# General Mandolin Topics > Vintage Instruments >  Lester's D28??

## Gary Hedrick

Saw this auction listing....

http://www.auctionzip.com/aflive.htm...ampaign=alerts

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## Timbofood

Something does not add up.  I think they mean to say its similar to Lester's and Loretta's not that they owned it.

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## Ray(T)

It simply says that they played it and not that they owned it - all manner of people may have played it!

What doesn't add up to me is the truss rod cover. Whether its a D28 or a D41 neck so far as I'm aware Martin never made a neck adjustable from the head end. From memory, the first adjustable necks weren't fitted until the 1980's. S'pose it could be a heavily modified D41 neck?

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## Gary Hedrick

Agreed....I thought Marty Stuart owned it and it is in a museum

but why such a high price????

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## Ken Waltham

Yeah, right. Not in this lifetime.

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## doc holiday

Didn't Earl have a D18 with a trussrod cover?

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## baptist mando55

This apears to be the late Bruce Jones d28. He was a prominant bluegrasser from NC who passed away november of last year. The late Ce Ward did all the work on this one. i HAVE PLAYED IT MANY TIMES IT IS A ABSOLUTE BEAST.  F5loar may know it as well. :Mandosmiley:

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## D C Blood

Seems the auction blurb says "Lester Flatt played this guitar", not owned it.  I've played Bill Monroe's mandolin...doesn't mean a thing...

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## grassrootphilosopher

A 1948 Martin D-28 might bring about 12.000,- USD in today´s market.

There´s no celebrity factor as it was not owned by the ones the auction house claimed that had played it. Since Lester Flatt´s rythm does not goe with it, talent is not sold with the guitar.

I see (and read) a non original neck which would reduce the value heavily.

I also see swapped Grover tuners (that went with the neck, no doubt).

I see a changed bridge with a drop in saddle.

And I see a Lester Flatt pickguard, which looks cool to some (might be me) but reduces the value nonetheless.

All in all I´d value the guitar at about 7 k (and that´s optimistic, because player grade guitars just do not move presently).

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## Timbofood

My read was the line that the seller says, " like" Lester and Loretta played. I don't think this was in spitting distance of either artist. 
I seem to remember that Lester's was inlayed with "L 5" at the body joint. And that was with regard to it being Mike Longworth's fifth "D-45" customization.  I am sure there is someone around here with the real story on that....Tom? I thought that Marty Stuart was the owner of that particular guitar too.

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## Shuping

As with any add or contract, the devil is in the details. The add says "used by"...not owned by. Bill Monroe used my bathroom once...you get the point. I wonder how one can really put a value on these pieced together Frankenstein monsters. How it sounds would be my main concern. I kinda like these boogered up instruments if they sound great. At least it is easily identifiable. Price seems kinda steep but that is always debatable I guess. I can say without a doubt that this is not a famous guitar that was ever owned by Lester Flatt...maybe Lester Bangs? :Popcorn:

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## Gary Hedrick

The ad has been reworked from when I first saw it....

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## baptist mando55

I dont know who owns this guitar now but i am pretty sure It  belonged to Bruce Jones. He had it for sale a few years ago for 9500. I know its a 48 but as I stated it was heavily modified by CE Ward who also inlaid Jimmy Martins guitar<did the 6 string neck for Sonny Osborne and did many 5 string conversions and built many great f5 copies. i dont know what was done inside this guitar but it was a very strong guitar.Bruce taught me how to get started on mandolin and i played this guitar several times :Mandosmiley:

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## f5loar

This is the Bruce Jones "custom" CEWard '48 D28.  No doubt the Log Cabin Boys did many shows with ole Lester and Loretta and appeared numerous times at the old Bluegrass Days at the Opry.  I bet Lester strummed it several times. But it's not exactly like Lester's '50 D28 as this has a simulated style 45 neck with a similar but not the same Lester style oversized pickguard.  Likely Mr. Ward scolloped the braces giving it more of a "booming" big Martin sound.  Yeah, 12K is reaching.  6 to7K more like it.  As far as the truss rod cover since Bruce and CE are dead now we can only speculate on that one.  I supect it had a truss rod installed before Bruce got it used (aka Earl Scruggs D18) and CE just kept it in there and put a fancy pearl cover over it.

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## almeriastrings

Someone has drilled the bridge and covered it with pearl dots. Could be a Barcus-Berry 'hot dot' installation, could be bolts! If the former, could also be a big old jack socket lurking there somewhere. Not a very good attempt at a 45-style headstock inlay...lots of other stuff altered, as already noted.

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## f5loar

It's bolts holding the bridge down.   Because Lester did it, so did Bruce!  In the old days when F&S was tuning up to G sharp they pulled alot of necks and bridges.  So the best way was bolt it down. Likely a reason for the Martins with adjustable truss rods put in them too.   I remember in 1966 on a brand new Martin D28 i bought the bridge started coming up the next year.  I sent it back and it lasted another year and came up again.  The next time I requested they bolt it down like Lester's and they did at no extra charge since it was still under warrenty!  Never came up again.

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## baptist mando55

It was a very early attempt ov inlay by Ce Ward . He later did very nice banjo necks and the inlay was very good.Also CE ward f5s are verygood :Mandosmiley:

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## BradKlein

I think we ought to have a photo up on this thread for posterity. Anyone have a photo of this instrument up on stage?

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## baptist mando55

never saw  Lester or Loretta play it but I have seen Bruce pick Just a rose will do many times. Think Josh Graves may have fingerpicked some of the old Flatt and Scruggs tunes at one of Bruces festivals.  Its not worth what the want but it is a great guitar,not origanal but ifyou could get it at a good price you would be pleased. I have playe a few prewar martins and I qwn some good guitars but few can touch this  one :Mandosmiley:

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## Gary Hedrick

Bolting bridges on Martin guitars in the 50's and 60's was indeed "common". Some used extra wood screws and sheesh Swiss Cheese........tuning in those days was a real trip.....guitar player was the "standard"....if the humidity had increased and that along with the natural tendency of some folks to sharpen strings when tuning and voila.....I'd be singing tenor like a cat with its tail being pulled.....great fun for a average muscian (at best) like myself...

I think every area of the country has guitars like this one that are part of the fabric of the bluegrass or country bar music scene .....that have a "history" behind them......modifications.....wear and tear and sometimes just plain slop jar abuse. 

Beer....cigarettes on string ends....wild strokes.....banjo pegheads around the mic....open cases and pissed off wives all contributed to the battle scars...

Heck I remember one of the Logsdon Sisters of Bean Blossom fame getting upset because her husband didn't come home one Saturday night and she took his RB3 archtop and his mid 40's D28 and put them on a trash fire.... the ultimate battle scars....charred remains.....

Ah but I have digressed....

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## f5loar

Well, 12 thousand ain't going to touch this one!  I played it back when he was trying to sell it and it's a hoss.  Could stand up to a bone for sure.  CE Ward would do anything you ask of him back in those early days.  Why he could take a perfectly good 20's F4 and make an F5 out of it in one weekend.  He could turn prewar TB1 tenoros into gold plated 5 String Granadas.  And he could take any old D28 and make it into a D45.  I was in his Charlotte shop (behind the piano place) in the early 70's when he had one of Red Smiley's D45s in for repair.  He told me to stand across the room (about 30 feet) and put my hand on that picture frame glass.  Then he strumed a solid E chord and the glass just shook.  He said" now that's a real Martin guitar."

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## Willie Poole

I am sure that Jimmy Martin also had his D-28 altered with a truss rod and the bridge screwed down and had those pearl dots placed over the screw heads, a common thing in those days for someone that played all of the time....

    Willie

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## baptist mando55

Bruce also had a real nice CE ward Loar copy F5 loar got any idea who ended up with it?

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## f5loar

I can't believe the really pi^s poor description this auction house gives on this guitar.  Almost sounds like it's a real Martin D42 neck whatever that is.  Pretty sure it's been refinished too and no mention of that. And they want a $12,000 starting bid?  That's crazy.
Also noticed they plainly state "Auction House does NOT ship"  meaning you best add a few thousand to the price to go to Texas to pick it up and then be expected to pay a 10% Texas State Tax on top of your high bid and 20% commision added to it.  Whomever owns this guitar would have been much better off to go to ebay with it.

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## almeriastrings

Since we're talking Lester era D-28's...



An unusual feature on this one is the very pale, golden-yellow rather than pumpkin-orange top. It is hard to be 100% sure, but I am inclined to think this is a very early early example of use of Englemann.  We know for sure they used some in 1952 (so-called 'magic spruce'), and this one dates from mid-1950. I have seen one other very similar, a D-18 from the same year with a very close serial number to this... 

Brazilian on this one is also very fine. Has a couple of repaired cracks, but otherwise in very nice condition for its age.



It sounds exactly like what you'd expect of a really good D-28.

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## mando-tech

> My read was the line that the seller says, " like" Lester and Loretta played. I don't think this was in spitting distance of either artist. 
> I seem to remember that Lester's was inlayed with "L 5" at the body joint. And that was with regard to it being Mike Longworth's fifth "D-45" customization.  I am sure there is someone around here with the real story on that....Tom? I thought that Marty Stuart was the owner of that particular guitar too.


     I can detect some confusion in the making here.  Mike told me that he put the L-5 inlay on Lester's guitar to denote the fifth work of that kind he had done, it had nothing to do with any "D-45" customization.  However, sometime in the early or mid-sixties Mike started doing "simulated" D-45 work on D-28s.  His ad stated that for the sum of $500 you could have your D-28 made to look like a D-45, also a D-21 could be changed to a D-28.  It would take 120 days.  He specified that no style # would be changed inside the guitar, therefore, avoiding any fraud or deception down the line.  You probably know Lester's D-28 was a 1950, he got it in 1956, he played a D-18 up til then.  After the break-up he got a newer D-28.  Marty and Connie got hold of Lester's '50 D-28, from them it went to the CM Hall of Fame.

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## Timbofood

I love it when an older thread like this pops back up! Thanks for the clarification.

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## allenhopkins

My "favorite" D-28 bluegrass modification was Charlie Moore's; he put a trapeze tailpiece on his...!

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## Hallmark498

> I can detect some confusion in the making here.  Mike told me that he put the L-5 inlay on Lester's guitar to denote the fifth work of that kind he had done, it had nothing to do with any "D-45" customization.  However, sometime in the early or mid-sixties Mike started doing "simulated" D-45 work on D-28s.  His ad stated that for the sum of $500 you could have your D-28 made to look like a D-45, also a D-21 could be changed to a D-28.  It would take 120 days.  He specified that no style # would be changed inside the guitar, therefore, avoiding any fraud or deception down the line.  You probably know Lester's D-28 was a 1950, he got it in 1956, he played a D-18 up til then.  After the break-up he got a newer D-28.  Marty and Connie got hold of Lester's '50 D-28, from them it went to the CM Hall of Fame.


My father has a 54 D28 that Mike did some work on, It has the upgraded 45 neck inlays and just an "L" on the finger board.  Story is Mike started putting just the "L" because L259, L260, L261 wouldnt look so great.  I'm not sure how many had the #s on them

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