Help ID Old Guitar

[Paul Breen]

Sweet!

[Craig Bumgarner]

Sweet indeed!

A follow up question or three if I may.....

As Paul pointed out, there is evidence the guitar has a tail piece at one time. Is this possibly original? None of the pictures I see of Maurer guitars have a tail piece.

The bridge has clearly been raised at some point, not particularly well done and very clunky looking. The saddle is no more than 1/8" high, but the top of the bridge is 1/2" high. I'm not that familiar with fixed bridges on acoustic guitars, but this seems very high compared to what I've seen. And why? Usually bridges are lowered over time to counter act neck bowing and rotation, eh? Why would someone raise the bridge?

Possible scenario: Bridge came unglued, tearing up some of the top. The bits were glued back, but the bridge was not. Someone was afraid it would happen again, so installed a tail piece and left the bridge floating. The increased downward pressure of this arrangement sank the top and a shim was added to compensate. After a while, it became clear the tail piece arrangement was not so good. It was removed and the bridge was glued back in place along with the shim.

The guitar is strung with nylon strings, but the tuners have small shafts like steel string tuners. Guessing based opn the 4962 serial number is somewhere around 1916. Could it have been a steel string guitar originally? Should I be concerned about stringing it with steel?

[Craig Bumgarner]

Here is a picture of the bridge......

[Mark Swanson]

How is it braced inside? you can do some research on these guitars, and find out I think.

[Craig Bumgarner]

How is it braced inside? you can do some research on these guitars, and find out I think.

Below the sound hole, there are two ladder braces and one diagonal in between. Something like the second picture down here:

http://www.thisisclassicalguitar.com/br ... l-guitars/

I'd say the bracing is pretty light, maybe that answers the question.

[Paul Breen]

The guitar is not braced for steel strings with a fixed bridge but they could be used with a tailpiece and a floating (not glued on) bridge. The bridge saddle on it now is straight across, steel strings would not play in tune with the saddle like that, it would need to be slanted (compensated). It is also possible that it started life with a fixed bridge and was strung with gut strings, which would have a straight across saddle. No way to know what may have been done to this poor thing over the years, the scenario could go either way.

The bridge arrangement is too tall and likely done for a neck angle issue. If you look closely, can you tell if the bridge has had more wood glued to it?

My suggestion would be to scour the internet for Maurer images and see if you can find another example like yours. You might also want to try and contact Robert Hartman who wrote the book The Larsons' Creations Guitars and Mandolins. It would be well worth doing some research on how this guitar should be configured.

[Mark Swanson]

That's good advice. You could also look at the bridge plate, and maybe you can tell if it is original and if it had bridge pins from the start.

[Tyko Runesson]

As far as I know the Larsson brothers exclusively build Guitars for Steel strings. 1916 they definitive did that anyway. There is a lot of guitars like this that is also build for steel string with similar bracing. It was common though for some "repairman" to put a tail piece on it later on instead of doing a real restore work.
But I can be wrong of course. Very nice guitar anyway.