Topic: oscar schmidt serial nos.

[dabluz]

neil,

thanks, sorry about the misspell, the information i got at purchase was approx 28-31 and was a blind lemon model. there is a picture of him playing a similar looking stella in "the history of american blues" in that publicaton they refer to it as a "perloid" but it's not exactly like the one pictured with blind lemmon. stella is very difficult to nail down as you say. thanks very much for your info.

if you don't mind i'm going to send you a picture of a circa 1890's "BEERE & SONS" parlor that i'm about to do a neck reset on , maybe you know something about these, i can't find a thing.

[crawley]

Neil has mentioned a reprint of a 1921 catalog. Where can a poor boy get a copy of this? I know of a website where you can view a few pages from a Stella/Sovereign catalog that has banjos and guitjos. But no guitar pages are posted.
Aaron

[onewent]

...and the top, back and sides are all birch on the black Stellas, correctomundo?

[harpe]

Elderly Instruments used to sell the reprint 1921 Stella/Sovereign catalog. You might also try Bernunzio Vintage Instruments.

...and the top, back and sides are all birch on the black Stellas, correctomundo?

Not necessarily. The ones I have seen have had birch tops. However, production coming out of the Schmidt factory was all over the place. They would sometimes substitute spruce for birch for the top of guitars that would otherwise receive a birch top. I have seen this on some of the "decalcomania" guitars that customarily have all-birch construction.

Neil Harpe

[harpe]

I forgot about one Stella that DID have a black finish and spruce top! How could I forget "Blackie"? She was the first black finish Stella I ever came across. A wonderful jumbo/auditorium sized guitar, "Blackie" was light as a feather and had a huge sound.

N.H.

[crawley]

Neil, if you're still checking out this thread, I have another O.S. question for you.

I've noticed on my guitar, and a on a few other Schmidt made guitars, that there are what looks like hand written numbers on the fretboard indicating the frets. One of these other guitars was one of those cool 7 string Tonaharps. They even all look like they were written by the same person. Do you have any idea if this was done at the factory or if the commissioning company did it?

I love the O.S. obscurities and mysteries.

Crawley

[harpe]

Hi Crawley,

There are often numbers written on the fingerboards of old guitars. The numbers were most often added by teachers, as a learning tool for students of the Hawaiian guitar technique.? Playing the Hawaiian guitar? was a huge craze during the first several decades of the 20th Century. I've seen Regals, Harmonys, Kays, even Martin and Gibson guitars with similar numbering. Fingerboards being characteristically dark in color, the numbers are usually hand written in white ink.

The Oscar Schmidt Company cashed in on the Hawaiian guitar craze in a big way! They established a network of "Hawaiian Guitar Conservatories" all over the world. These were mostly mail order lessons, where the student paid in installments and received not only lessons, but an instrument as well. They ran advertisements in newspapers and national magazines and attracted thousands of students between 1915 and 1935. These "Hawaiian Conservatory" guitars, though quite modest, are exceptionally good sounding instruments. They came with a numbered paper learning aid glued to the fingerboard, rather than having numbers added by the teacher.

Another company that did well in the "Hawaiian Guitars business" was the Oahu Company. They had a network of teachers, all of whom sold "Oahu" sheet music and "genuine Oahu guitars" to their students. Most Oahu guitars were made by Kay, (although early on, they sold a few that were made by Oscar Schmidt). Another company was "Bronson", an offshoot of Oahu. The Oahu and Bronson (Kay) guitars cover the entire range of quality - student models made entirely of birch as well as very fancy spruce top examples with lots of pearl and gold leaf ornamentation. Most were made with square necks and almost every one of these guitars will have the white numbers on the fingerboard.