Here's a joy to play and see! This is a 1920 (exact date) Washburn size 2 (concert) guitar, built for gut strings and here strung with Aquila nylguts. It's essentially a 0 to 00 size guitar. in shape and styling. While it would stand up to a set of light steels just fine, these were built for gut when they were made and sound infinitely better strung with them as opposed to any sort of steel string -- the tone will sound forced and weak, while with gut/nylon strings it'll open up tremendously. The Washburn catalogs at the time warned customers that the 1-year warranty was void if steel strings were used!
These guitars were intended for, well, concert use in any sort of music, and were "serious instruments" -- often used for classical performance in small settings. You sort of have to think of most high-end American guitars up until c.1920 as the American version of classical guitars, whereas many players now consider them to be "folky guitars." Unlike Spanish classicals, which tend have a bombastic and thundering tone played chordally, these have a much more balanced, almost rich and jazzy tone, with quite good balance and note separation all over the neck, while still retaining good volume.
Let's talk materials -- first off the fretboard and bridge are rosewood, with nickel-silver frets and MOP markers. The top is choice spruce with not a single crack on it. The back is also crack free, and is gorgeous Brazilian rosewood, all solid. The sides and neck are, as well, but sport a few previously-repaired dryness cracks (good repairs, though, with diamond cleats behind).
It's bound front and back in black celluloid with 2-ply purfling and has a simple, tasteful, Martin-esque inlaid rosette.
Here's the rosewood bridge, which was a little maligned by a botched repair and was too tall for the current neck angle. Rather than reinvent the wheel and reset a perfectly straight, solid neck join, I cut the top down on this fellow and installed a new saddle -- in this case a slightly compensated fret saddle (just in case the new owner wants to use silk & steels), like on the older gut-stringers from c.1880. While doing this I revealed beautiful grain in the rosewood that was darkened (as was the fashion) when it was made. Original bridge pins w/MOP dots, by the way.
Here's the label. Washburn first made this style of guitar in 1915, whereas they used a slightly different build and body shape before then (their other redesign was in 1897).
Nice binding!
A looker!
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Ooh, rosewood!
Original bakelite-buttoned tuners. There was a previous headstock repair that took care of a crack in the lower part of the headstock. Plenty stable, fortunately!
Heel cap, inlaid back-strip (5-ply ebony/maple it looks like). I think the neck is mahogany and it has a very strong V shape to it.
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Really stunning old Brazilian rosewood on this!
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Side.
Detail.
There are a few previously-repaired 5-inch-plus dryness cracks on the lower bout and waste that are all quite solid.
Other side.
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Original end-pin. Did I mention this plays nice (action 1/8"-3/16" at the 12th, perfect for nylon or very light steels) and has all-original finish? Yup! A drooler! And it sounds amazing, as you'd expect, too!
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