Guitar Blog

Mystery "Silvertone" acoustic guitar

Here's another eBay find. It's an old - possibly 1950s - archtop guitar, and is supposedly a Silvertone. However, at some point in its life someone has refinished the guitar in dark green, and removed all logos, serial numbers, etc, in the process. The Silvertone logo on the headstock has been painted on by hand so possibly it isn't a Silvertone. But then again, why fake a Silvertone?

To complicate matters even further, the name Silvertone was a brandname used for guitars sold by Sears and Roebuck, and were often re-badged guitars from other brands. So, who knows what this guitar really is?

The back of the guitar suffered a split at one point, and this has been repaired. The splints can be seen quite clearly through the upper f-hole.

Soundwise, it's very sweet. It has quite a pleasing tone, and playability isn't bad as the action is quite reasonable given the age of the instrument. The string spacing leaves a lot to be desired due to some pretty random slots cut into the bridge. Possibly this is something I could repair. The machine heads are old but work perfectly well, and the guitar impressively stays in tune very nicely.

The red "scratchplate" is actually a glued on piece of felt; I assume this was done by the person who painted the guitar green - possibly someone called "John B" because the intials "JB" have been added to the top of the guitar on the lower bout, and also the incredibly sturdy case also sports the name "John B".

I would love to know the history of this guitar, but chances are it'll remain the mystery Silvertone acoustic.