-style L bracket that's glued-up under the top. It's very retro.

It's, of course, strung with nylon classical strings as the original strings would be gut on these. Folks like to string these with very light steel but the sound is definitely not as good as when these are strung with gut or nylon or Nylgut as you get a warmer, fuller bass response and the instrument isn't screaming about the excess tension.

Haynes-made guitars (Bay State, etc.) are some of the first American instruments with radiused fretboards and so, despite their age, they have a mildly-modern feel to the neck aside from the stiff V profile.