Re: Please Help ID Instrument - Partial Label and Pat 88 Tuning P
Hopefully, one of our bowlback experts will recognize that bit of label and ID the builder.
I'm pretty sure that the three banjo tuners were not original to the instrument, but such tuners are handy for adding strings to a stock instrument. An 11-string ... something? Maybe 5 paired courses plus a single? That could allow for guitar-style tuning (fourths + a third), even if, as many of us have learned the hard way, that doesn't leave room for guitar-style fingering.
A close-up of the nut, that wired-on metal thingy near the tuners, might give a hint of how the strings were intended to be placed. If there's an original nut underneath it, maybe bone, dark wood, or an early plastic, that should show evidence of the original 4 pairs of strings, plus maybe later modifications.
Clearer close-ups of the bridge, at the bend in the top, should also show evidence of the original 8 strings plus mods. (The bridge is normally held on by string tension only; should it come loose, "re-gluing" would not be standard practice.)
May '88 is probably the banjo tuners' patent date but they could have been made decades later, so that probably isn't a helpful clue.
Just for comparison to a typical "what were they thinking?" history:
I have a 1950-ish 10-string Martin tiple, sort of a cross between baritone uke & 12-string guitar. It has 4 courses of 2-3-3-2 strings, tuned in fourths + a third like ukulele or the top 4 strings of guitar, and the 3 lower courses having an octave string. From the holes drilled on the bridge and slots cut in the nut, it's clear that someone thought five paired courses (2-2-2-2-2) would be an improvement but, like most such mods, it didn't stick. I suspect you're looking at a similar effort.
Edit:
The original tuners' gears, with cogs that are almost square and worm that is almost a knife-edge, indicate (to non-expert me) that it was originally European.
- Ed
"Then one day we weren't as young as before
Our mistakes weren't quite so easy to undo
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