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@Jojo if you look at the guitar Django was playing in the picture you can see that at that same spot there is something that holds the pickguard to the body, so to me it looks more like that, but I can be wrong of course.. difficult to judge from the picture quality...
Yes, you’re right. The first picture of it with Django doesn’t ( I think) have a reflection from the edge of the pickguard ‘clip’; the second photo does have a reflection hence me thinking it was a chip.
So, the pickguard and clip have been removed as has the pickup which seems to have left a small mark, too, right at the end of the fretboard.
The thing is, how many of these did the luthier make?
So who bought this guitar? For sure it is someone who read this post or maybe @Mitch ? At the end of his article on his website he wrote :
After the recent discovery of the french « Chouette d’or » (« Golden Owl »), here is a new challenge, this time for guitar enthusiasts: the hunt for the mysterious white guitar is on! »
I put a "commentaire" on his website but it is not published... I only wrote the same thing as on this forum.
@Jojo yes that's what I thought I saw..
I have no idea how many he made of these, maybe just one.. I don't know.. I have never seen other guitars made by Hermitte.
Sounds like it’s one for guitar shops that specialise in GJ in Paris though, just thinking aloud, it might be worth, if someone really had a lot of time on their hands, asking around the Cannes area especially the local archives. He’d have obviously made a lot of guitars to make a living though made them for the South of France ( which is a total guess on my part). Presume he would have advertised in the local press.
Have to say, I’m a bit swept up in the ‘romance’ of this…A guitar played by Django? For €850? Bargain of a lifetime :))
The two sets of pictures don't even look exactly identical. Most of the details are there but they're not identical. Likely because of the low quality photographs. Because who would put in the time to copy a guitar that sold for 850 euros... Which, I don't think I'd pay the money for it even if I thought it was in Django's hands lol. It could be a good guitar, who knows.
I posted this link before, you can see it was as described an "atelier de réparation" so mainly an instrument repair workshop. Frédéric Hermitte and his sons Léonce and Barthélémy were luthiers. They also sold records. It is possible they repaired this guitar and put their label in it, but since the guitar is very difficult to identify it is of course possible they also build some guitars... . In any case this guitar that was for sale on Leboncoin until yesterday (it has been for sale since I think February this year) looks almost exactly like the one Django was playing on the picture and it looks like it has had a pickguard that has been removed. So it could be the same guitar, but we cannot be sure.. . The person who sold it (or maybe he or she saw Michel Mercier's article and removed the "annonce" on Leboncoin) wanted at least 850 euros in cash for it. Or maybe the guitar had been sold a long time ago but the seller did not remove the "annonce", that happens sometimes on Leboncoin... .
@wim I saw you edited my first post in this discussion, you added a picture, I don't know why you did that.. . I thought hmmm did I post that second picture? I thought I didn't since I have not kept that picture on my computer... I keep pictures from all guitars that I find interesting.. . Anyway, not a big deal.. .
Yes, this edit added the second picture from the blog link directly in your post. I did that because pictures from random blog links have a habit of disappearing.
Posts with embedded pictures have copies of the images uploaded to the forum backend, which is (hopefully) less susceptible to link rot. It's a real shame when interesting historical content in old threads vanishes.
Ok thanks for your reply!
Just out of interest, is this the only white GJ guitar people have seen? It’s the only one I’ve ever seen and am just wondering if it was ‘a thing’ some manufacturers did, perhaps as a ‘one off’ in the 1940s