Pre-war Martin 1T Tenor Ukulele Visits the Garden

The prewar Martin 1T is all done.  I took it outside to get some decent pictures of it.

Here's the front.  It has a fair amount of wear.  I think these days you'd call it a "natural relic."  Most of the finish is still there and is in reasonably decent shape.  I was able to polish it and it looks good.

You can see one spot on the lower bout, bass side, where the finish is gone from arm wear.

A closer shot of the body.   No cracks at all, just player wear.

This is a "12 fret" model.  At some point after WWII, Martin switched to have 14 frets clear of the body.  Unfortunately, they never put serial numbers on their ukuleles, so precisely dating them is dependent on their features.

Closeup of the beautiful Brazilian rosewood bridge and the new bone saddle.

Those scratches just give it some cool mojo I think.

It's a lot louder and brighter than my other Martin from about the same time period.  I think the neck reset did wonders for its tone.

The back.

Again, no cracks at all.  Most of the finish was gone from the neck, so I put about 12 coats of Tru-Oil on it.  It made a perfect match with the finish on the back and headstock.

New Waverly tuners.  They look great, but they're not a perfect fit.  See my earlier posts on the installation process.

The old headstocks come to a sharper peak than the modern ones.  That's one way to tell an old one right away.