1940 Regal Jumbo Acoustic Guitar - 1940 Regal Jr Jumbo

Here we have a very cool vintage small-bodied jumbo style Regal guitar.  Regal borrowed the body shape used by Gibson for their Kalamazoo KG-11 guitar to build this beautiful guitar.  This model was meant to occupy the same medium grade guitar range as Gibson's Kalamazoo line.  Regal sold these guitars under their own label, and also manufactured and branded them for a host of other companies.  Although this model was in production for 20 years, you don't find a lot them around today, particularly not in playable condition. 

This guitar has a tight-grained solid spruce top over solid birch back and sides.  The back of the guitar has a few well repaired cracks using cleats and authentic hide glue and they are now barely noticeable and do not affect the sound at all.  The guitar plays wonderfully and has a projective, assertive woody voice, typical of ladder-braced spruce-over-birch parlors.  It's an unrefined sound, with lots of bottom (courtesy of that fat lower bout) – perfect for blues and folk.  The guitar measures 38 1/2 inches long, 10 inches across the upper bout, and 15 inches across the lower bout.  The body itself is 17 1/2" long.  She is 4 inches deep at the end pin, the scale is 24.75, and width at the nut is 1 3/4.