Rare and cool! A Regal mando from the thirties. Made in Chicago, USA.When she was new, she had a metallic silver/black burst paint scheme but the clear lacquer topcoat has yellowed in the 90 years since she was made into a sort of greenburst. The flowers on the top are a factory decal, not painted.

As you can see, the paint has worn in a few places. We didn't want to change that; the wear gives it more character.

She was in awful condition when we found her. She needed a lot of restoration and repair without changing the character or the patina. Just fix what was broken and make it play better. The top was loose; the back was starting to get loose; the neck needed a reset. The tuners were corroded and dirty. The tailpiece was a half inch to the left of center! Three of the four top braces had come completely loose (among other problems too many to list.

So we took off the neck and the top. The top was cracked, so we closed up the cracks and cleated them, then put the braces back on; all with hot hide glue. Note well: the top still has about 2mm of warping near the bottom of the soundhole. The top had four thick braces, a tailpiece reinforcement and was glued to a huge neck heel block. It was over-braced and couldn't move freely. Using the traditional tap tone method, we shaved the braces down until it could sing. After gluing the top back and resetting the neck, it was time to set the action. The bridge was a pinch too low so we laminated maple veneer to the bottom. The action is now about 1.7mm at the 12th fret. Since there's no truss rod to adjust, we had to do a LOT of fret levelling. We re-ebonized the fretboard and nut the traditional violin-maker way with India ink and almond oil. That made the abalone position dots really pop. Softened up the fret ends and did a mild roll on the fretboard edges. Note well: the lower edge of the fretboard is very worn at the 5th fret, see the picture. The tuners were completely taken apart, de-rusted, degreased, lubricated and reassembled. Then we did just a few touch-ups to the paint with nitrocellulose lacquer.

A few other details: it's all solid wood. The neck is poplar with a weird dowel joint instead of a dovetail. The tuning buttons are bakelite instead of the usual celluloid so they didn't turn to dust. It has the weird Regal "Gumby" headstock shape. Two of the tuner screws aren't original. The bridge was in the wrong spot so there's an un-yellowed spot where it was for almost 100 years. The stripe on the back isn't inlay; it's a decal. At some point, a pickguard was installed and then removed. Plus she plays and sounds great!