Comment

Comment by robert jones on May 17, 2012 at 1:56am

It's the lighting and angle, the low E is at the right depth.

Rough as it is and with all it's flaws I like it too. The more I play it the less it seems likely it'll get donated to the university program.

Comment by Uncle John on May 17, 2012 at 1:41am

I like the parlor size.  Looks like the big string should sit lower in the nut.  Open tuning and have some fun.

Comment by robert jones on May 17, 2012 at 12:46am

Stellas were made by the Oscar Schmidt Company until bought by Harmony in 1939.

Oscar Schmidt used a paper label and Harmony date stamped the back. This one has glue residue where the label is normally placed and no date stamp so I'm leaning toward pre-Harmony manufacture.

The entire guitar is birch; neck, body, fretboard, original nut, assuming the original bridge was too. But it is solid birch not plywood on the body unlike the craptacular low end gits made today.

This was the parlour guitar model, basically it was equivalent to the FirstAct model from Wal-mart. I mean it's bad, I have the neck on straight and centered but the tailpiece is off center to the right, the original nut was cut a hair over a 1/16 from the edge on the high E, the action is ridiculously high and the tuners are...interesting.

The tuners were put on backwards at the factory, I was going to reinstall right-way-round after I cleaned the gears but the holes didn't match so I left them in the original configuration.

You can tell by the wear pattern that it was rarely fretted above the fifth fret. Short of removing the tailpiece and making a different bridge there's no fixing the action.

I just play it with a slide and love every bit of it. :D

Comment by Uncle John on May 16, 2012 at 3:22pm

I like it just as it is.  Stella - I think was their own manufacturer for a while before being made by Harmony of Chicago, Illinois, USA.  This could be old enough to not have been made in the Harmony factory.   The top?  Birch?

Comment by Gary Deemer on May 16, 2012 at 4:55am

great find

Comment by robert jones on May 16, 2012 at 1:12am

Pre-Harmony :D

Neck was falling off, top and back loose in spots, ugly existing patch and a big crack on the top, no bridge, finish is FUBAR, plus the nut was cut badly.

Reset neck, re-glued, repaired crack, made new walnut bridge and nut, cleaned 8 or 9 decades of gunk out of the gears and slapped on some 8's I had laying around. Leaving the finish as found.

The action is high and the tailpiece is slightly off center but I'm leaving those as is for the moment.

Sound is surprisingly loud and fairly mellow. Considering trying it out with nylon on the next string change.

I may end up donating it to the local university's blues preservation project for the exhibit.

Comment by Lonman on May 15, 2012 at 4:00pm

suh*wheat

Comment by Ron "Oily" Sprague on May 15, 2012 at 8:12am

Woo Hoo! An old Stella.