Oahu Hawaiian Lap Steel Guitar - Vintage ** Free Shipping **

Description

Up for sale is a vintage Oahu Publishing Co. Hawaiian lap steel guitar. I do not know a whole lot about it. I have included text (below) that discusses the general history of the company and it's acoustic guitar offerings. I picked it up a few years back to use in our country-esque band. It appears to be a student model and I base this on the 'lower quality' features such as a label for the headstock badge and no binding. In addition it came with an "Orchestra Enrollment" form with the students 'contract' and, on the reverse side, a tally of lessons, dates and costs, dated 1944. Pretty neat! The name of the original owner is on a label on the back of the neck so it has some provenance. It comes with, what I assume is, it's original case, in decent shape considering it's age. Somewhere along the line the frets were removed (they aren't needed for a lap steel. Kind of funny they were there in the fist place) and the tuning buttons were replaced, as the old ones had deteriorated over the years. It works great. No hum or buzz. There is an on/off switch on the back so, I suppose, you could turn it off to keep quiet when you needed to. Very neat little guitar. I don't play in that band any longer and don't find myself playing lap steel at all these days so I'd like to pass it along to someone who would use it and enjoy the history it comes with.
US sales only. No returns or refunds. Free US shipping.
Ping me with any questions.
"Oahu-labeled guitars were made for the Oahu Publishing Co. of Cleveland, which called itself "The World's Largest Guitar Dealer" in 1935.
The Honolulu Conservatory of Music was established in Flint, Michigan in the late '20s by Harry Stanley and his half-brother, George Bronson. Stanley founded Oahu in 1933; Bronson started the Bronson Music & Sales Co. in Detroit about the same time.
Oahu offered a variety of square neck and round neck acoustic guitars -- most were made in Chicago by Kay and Harmony. The most common are inexpensive (.50 in 1935) birch guitars with a dark brown finish. More expensive models were available; I used to own an all-mahogany small-bodied square neck with black-and-white "rope" style binding ( in 1935). The top of the line was a rosewood/spruce jumbo with "pearl" inlay (it sure looks like abalone to me!), sound hole ring and top trim. These were 8 in 1935 -- more than 00 in 2004 dollars."