Old French D-Hole Django Guitar

Wolfi59

I´m now following another track - I try to find the previous owner. The owner of the guitar shop where I bought the guitar remembered a name and a city - but thats nearly 4 years ago. Maybe I´m lucky and find him and get some more information from the previous owner (who brought in the name Etienne).

Wolfgang

scot

The neck on this guitar looks a lot like the neck on a Beuscher-labelled guitar a friend of mine used to have - especially the peg-head and the color of the lacquer. We never did find out who made that guitar.

There is an old tradition in Europe of small, one- or two-man shops turning out good sounding but crude string instruments. The most famous ones in France were Gerome and Patenotte. They made every kind of string instrument, fair quality and fair prices. We never had this here - our workaday guitars etc were made in factories. And today our small shops are all trying to make the absolute best guitars they can.

I think that in the 50s and 60s, many small instrument ateliers produced reasonably good quality Selmer-like guitars. If Selmer-style guitars were a mystery here, they certainly were not mysterious at all in Europe. On my trips to France I have seen many older no-name guitars with a stressed top and a big clunky neck, clearly modelled on the Selmer but without the kind of refinement you find on a high quality guitar. These guitars almost certainly originated in one of these long gone workshops. There are still a lot of these kinds of guitars around I think, and this guitar is probably one of them.

This instrument making tradition still exists in Spain and in Latin America. Maybe in other parts of Europe, too - anyone else remember the Polish and Russian flattops that were around in the late 70s and early 80s?

It's interesting how there is suddenly all the interest in stressed top guitars. The concept was patented and put into practice here in the USA by the Larsen brothers in the first decade of the 20th century. Clearly it works as well with a pin bridge as it works with a floating bridge. The many guitars the Larsens made using this technique were fabulous sounding instruments which command a very high price on the market today - if you can find one for sale. Anyone here know why N American builders never embraced the stressed top? Too difficult to make using even small factory production methods? Or what?

Ken Bloom

Hi Scott,

Our American guitar tradition comes from the German approach. The stressed top was common in mandolins and, earlier, in the saz from Turkey from which many of our plucked instruments were generated. Once you had Martin establish what a guitar was suppose to be it set us on a particular course. Even today, the majority of the guitars made are Maritn clones. Orville Gibson generated a different approach and now we have archtops. I don't know where the Larsens got their idea from or if they just hit on it themselves. Once a tradition gets going it sets the course for what follows. How many people make stressed top gutiars that don't follow the Maccaferri/Selmer approach to the particulars? If you search, you can find the occasional luthier who will make a round hole Selmac style guitar but the norm is oval or D and the size and shape of the soundbox is also very prescribed. For me, the stressed top design solved a problem. I needed an instrument with seven strings, lots of volume and projection and as much clarity as I could muster. I'm happy.

Bob Holo

If you want to go back even further, EF Howe patented a stressed top mandolin design for increased strength with lighter bracing prior to the turn of the century. I was really taken with Shelley Park's interpretation of a Vega Cylinder Top guitar at DFNW 2005 and researched cylinder instruments a bit.

Some American builders have embraced stressed top designs. John Greven started embracing it when he started making his Prarie State model which was more or less his Homage to the Larsens. He lives a few miles from me and has been kind enough to meet and talk about luthiery - how he got into it - what his aspirations are - very cool guy. His goal now, after some 30 years or more building guitars is to see how close he can come to recreating the tone of the great pre-war flat-tops (and stressed tops) so Pre-war Martins, Larsens... etc..

A handful of other creative luthiers have done various stressed top traditional American style steel stringed guitars. I think SCGC has recently started offering guitars with a smaller radius arc on the soundboard... probably not a "true" stressed top, but a refreshing departure from the ordinary to be sure.

sockeye

There's a guy in Chicago named Frankie Montuoro who builds his Larson-inspired guitars under tension:

http://www.montuoroguitars.com/

I've never seen or played on but they look beautiful!

John

scot

I remember seeing some Vega cylinder back mandolins a long time ago. It's an interesting concept but it must not have worked all that well because it's not in use any more. But - Phillip Monneret who is the heir to the Gerome workshop in Mirecourt makes a semi-Selmer style with a sort of cylinder top and back. This guitar is popular in Paris, Sammy Daussat used one for a long time. They are rare in the US, though. They have a nice tone, slightly softer than the traditional Selmer tone. Maybe a bit closer to an archtop tone. I have attached a couple of photos - these seem to be a bit pixilated - sorry. Honestly I don't know if these tops are carved, formed or made from some combination of the two techniques.

Those Montuoro guitars look great! I had a chance to by a Larsen Euphonon once, had the money but said no. It wasn't one of my better moves...

patrickbitane

I know this guitar absolutely as I sold it to Stephan Senger of Hannover...

This is indeed a Wil Etienne , but he is not french, he is dutch, I am not sure of his whereabout or if he is stil alive, but that is where you should try to find more about your guitar..

Wil was one of the very first guitarbuilder to wonder the path of this kind of lutherie, which to me should be not be left per se to the Italo-french tradition , but they do are the best of the rest...

Anyway this guitar weight as I rememeber enough to have you doing some body building as well as playing it... still it does have "something " to it, have fun with it and enjoy !

Patrick Bitane.

Wolfi59

Hi Patrick,

sorry for my late response. I was absent in the forum for some time. Thanks a lot for your information on my old guitar. I thought of a french luthier first simply because the name Etienne sounded french to me. You are absolutely right, dutch luthiers easily match the best of the world. Only think of Leo Eimers, Thijs van der Harst or Ger Boonstra and others. And my Etienne is indeed quite heavy. The last years it served me very well as a rhythm guitar and for body building

Thanks again,
Wolfi