1930's Regal Archtop Guitar - Bacon & Day Acoustic Electric - Unique Carved Spruce Top

    Here's an extremely rare archtop guitar made by the Regal Musical Company in Chicago, circa 1935. -- Regal's custom shop got busy in the 1930's making their version of the L-5 and this was one of them, but with a unique twist on the carved spruce top. On this model the bracings for the two top halves were actually carved into the wood itself. I've never seen one like it and I have asked other builders, and they've never seen it either. One luthier said it was perhaps a time saving attempt for the build - as cutting and fitting two long archtop braces is a lot of work.

     I've included 2 pics of the top from underneath, so you can clearly see what makes this one so unique. The top has no bracings attached to it because those bracings are carved into the top itself - all one piece.  

There are no brand markings anywhere on the guitar now, but the original headstock featured a jeweled circumference very much like the Bacon and Day Senorita guitars. B&D, however, only made banjos and hired Regal for their guitars, and they were the only sellers I've seen from this time to ever put jeweled beads on a headstock. So, because of the unique build and headstock, I'm convinced that this was a custom build - possibly a one off, made by Regal for Bacon and Day. I've included a picture of the original headstock - see the last pic.

    This guitar has several repaired cracks on the top, back and sides - all cleated and stable now. I've put on new Grover tuners, a Kluson copy tailpiece - new pickguard, rosewood bridge and bone nut along with a suspended pickup - volume and tone controls mounted on the pickguard.

    Someone played this guitar a lot - played the finish off the back of the neck and the old ebony fretboard on the front was falling apart from use. So I replaced that with a new rosewood fingerboard - made by Grondlund here in the USA - 25" scale like it was originally. -- I also replaced several sections of binding front and back - at the waist.

    Acoustically his guitar has a tight clean spruce tone, like an early L-5, the smaller 16' bodies.  The attack / release is very compact and the projection is impressive for its size.  The pickup has a sort of P90 type sound with 7K ohm impedance.

     The string height at the 12th fret is set at just under 1/8" bass side - 1/16" treble side and it plays well there up and down the fingerboard. It is comparable to 1930's era Bacon and Day, Tonk, Metro, Pitt - all made by Regal back in the day. This is one is their rarer guitars, because of that top.

     The neck has been refinished into a mild C profile, and the fingerboard is a little wider than most - 2 1/4" at the 14th fret, where the neck meets the body - 20 frets total.  I did not try to touch up the old paint - but I did buff the body down and applied 2 coats of polyurethane satin.  It's clean and smooth inside and out now.

    There are no brand markings on it anywhere but the distinct f-holes, the shape of the headstock, and 25" scale all indicate a Regal make. I dated it by the old Waverly tuners, which have sold here on Reverb - used in 1938 or earlier - before Klusons.

Ships in a banged up but working Road Runner hard case.

I've posted an electric sample on Soundcloud under ClaytonAudio

soundcloud.com/claytonaudio/regal-electric-test2

Length                 -      41 1/2"
Scale                  -       25"
Lower bout         -      15 3/4"
Upper bout         -      11 1/4"
Depth                 -        3 1/4"

Nut      -     1 3/4"
Weight   -  4.25 lbs