James Ashborn Style 3 Guitar, 1860 Natural

Circa 1860 style 3 guitar built by renowned luthier, James Ashborn of Wolcottville, CT, for William Hall & son music store (Ashborn's distributor). Brazilian rosewood back and sides; Adirondack top; double maple binding (front, and back). 

This guitar is is 100% original, including all original finish, and down to original ebony nut, and original bridge (and saddle) that has never been off the guitar. And it comes in its original wood coffin case, as it left the factory around 1860. 

This James Ashborn style 3 is rare, and unique because it has brazilian veneer on the neck (not the fretboard which is ebony, but the back of neck), original to the guitar. And, that is very rare for any style/number Ashborn.

Also unique to Ashborn’s style 3: his trademark hand-made tuners, have ebony buttons (not rosewood buttons as on his style 1, and 2) 

And this is a superb sounding Ashborn, unrivaled in tone by any 1850’s/1860’s American guitar we’ve seen and played, including any Martin from that era. This is not a guitar good only for hanging on a wall – it sounds great.

Ashborn varied a few details on his guitars (styles 1,2,3, 5), but he did not vary the size of the guitars. He made them all the same body and neck size (unlike Martin for example). They are all the same size. And almost all had spruce/Brazilian veneer on back and sides. As this does.

• Nut width is 1 7/8 inches

• Width at lower bout: 11 3/8 inches

• Scale Length: 24 inches

• The action is 4/32 inch on both sides, at 12th string – normal action for this kind of guitar (and lower than some modern classical guitars)

• There are repaired cracks on top, and back of guitar. All professionally repaired.

James Ashborn was born in England circa 1816 and came to New England in the late 1830s. Ashborn had his shop in Torrington, but soon after start-up, he began selling guitars to the New York distributor William Hall & Son, whose name appears inside the instruments. 

From Vintage Guitar magazine:
“Ashborn’s design for the guitar was quite innovative for the early 19th century. Instead of making guitars fashioned after the typical parlor-style guitars, he made them in the Spanish style, by taking interior bracing cues from the Spanish while retaining the body of the English guitars. This included a fan brace pattern rather than the more common ladder pattern Ashborn guitars have a very complex dovetail V joint for attaching the head to the neck. The headstock was cut in roughly five steps, using some kind of tracing router, as suggested by the chatter marks on the inside ears of the pegbox. In addition to the complex head design, Ashborn made his own tuning machines in-house. They’re made of brass, very much like contemporary machines, with worm gears, cog gears, and rollers."

In its original wood coffin case, with all original hardware