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Natterjack - Rick Sellens (rick218) is in St. Leonards/Hastings (I'm in Rye).
I think the back and sides are ash..? At first I thought birch, then possibly maple, but I'm sort of thinking ash .. How 'bout yours, natterjack? ..Tom
There are a few samples of scratchy's in this topichttp://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?amp;Itemid=128&topic=3405.0Mine just needed a neck reset (as do pretty much all old guitars) and the bridge re-glued. Rick Sellens (a weenie) did a great job for ?140. The guitar only cost $275 on ebay, so definitely the best value for money guitar I own (or am ever likely to).
There is some information in John Teagle's book "Washburn: Over One Hundred Years of FIne Stringed Instruments." Tonk was one of several interconnected Chicago-based music houses in the early 1900s. In a nutshell, they set up operation around 1893. Twenty years later, the last Tonk left the business, which was taken over by Paul Moenning, who continued to run the Tonk Bros. firm. In 1928, Lyon & Healy decided to concentrate on pianos and harps. They sold their Washburn name to J. R. Stewart and their wholesaling operation to Tonk Bros. The arrangement had Stewart building Washburns for exclusive distribution by Tonk Bros. (A slightly different version of the story has Tonk buying the Washburn name from Lyon & Healy and then hiring Stewart to do their manufacturing.) Stewart, expecting big things, geared up production and opened a new factory. Then the Depression hit when the market crashed in '29. Stewart was left overextended with Tonk not ordering any Washburns for fear of not being able to sell them. He went bankrupt in 1930. Tonk Bros. then bought the Stewart factory for a fraction of its value when it was auctioned off as a result of Stewart's bankruptcy. It also acquired the Washburn, Stewart and LeDomino brand names from the Stewart Co. Tonk sold the Stewart and LeDomino names to the Regal Co. When Tonk geared up Washburn production again, Regal was their builder, using the same factory that Stewart had built before the crash. Tonk continued to wholesale instruments from a variety of sources, including Kay and Stella. Many of these companies had interconnections that are difficult to sort out. Chicago was the center of instrument sales and manufacture by the 1930s and there are many incestuous linkages among the various firms it housed, including Tonk.
I'm working up a little sampler for you Pan.