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Yep, Juan Estruch is a well regarded name from Barcelona, and his Flamenco guitars are highly prized. but what you found there is a Laut or Tenor Lute, a local 12 string folk instrument, a longer scale version of the Bandurria.
Nice find !
So this is no odd twelvestring guitar, but a cister? Another cousin of the portuguese guitar?
Yes. Or as the old English version is called - a cittern. Tunings are different but all related historically.
There have been questions about this kind of tailpieces:
https://www.galerie-casanova.com/portfolios/petite-bouche-jazz-anonyme-c-1940/
Maybe Jerome Casanova can tell more about it?
Well I can take a guess about that guitar (as could anyone else).
Certainly the body shape, soundhole and thirteenth fret join all suggest Busato,
It has the yellow button tuners by Delaruelle common to many Paris made guitars, but the bridge with its white trim detail is typically Italian.
The neck meanwhile has a Di Mauro shape headstock, again a common enough design but I notice it also has that little felt strip behind the nut which nobody has ever been able to explain but I have only seen on Di Mauro guitars.
Until I posted recently about finding a small. parlor size. guitar by Luigi Genovesi with the same tailpiece they had generally been seen on guitars labelled, or more often, branded as Sonora. Sonora was a wholesaler or retailer but not a luthier, possibly Italian. Some of us are still looking for more clues to the Sonora story. It has long been known that Busato did indeed make guitars for Sonora, to the point where some would like every Sonora guitar to be a Busato if only for financial gain.
So that is my guess, a hybrid Busato body with a Di Mauro neck and bought in hardware assembled for Sonora but escaped the branding iron.
Anyone care to take another guess?
Here is the Genovesi:
And a Sonora I sold a while ago which also has a thirteenth fret join and the same bridge:
“it also has that little felt strip behind the nut which nobody has ever been able to explain”
The guitar appears to have single-routed tuner slots (as opposed to the common, and trickier-to-do, double-routed tuner slots, the purpose of the latter mainly being to allow for the strings not to touch the headstock between tuners and nut). The felt may be there to keep the strings from rattling on the headstock face and otherwise damp the after-length of the string between tuner and nut.
Check out how the G and D string exit the tuner channel- they clearly touch the headstock, at a fairly steep angle. If you damp the strings with some felt, you’re less likely to hear any weird rattling/ringing from the strings above the nut.
Thanks for the suggestion Gouch but I can't see how that makes any difference. Yes, the D and G strings touch the middle strip of timber on my St Louis Blues although on the Modèle Django they do not (looking closely it is possible someone removed some more of the centre strip on that one) and both the high and low E strings on both of my Di Mauros do touch the end of the slot due to the sharp angle from the tuner to the nut and not enough timber routed out, but the felt is nowhere near that point and well clear of the strings.
I had asked this question on here a few years ago and got no definitive answer; the theories about damping overtones being the most believable.
You can clearly see how far away from the strings it is on my St Louis Blues here:
And likewise on the Modèle Django here:
A year ago, I was perfectly happy with my collection of guitars as they seemed to meet all my practicing and gigging needs (the latter infrequent now I’m in my 70s). These include two modern manouche guitars, a Mateos and an Altamira.
Then it started: as I read posts here, especially by @ChrisMartin and @AndyW, I found myself more and more regularly perusing the European auction sites. And I now find myself the owner of a 1960s Henri Miller (of Mirecourt) and a 1950s Huttl (Bubenreuth) archtop.
This involves a longish story spanning over 50 years
Over the last 20 years or so I have tried on and off via jazz guitar forums, vintage guitar sites and shops to identify a guitar I used to play in the early 1960s but sold in 1967. I had forgotten the brand name but I recalled it was named after a US location with an M ... something like Madison ... or Michigan or Manhattan I recalled. Impossible to decipher the headstock badge in my old photos. My online searches for guitar + Madison, Michigan or Manhattan just gave guitar shops in those US cities or the Guild Manhattan.
Fittings are very like early Hofner and other German models of the time. It was not branded Hofner though as I was obsessed with Hofner at that time and wouldn't forget (I still have an old 1957 Senator, now unplayable, hanging on my wall).
Finally, I recently found concrete info! With help from @Willie who contacted some German experts on these instruments, I solved it.
The Michigan was a generic brand name for guitars imported by the UK firm Beare and Son. They sold guitars imported from W Germany and probably from RDA and Czechoslovakia; also dobros from the states and even Gibsons at one stage that they sold as Cromwells. They also had a branch in Canada.
The headstock badge on the various Michigans online do match the one on mine (which I could never make out well from my old photos).
So, mine is a Michigan from B&S that was possibly made by Hofner (based on the Club), or perhaps Framus or Huttl. The controls and pickup do look like Hofner. I’m not sure if the parts were shared by different manufacturers at that time.
Now Huttl, a possibility suggested to Willie by a German expert, was a new name to me but some of their headstocks were quite similar to my Michigan.
Then I found a Huttl archtop for sale at a reasonable price, a Black Rose sunburst Combo model, and my bid was accepted.
The unusual headstock suggests it was probably made for the Lindberg music shop in Munich in 1958. Apparently, Wolfgang Huttl was quite influenced by the op-art movement which was getting underway in the 1950s and
some of his designs are rather over the top.
My guitar when it arrived appeared to be almost 100% original, very light and easy to play. I had a local luthier tidy up some details and replace the Bakelite nut and bridge saddle with bone. Although the top is laminated, with bronze strings it produces a pleasing sound and gives me immense pleasure to play.
@Bill Da Costa Williams
I was wondering if it finally has arrived, congratulations to this beautiful instrument!
Ha ! Well sorry if this is partly my fault, but you don't have to read my posts !
Yes, there is a whole new world of German archtops out there to be discovered. I too have always had that nostalgic leaning toward Hofners as they were the most commonly seen in suburban London music shop windows in the 1960s. I finally attained my dream of a red Verithin model, the subject of my teenage lust back then.
But there have been many others in between. The Verithin has a nice shallow neck which I find very comfortable, something I could not say about some of the other Hofners that have come and gone:
The link you posted to german-vintage-guitar.com is always worth a look. They are probably the best online for such things and must have seen and worked on them all.
My current project is resurrecting a Hoyer Solist that got wrecked. I say 'resurrecting' rather than 'restoring' as the top has been smashed in, (jumped on by the look of it) and needed major surgery to make it into a guitar again. I soaked the damaged area briefly, just enough to be able to massage the remaining part back into some sort of shape, and then reglued a new tailblock to hold it together. With so many splits running across the grain as well as along it I then had to add some extra bracing and a pair of violin style soundposts under the bridge area. At least now it has the strength to hold up under strings tuned to pitch. I doubt it will ever have a true archtop tone with so much timber inside but it is gonna make one helluva statement as an electric. This is how it was when I got it.
More on that one soon, it is nearly finished. Meanwhile, my taste for the Bulgarian Orfeus (or Orpheus) guitars and my penchant for playing bass occasionally has led me to looking for one of these.