c. 1940 Acoustic Lap Steel guitar

c. 1940 Acoustic Lap Steel guitar

Here we have a vintage ladder-braced, parlor size lap style acoustic guitar with a 13” (330mm) wide body and scale length of 24” (610mm). We believe this to have been built as a lap guitar;  the original wooden nut has no string slots and simply supports a metal nut riser to manage the string height and spacing. The bar frets suggest a pre WW-2 date.  There are hints of an Australian provenance as its ‘flat-top with tailpiece’ design and the tuners have echoes of Australian made ladder-braced JMG guitars from the late 1940s, while the coloured fret markers are reminiscent of the electric steel guitars made by Peter McCarthy in Melbourne, pre WW2.  Unfortunately there are no signs of a maker, other than the number ‘1009’ pencilled inside.  If anyone can help us identify this guitar please get in touch! Meanwhile with a recent set-up, fret job and new bridge by us, this affordable vintage unit sounds surprisingly loud and toneful for bluesy slide or Hawaiian excursions.  Comes with a gig bag, or talk to us about our selection of vintage cases. Also enquire if you’d like to see/hear a facetime demo of this or any of our instruments.