The Steel Guitar Forum

i have just bought the small weissenborn style guitar on the right. it seems to date from the 20s. 20" scale, nicely figured mahagony, waverly tuners (improvised bridge and tailpiece).ladder braced (overbraced, there is not much room left inside, back and top braces almost touch).
does anybody knwo who made this instrument? stella, harmony, regal?

thanks

manfred

Manfred,

The small guitar is a Hilo manufactured by Oscar Schmidt. See p. 173 of my Knutsen book.

Tom Noe
Everett WA

Great find!
What gauges & tuning do you have planned for this?

at the moment the gauges are 16-19-24-32-42-54, tuned in open d. there is a crack at the end of the fretboard so i don't want to put more tension on the top as long as it is not repaired.
i have other acoustic instruments with 20" scales (or shorter). in theory thicker strings might be better and louder. but often times "too thin" strings sound better(using a lighter steel will improve intonation in this case).
also tuning small instrument up to open g or a
(a-e-a-c#-e-a) does not generally make them sound better. some have high voices but some don't.
i have been experimenting with a kind of "cross tuning" which uses no thirds: d-a-d-a-d. you can't get goood sounding lower notes than the d, so five strings will be enough. the small hilo might be a candidate for that tuning.

That's a very cool looking little guitar there, Manfred.

Manfred Nabinger wrote:. . . i have been experimenting with a kind of "cross tuning" which uses no thirds: d-a-d-a-d. you can't get good sounding lower notes than the d, so five strings will be enough. the small hilo might be a candidate for that tuning.

Years ago, I used to fool around with that tuning, but I used all six strings with two unison Ds in the middle: d-a-d-d-a-d. The string gauges were light. I thought of it as a sort of Sunday Afternoon Raga sound. I hope that doesn't rile up too many Indian music fanboys. Have Fun!