This guitar plays like a dream, soaked in creamery-fresh butter, by a 85-year-old Chicago Blues man in a light-grey wool suit and a pork-pie hat and Ray-bans. It’s my favorite guitar.
Back in the Depression, anybody trying to make a living in the music business needed to be bold. Mr. Slingerland, who had a sheet music business, came up with the idea that he could sell a lot of sheet music if he packaged it up with an instrument. Sign up for a subscription music course through the mail, and he would send you the instrument of your choice “for free.” He sold thousands of subscriptions. The instruments came out of the big factories in Chicago, wherever he could get them cheap.
There are very few of these guitars left, since most blew up when folks tried to put steel strings on them. In this example the body was made entirely out of flat-sawn birch – not a bad tonewood but it splits like crazy when slab sawn, so off it came.
New spruce top from my 30-year-old stash. I used the original bridge, but replaced the original fret-wire saddle with bone. Re-braced with a light X-bracing pattern to handle steel strings. Ivoroid binding top, back, and fret board. Historically accurate tuning machines from StewMac. I can’t stand cheap tuners and these are great! All in all, probably too many upgrades from the original condition, but what a joy to play! SLINGERLAND, MAN!
Now it’s my favorite guitar!
Woodsong Strings 