Thread: Maxitone Vintage Acoustic

I was given an old melody acoustic to restore a few months ago,
probably around the same year as that one you have there?

one thing i have learnt over the last year and a half of furniture and guitar restorations is to ask the simple question,
What level of restoration are you after?

As far as the woods go Wayne (though it is hard to tell under the striped paint job) judging from the period and what I can see of it, the back and sides are likely to be birch, it is harder to see grain in the top but it could be birch as well. The neck looks like the poplar typical of the low end instruments of the time and again typical of the time you might find the fret board to be dyed pear wood. It does not look like a Bruno maxitone as the label is different from the Bruno's but that does not rule it out. Try the Montgomery Wards or Sears catalogue guitars. I have seen that paint pattern on Regals of the time. You may also try the Harmony Guys forum as there is a fair bit of knowledge there but in the end you may find you have to be satisfied with a best guess for the maker as with many of those catalogue guitars the makers were undisclosed. They could have been Oscar Schmidt, Regal, Stromberg Voisinet later Kay or many of the other makers making catalogue guitars of the time.

Jim

Hi Wayne, I maybe a bit off topic, hope I dont get in trouble. I joined this forum just to post this. I have been looking for info about Maxitone acoustic guitars for months. Yeah eveybody seems to know about maxitone / Ibanez but the only picture I've found are electric. Untill now, so I have include some pictures of my Maxitone. As for restoring I'm not a woodworker (electronics tech I am) and learning to play blues. I bought this girl at a tender centre (like an auction place). One photo you can just see a crack (reglued at some time) at the bottom of the left 'F' hole. Doesn't seem to affect it, she has a great tone for blues. Which surprises me as It is light as a feather so I assumed it was just ply wood. I cleaned it up (mr sheen) and removed rust from the tail piece and new strings. It is a floating bridge and was no where near the correct place I corrected that and the intonenation appear to better than an Epiphone dr200 I have according to my electric tuner. I think some time restoring an old guitar takes away it's character, by all means fix any faults, but dont' go over board. And last of all the logo on the head stock, I now know of only two pictures of that same one on the internet mine and yours. So if by chance some guitar nut ot descendant of some one that worked in the factory making these, please be a hero and post some information. Roger

Look have way down this page Ikko Masada, Maton, Matsumoku, McNight Guitars and go from there.

Hi Wayne Heres a couple of pics of my dads maxitone, he had some restoration work done on the body