unsigned Lloyd Loars?

[Nick Royal]

I have a nice cd by the late Butch Baldassari and I recall that he had a unsigned Loar.
Any idea of how many there might have been; might be?

How many signed F5s are there.
Thanks,
Nick Royal

[Hendrik Ahrend]

The Mandolin Archive has 9 unsigned Loars, that is F5s with factory order numbers (FONs) and typical F5 features from the Loar era. http://www.mandolinarchive.com/signature_dates.html

[rcc56]

I don't believe that you will get any consensus on the question.
That is because there will not be agreement on whether or not the term is valid, and if so, what specifications would qualify an instrument to be called by that term.

Current estimates on signed instruments are that Loar signed perhaps 300 labels, and that somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 were for mandolins. It is also estimated that the number of F-5 mandolins built between 1925 and circa 1931, when the build specifications for the model changed drastically, is much smaller than the number of signed mandolins. This is because the popularity of mandolins declined drastically during the 1920's. By the end of the decade, public demand for mandolins was low. This resulted in a large reduction in the number of new mandolins being built.

[wbcohen]

This has been pretty extensively discussed elsewhere. There were a small number of instruments with FONs that matched those that were signed (built at same time/batch but never received a Loar signed second label). I believe most had same FON as the Dec 1 batch. With Loar leaving Gibson some were not signed and are considered the 'Unsigned Loars'. Has less to do with variability amongst specs etc. Some may be uncomfortable with the nomenclature but we are talking about a very few instruments that were made at the same time as the Loars that were signed but missed a label for some reason.