Gustav Glassl rehabilitation

[Hammertone]

Colour matching worked out just fine.

[Hammertone]

Pretty damned nice, I think. To quote Mark: "...the sound of that Glassl is pretty impressive - as you'd expect, bass resonance is very deep, but surprisingly, not overpowering - also surprising is its high end response - it really pops!" All it needs now is the pickguard/pickup installed.

[Cunamara]

Was the original neck really a laminate with the slices stacked perpendicular to the plane of the fingerboard? I've never seen that before.

[Ol' Fret]

The Willy Hopf Company was granted a patent (DE1816182) for stringed instruments , the "EVERSTRAIGHT" neck in 1960. The patent (in German) discusses the benefits, here a link: Espacenet – Suchergebnisse (sorry, I can't tell if links given by the European Patent Office work outside the EU).

They are laminates made of 1 to 1.5mm thick beech wood stripes, perpendicular to the fingerboard, which are glued under pressure and heat with synthetic resin glue to form a block. We call them "propeller necks" for the looks.
They were developed for mass production, are comparably stiff and heavy (beech), but show higher damping properties (the sheer amount of glue), so they are not so popular with high-quality archtop guitars. The vast majority of these necks was made and used by Framus.

Gustav Glassl, like many luthiers of his generation, had received thorough training from master makers and was accordingly a top guitar maker, more precisely he was a skilled "Schachtelmacher" (box maker). The bodies he made are outstanding, even those of the simpler laminated models, which he himself referred to as "commodity guitars". Nobody could (can today?) bend sides more crazy like Glassl did in his small workshop with the help of two or three close relatives.
After his Siberian war captivity, Artur Lang received a lot of help and tips from Glassl, who had been self-employed since around 1948, and Lang returned the favor just a few years later, when he had surpassed everyone else, including Glassl, in terms of quality, by allowing Glassl to continue producing some of his original designs, which he had been using until around 1956. This was the large, solid carved Hopf 320L (L standing for Lang) manufactured by Glassl in small numbers. In addition, Lang supplied Glassl with his own excellent necks until at least the mid-1960s, which can be found on many of the solid Glassl and Hopf-Glassl top models. Glassl also sold independantly, sometimes unlabelled, sometimes under his initials GG, but was not particularly interested in doing so, instead supplying brands such as the Hoyers, Alosa, Bauer, etc., but mainly Hopf, one of the largest musical instrument resellers at the time.
It can be assumed that Glassl used such propeller necks for his large archtop guitars when no other necks were available, or for the slightly later models, which were more American style in terms of appearance. Yet, the arching curves and gradations of the plates were more the "German style" - I will have to talk about this at some point, as the differences in the result are noticeable...

Glassl, primarily staying a talented "box maker", obviously did not place too much importance to the necks of his guitars. He bought them from third-party manufacturers and probably hardly made any himself. Which explains why, as a whole, a smaller number of Glassl guitars are not rated to be divine as players' instruments. His procedure is understandable given his really large guitar output numbers in a small workshop. Witnesses claim that he worked day and night.

Glassl has long been considered the "chameleon" of German archtop guitar making due to his strong individualized approach. In the meantime, the classification fog has cleared somewhat, and his top guitars are slowly gaining the reputation they deserve. Bill Haley, for example, was certainly not considered the most outstanding guitarist of his time; nevertheless, he was very successful with a big impact in the guitar world, and thanks to his tours in Germany, was knowledgeable enough to know what was going on outside of Gibson, whose endorser he had been. In Germany he testified that he valued his Glassl-made Hopf 319SL more than his Super 400; equipped with one DeArmond 1000 this model here sticks with Bill's name.

FWIW: One-piece, non-laminated guitar necks do not meet my expectations. They often move too much for my taste in the seasons, even on high-priced models like an otherwise fine 19" Triggs Stromberg copy. Multi-laminated necks like the EVERSTRAIGHT versions have other disadvantages.
My favorites are five- to seven-piece necks, yet not cut into pieces through the neck extensions. They are sufficiently stiff, not too heavy, and do not have excessive damping properties. Color contrasts also make them nice to look at, especially when the middle section is tapered - wider towards the bridge and narrower at the headstock end. In aesthetic terms, they almost replicate the taper of the neck, forming a visual unit. As far as I know, such necks were only made in Germany (Lang, Roger, Hoyer). The question is: why?


Btw., there is no reason at all to believe that Glassl ever made a guitar for the Klira Company.

[Ol' Fret]

Well, Mark's thoughtful and precise approach ran right into the reality of handmade vintage German archtops with tapered mortice neck joints - nothing quite lines up! Center seams, neck pocket angles, you name it - anything that could be slightly crooked was ... slightly crooked. So, the problem solving commenced, and Mark emerged, victorious. Hallelujah!

Out of consideration for the delicate sensibilities of some of our members, here are only a couple of pix of the gory surgical details. I don't want members haunted by too many bad dreams.

Feeling haunted by bad dreams when it comes to politics ... not so much by Glassl's guitars. Not all know that Glassl had to find some unique solutions for himself in the late 1940s concerning tapered mortice neck joints. You might even say that he made "slightly crooked" neck pockets and joints by intention. Their out-of-line appearance is somewhat real, again, often by intention.
Anyone who had to repair some of the older A. Hoyer solid carved "Special" and "Solist" models - original Glassl designs - will know what I am talking about. It was a consequence of that "crooked" cutaway rib that wasn't bent vertically but slightly inclined, by intention, to meet that tapered neck foot. These neck joint were not only looking out-of-line, but sometimes even show steps or little wooden attachments inside, though it is nothing to compromise the tone or the structural durability. Admittedly, some days may have been worse than others, or the beer simply tasted too good. Bear in mind that in Bavaria beer was a completely legal and wholesome food until well into the 1970s. For some, the day was over by lunchtime. No wonder Germans were in such a better mood back then - at the moment I can only warn all, tourists and asylants against trying to visit Germany! The general mood is pitifully bad, even subliminally aggressive and could change completely. It is the land of the unfree, and calls for "Germany first" are getting louder (more than 80 years ago it was already "D. über alles"). Well, the mirror neurons - do they forget that the first would be last?

Hard to tell from the pics, if your "Craftsman", a later Glassl model, was concerned, but I can understand that a luthier used to make dove-tail joints could grow desperate. Today, with all the CNC machines and precision routing possibilities, it's not too difficult to repair one of these dovetail or Glassl mortice neck joints, but, traditionally, most of the carved archtop guitar making has been derived from violin making. So, hand tools, if nothing more "modern" is feasible or available - and I don't have to accent the fact that stringed instrument makers using hand tools are usually more able "to read" wood than folks using power machines on a regular basis. Simple mortice neck joints have advantages if it comes (sooner or later) to neck joint repair work. I certainly wouldn't be concerned in a bad way knowing that the big joints of double basses still are simple, maybe even crooked-looking tapered mortice joints. They are stable enough, repair-friendly for centuries, though not much easier to accomplish than dovetails, if precision attachment is your goal.
In contemporary archtop guitar making my favorite by far would be a precision bolt-on mortice neck joint - one screw through the neck foot - invisible, the neck straps sitting directly in and on the screw.

[Hammertone]

The Willy Hopf Company was granted a patent (DE1816182) for stringed instruments , the "EVERSTRAIGHT" neck in 1960. The patent (in German) discusses the benefits, here a link: Espacenet – Suchergebnisse (sorry, I can't tell if links given by the European Patent Office work outside the EU).

They are laminates made of 1 to 1.5mm thick beech wood stripes, perpendicular to the fingerboard, which are glued under pressure and heat with synthetic resin glue to form a block. We call them "propeller necks" for the looks.
They were developed for mass production, are comparably stiff and heavy (beech), but show higher damping properties (the sheer amount of glue), so they are not so popular with high-quality archtop guitars. The vast majority of these necks was made and used by Framus.

Gustav Glassl, like many luthiers of his generation, had received thorough training from master makers and was accordingly a top guitar maker, more precisely he was a skilled "Schachtelmacher" (box maker). The bodies he made are outstanding, even those of the simpler laminated models, which he himself referred to as "commodity guitars". Nobody could (can today?) bend sides more crazy like Glassl did in his small workshop with the help of two or three close relatives.
After his Siberian war captivity, Artur Lang received a lot of help and tips from Glassl, who had been self-employed since around 1948, and Lang returned the favor just a few years later, when he had surpassed everyone else, including Glassl, in terms of quality, by allowing Glassl to continue producing some of his original designs, which he had been using until around 1956. This was the large, solid carved Hopf 320L (L standing for Lang) manufactured by Glassl in small numbers. In addition, Lang supplied Glassl with his own excellent necks until at least the mid-1960s, which can be found on many of the solid Glassl and Hopf-Glassl top models. Glassl also sold independantly, sometimes unlabelled, sometimes under his initials GG, but was not particularly interested in doing so, instead supplying brands such as the Hoyers, Alosa, Bauer, etc., but mainly Hopf, one of the largest musical instrument resellers at the time.
It can be assumed that Glassl used such propeller necks for his large archtop guitars when no other necks were available, or for the slightly later models, which were more American style in terms of appearance. Yet, the arching curves and gradations of the plates were more the "German style" - I will have to talk about this at some point, as the differences in the result are noticeable...

Glassl, primarily staying a talented "box maker", obviously did not place too much importance to the necks of his guitars. He bought them from third-party manufacturers and probably hardly made any himself. Which explains why, as a whole, a smaller number of Glassl guitars are not rated to be divine as players' instruments. His procedure is understandable given his really large guitar output numbers in a small workshop. Witnesses claim that he worked day and night.

Glassl has long been considered the "chameleon" of German archtop guitar making due to his strong individualized approach. In the meantime, the classification fog has cleared somewhat, and his top guitars are slowly gaining the reputation they deserve. Bill Haley, for example, was certainly not considered the most outstanding guitarist of his time; nevertheless, he was very successful with a big impact in the guitar world, and thanks to his tours in Germany, was knowledgeable enough to know what was going on outside of Gibson, whose endorser he had been. In Germany he testified that he valued his Glassl-made Hopf 319SL more than his Super 400; equipped with one DeArmond 1000 this model here sticks with Bill's name.

FWIW: One-piece, non-laminated guitar necks do not meet my expectations. They often move too much for my taste in the seasons, even on high-priced models like an otherwise fine 19" Triggs Stromberg copy. Multi-laminated necks like the EVERSTRAIGHT versions have other disadvantages.
My favorites are five- to seven-piece necks, yet not cut into pieces through the neck extensions. They are sufficiently stiff, not too heavy, and do not have excessive damping properties. Color contrasts also make them nice to look at, especially when the middle section is tapered - wider towards the bridge and narrower at the headstock end. In aesthetic terms, they almost replicate the taper of the neck, forming a visual unit. As far as I know, such necks were only made in Germany (Lang, Roger, Hoyer). The question is: why?


Btw., there is no reason at all to believe that Glassl ever made a guitar for the Klira Company.

Thanks, Doc - great information for the forum. I always thought Glassl at least built the carved-top Klira Tone King guitars, but that's just conjecture on my part. Do you think it's possible that he did build these? Very few exist, and I don't think there were made at Klira because they seem to be in a different league than the standard Klira archtops. The Tone Kings I have played have all been very nice instruments, very much in the "American style." If Glassl didn't build them, then I wonder who did. Any thoughts?

[Cunamara]

Ol' Fret, you are a generous font of knowledge. Thanks!

[Ol' Fret]

Thanks, Doc - great information for the forum. I always thought Glassl at least built the carved-top Klira Tone King guitars, but that's just conjecture on my part. Do you think it's possible that he did build these? Very few exist, and I don't think there were made at Klira because they seem to be in a different league than the standard Klira archtops. The Tone Kings I have played have all been very nice instruments, very much in the "American style." If Glassl didn't build them, then I wonder who did. Any thoughts?

Indeed, Hammertone, the Klira Tonekings are respectable fully carved 17"-plus archtops. Benedetto would be scared to hear that these have extra deep rims, I think approx. 4 inches... The Tonekings were made by master maker Erwin Weidner in the late Klira period, when more "American style" guitar design was in growing demand.
From yesterday's chatter: The Klira boss Otto-Josef in Bubenreuth had a daughter, a hottie who attracted a lot of suitors, among them Roger Rossmeisl. She eventually married the guitar maker Erwin Weidner who had worked for Alosa. Roger, Erich, and some other rejected lovers, managed to remain friends, play handball together, drink beer, play guitar, etc., and they were still friends when Roger died in Bubenreuth (Klira Archtop).


The earlier black or red (sigh - the latter could also show a black finish) "King" and "Queen" models were made by Glassl. Before Alosa slowly stopped their trade with musical instruments (sometime around 1958), Glassl had already turned to the Hopf Company as his main customer. The comparably short gap left by these former Alosa top models was filled by Klira, and these late Kings were completely (body and neck) made by ... Klira.
At first glance they look similar to those made by Glassl, but they are clearly different, and not just in size (44cm against 42cm). Klira later copied the successful laminated Glassl models with the sickle sound holes (called "Vogerl", meaning 'birdie', holes in the jargon of Bubenreuth guitar makers at the time, because they resemble the silhouette of a flying bird). Klira may be archtops not all that bad, especially in terms of price-performance ratio, but in terms of build quality and sound they cannot compare to real Glassls - with the possible exception of the Weidner Tonekings. The majority of Klira guitars (> 90 percent) produced in the 1960s/70s was exported.

From: RESTAURATION EINER ALOSA-Black King – Herbert Rittinger – Schlaggitarren




HR also talked a bit about Glassl's guitar neck joints:





OT, and quite another matter, Hammertone: I know that recently an online talk took place about the exquisite Roger "Standard Ultra" models, listed also as Roger "Edelholz" models. I don't follow any Facebook groups, maybe the specialists there were able to sort them out ... but I've lent my example to HR who was crazy enough to sort these guitars out in a few weeks of work - down to the smallest detail.

The story of these handful guitars is overwhelming. For me they symbolize the whole Roger story in the best way, or should I say tragedy? Unfortunately something that, IMHO, has not been adequately conveyed either online or in films etc. In order to clarify such connections in a more than vague way, you need a personality in addition to the guitars, the technical and construction knowledge of the time, the restoration skills, the general historical circumstances of the time and the special family circumstances. Kudos to HR... he shared the new findings with me and, among other things, was probably keen to test whether any "unreasonableness" on my part would come up. Being a smaller shining light, I usually have to lay down my arms...

I suggested HR once more updating the Roger Report, though it seems like a lot of work to describe the whole narrative in such a way that even someone who is not very familiar with the subject matter can follow it. If someone wants, and with HR's consent, I would be happy to comment on the topic in question, perhaps answer individual, specific questions to reduce a bit the work involved.

[Ol' Fret]

Ol' Fret, you are a generous font of knowledge. Thanks!

Thank you, Cunamara, some say I might as well be a font of ol' fret, and I can't even argue with them!

[Hammertone]

Indeed, Hammertone, the Klira Tonekings are respectable fully carved 17"-plus archtops. Benedetto would be scared to hear that these have extra deep rims, I think approx. 4 inches... The Tonekings were made by master maker Erwin Weidner in the late Klira period, when more "American style" guitar design was in growing demand.
From yesterday's chatter: The Klira boss Otto-Josef in Bubenreuth had a daughter, a hottie who attracted a lot of suitors, among them Roger Rossmeisl. She eventually married the guitar maker Erwin Weidner who had worked for Alosa. Roger, Erich, and some other rejected lovers, managed to remain friends, play handball together, drink beer, play guitar, etc., and they were still friends when Roger died in Bubenreuth (Klira Archtop).


The earlier black or red (sigh - the latter could also show a black finish) "King" and "Queen" models were made by Glassl. Before Alosa slowly stopped their trade with musical instruments (sometime around 1958), Glassl had already turned to the Hopf Company as his main customer. The comparably short gap left by these former Alosa top models was filled by Klira, and these late Kings were completely (body and neck) made by ... Klira.
At first glance they look similar to those made by Glassl, but they are clearly different, and not just in size (44cm against 42cm). Klira later copied the successful laminated Glassl models with the sickle sound holes (called "Vogerl", meaning 'birdie', holes in the jargon of Bubenreuth guitar makers at the time, because they resemble the silhouette of a flying bird). Klira may be archtops not all that bad, especially in terms of price-performance ratio, but in terms of build quality and sound they cannot compare to real Glassls - with the possible exception of the Weidner Tonekings. The majority of Klira guitars (> 90 percent) produced in the 1960s/70s was exported.

From: RESTAURATION EINER ALOSA-Black King – Herbert Rittinger – Schlaggitarren




HR also talked a bit about Glassl's guitar neck joints:




...

Well, tabernacle! as they say in my home town. I missed that post back in 2020. Erwin Weidner, eh? The Tone King models do have some unique design details. I've played a few of them over the years - nice guitars, but I was never moved enough by their sound or feel to buy one for my collection. My Glassl, OTOH, sounds so good that I was compelled to get it re-necked. They are not all great - I have encountered some unevenness in the acoustic qualities of other Glassl-built Hopf models. Such is the way of the world. Here's another Glassl, built for Hopf, currently resting comfortably in bunker #1. It's a nice guitar as well:

[Hammertone]

I finally picked up the Glassl and have been having way too much fun playing it. It sounds even better than I remembered. Amazing guitar, now with a proper-sized neck by Mark. Here are a few pix from The Chair, with more to come after I install the pickup/pickguard/TRC.

[Hammertone]

... I have had a couple (below). I kept one, with every intention of having a new neck built for it, because it had a pencil neck. And that's the subject of this thread - the rehabilitation of that guitar...

To continue, when I posted a photo of the two Glassl guitars a few years back (shown in post #1 of this thread), Ed Cherry got in touch with me - it turns out that he had owned that very guitar (on the left in post #1 of this thread) decades previously, had sold it, wished he had kept it because it was a fine guitar, and so on. So, I sold it back to him. Now, like me, Ed has more guitars than he wants or needs, and is selling a few of them, including his Glassl. He's asking $2k (which is a steal, IMO). I'll post an ad on his behalf. Here's a shot taken when I had it - it is the same today:

[Hammertone]

Here's more fun from one of my European pals who understands the worth of high-end German archtops - another Hopf Craftsman, built by Gustav Glassl.

[Ol' Fret]

Cynosures do exist, for sure!

Hehehe, as for understanding the worth - or worthlessness - of high-end German archtops, I stick more and more to words (1920) of French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typographist Francis Picabia:
"Before you can love something, you have to have SEEN and HEARD it for a LONG TIME, you bunch of IDIOTS!"

[Hammertone]

One of these tailpieces would look mighty fine on my guitar. A boy can dream.

[Hammertone]

The Allparts L-5C pickguard just squeaked in, with a bit of filing. I decided to install the pickup on the end of the board, because that was way easier than re-inforcing the pickguard, and in keeping with the original design. So, it is now very firmly half-inset on either side of the neck extension. Hooray for sharp chisels wielded by Tony Duggan-Smith! Now all I need to do is find my box of endpin jacks, sheesh. I jury-rigged something for now. Threw on a set of Monel rounds (.013-.056). It's a monster, both acoustically and electrically.