And this is not just any mandolin - it's royalty!
This is a sort of mystery-make banjo mandolin. I'd guess it dates from the late 1920s maybe up to 1940 or so.
It's a 'Princess.' Very nicely made - 5-ply maple rim, three piece maple and rosewood neck, and what appears to be a rosewood headstock inlay.
I suspect this was made by Regal or one of the other Chicago makers - there is a plate covering the rear of the tuners that sure looks Regal-esque. Plus, the name could be a play on 'Regal' as well.
At any rate, it belongs to a friend of mine and I'm going to do a little fix-up and get it going again.
There are a couple of cracks to fix, I'm going to put a new head and possibly a bridge on it as well.
The lugs were pretty loose - virtually no tension on the head.
The rod isn't adjustable, but it's not made of wood, so I think the proper term is coordinator rather than 'dowel.'
OMG. I am speaking banjo language. We're in trouble now.
You can see how I just used the lug itself to turn the nut that attaches to the rod.
I'm leaving the other lugs on for now. I'll polish them, and I think it will be easier if they stay on the banjo pot.
If you have one of these, you will be able to tune the head on virtually any banjo on earth. That, my friend, is power. Use it carefully.
I bought this and the new head from Elderly Instruments. And ironically, my friend, whose banjo mandolin this is, worked at Elderly in the early 1980s. Small world.
So now we can just pull the neck away from the pot.
When I did this, I thought of another good friend who says "Banjos are easy to work on. They're just a bunch of parts." And so they are. And it's pretty logical as to which part goes where.
The internal rod just slides out from the bigger coordinator (or is it just a rim?) rod. There's a thread that goes into the neck heel.
The frets are really sticking out from the fingerboard, so it will actually be easier to dress them back with the board off the neck, I think.
Check out the beautiful black and white pearl "moon" inlays. Very nice.
Next, I'll work on those cracks I mentioned.
Sir,
ReplyDeleteI stumbled into your site after a Google search turned up the pictures of your Princess Banjo Mandolin. It looks like I have a sister of the Princess, here on the Eastern Shore.
Link to pics:
https://imgur.com/gallery/1qCpSFv
My girl's in pretty good shape, considering that she came from a junk shop. She was very loose, grimy & un-strung when I found her.
Since the Princess is the only other Banjo Mandolin like this one that I have ever seen, I was wondering if you had any more information on this instrument and if so, could you share?
I would really like to know who made her.
P.S. These things are loud!
P.P.S. My OCD is in high gear & I have found pictures of a similar Banjo-Mandolin neck here:
ReplyDeletehttps://reverb.com/item/32933232-majestic-banjo-mandolin-neck-1920s-natural
This one was made by Majestic.
The head style, Waverly tuners, scallop cut on the fretboard and those crescent moon inlays are all spot on to the Princess. It also has the fairly uncommon metal "coordinator" rod.
P.P.P.S.
DeleteThe workshop of Gaetano Puntolillo produced banjos for a variety of brands such as S. S. Stewart, Globe and Bell. Some banjos bear names that suggest custom orders or limited runs. However, Puntolillo is probably most famous for their own Majestic brand, whose name can be found on banjos from a wide range of price points. Apparently, no contemporary literature has survived describing the brand; it’s possible that Majestic banjos were primarily custom orders or decorated according to the whims of the builder.
http://www.oldfrets.com/Majestic.html
-And this brief history, from his grand-son.
My great grandfather, Gaetano Francesco “Thomas”Puntolillo, came to the United States from Potenza, Italy in August 1892. He traveled here with his sisters Rosa (age 19), Concetta (age 14), and Adelaide (age 9) aboard the SS Italian Bermania, and joined his parents, Gerarda and Vincenzo, and brothers Savino (age 5) and Nicolo (5 months) in New York City.
My Aunt Yolanda told me that Gaetano used to stop on his way to school to watch a man who made musical instruments. He was always late for school because of this so the teacher told him that he had to make a choice: Either he was going to come to school or stay with the man. Gaetano went home and told his mother that he would rather work with the instrument man than go to school so she arranged for him to apprentice there. Unfortunately, no one in my family knows who this man was.
1900s: Tone Ring Patent
On August 30,1919, Gaetano filled out the application for a patent on a tone ring he designed which allowed sound to resonate through it. Patent #1,345,104 was granted to G.F. Puntolillo on June 29, 1920 which is the same date found inside many Majestic banjos.
My grandmother (Gaetano’s daughter), Constance Marchitelli, told me that he ran a factory at one point which could be where a lot of the more mass-produced Majestics I’ve seen came from. She remembered the name S.S. Stewart and Weymann. She also remembered him making frequent trips to Philadelphia.
Michael Holmes of Mugwumps thought maybe the metal parts and rim assembly were contracted out to Wm. Lange Co. and the necks and resonator were made and assembled by Gaetano (Thomas) Puntolillo. According to Holmes, “The tooling to make the big parts for the Majestics would have been too expensive for a small shop to own. Possibly, the parts were contracted out to Lange, and maybe even the finished rim assembly.”
It’s been speculated by people, including John Bernunzio, that Gaetano may have made the necks for S.S. Stewart on some of the higher end model banjos of the teens and twenties. In the book, One Thousand and One Banjos: The Tsumura Collection, there is also a Wurlitzer catalog in the beginning section on Majestics. My grandmother remembered him getting an offer from Wurlitzer to go to England to make mandolins for them but he didn’t want to move the family.
1920s to 1930s: From New York to New Jersey
I have three addresses in New York for Puntolillo’s Famous Banjos and The Majestic Musical Instrument Company—from a business card, a receipt form, and the motorcycle picture (above). The addresses are on Broome street, Bleeker street and Fourth Avenue at 12th Street, respectively. The Broome street receipt is from the 1920’s and has the same logo as the motorcycle.
Around the depression, Gaetano moved to Lyndhurst, New Jersey where he began making instruments out of his house. This is where I believe the highest quality instruments were produced. I believe most of the fancier Tsumura instruments (but aren’t most of the M.O.T.S. banjos from the late twenties and thirties) were made in Lyndhurst as were most, if not all, of the guitars. The guitar at left has a shredded label with the words “lillo” and “hurst, N.J.” I also have card from a round holed archtop guitar with the address where he lived until his death in August of 1946 at the age of 73.
https://majesticguitars.co/history-of-majestic/
OCD satisfied.
Got an old one from the 20s...princess mandolin
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