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Bacon and Day Ramona

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Body width at lower bout: 16 3/4" Depth: 4". Scale length: 25.4" Nut Width: 1 3/4"

Finish: Original sunburst finish, nitrocellulose type

Materials: Solid bookmatched handcarved Brazilian rosewood back and sides; handcarved bookmatched solid spruce top; bound Brazilian rosewood fingerboard with variegated pearl inlay; checkerboard body binding; engraved tortoise art deco headplate.

Hardware: 100% original hardware includes Grover Sta-Tite tuners; engraved nickel trapeze tailpiece; original bound translucent tortoise pickguard; adjustable rosewood bridge.

Notes: The ultimate treasure of the Amazon rainforest, Brazilian rosewood was for years the tonewood of choice for premium fretted instruments. However, this lustrous wood has been unavailable for factory production since the late 60's, when it was banned from export as a protected species. Today, Brazilian rosewood adds thousands to the cost of a hand-built instrument, as custom luthiers ration their dwindling stocks jealously.

Gibson, Epiphone, D'Angelico and others did use Brazilian rosewood in their archtops, but sparingly, confining it to fingerboards, headplates and other decorative areas of the instrument. The wood is notoriously hard and brittle, so carving an arched back would be extremely laborious and unusually hard on the tools. More to the point, carving an arched back demands a rough plank at least a full inch deep. As several flat backs could be sawn from such a slab, carving an arched back of Brazilian rosewood would have been absurdly expensive. (In fact CF Martin did build a very few Brazilian archtops, but only with flat backs, examples of which can fetch over $10K on the vintage market.)

But the folks at Bacon and Day apparently didn't care. They'd been making the world's most expensive banjos for decades, including the impossibly ornate Ne Plus Ultra series, so cost was evidently no object, at least for a while. B&D must have run the numbers soon enough, as the Ramona now appears to be one of the scarcest archtops ever made. (We've searched high and low, and can find no other example offered for sale anywhere.)

We estimate this instrument to have been built sometime in the late 1930's. The body is constructed of materials of the highest grade; the sort of exceptionally fine-grained and straight-figured quartersawn tonewoods generally seen only in top-line prewar instruments. This example is in outstanding condition, with 100% original hardware and finish, no cracks and only a minimal amount of typical playwear. The visual design is pure art deco, with gold-leaf motif in the headplate, swirled tortoise pickguard and bold checkerboard binding. The neck profile is gentle and comfortable, the tailpiece is deeply hand-engraved, and the bridge is a unique design with feet that position independently.

Most remarkable of all is the voice. The hard Brazilian tonewood and the unusually deep 4" body produces an exceptionally resonant instrument. This unique design combines powerful archtop projection with added bass response and sustain reminiscent of a dreadnought. (Just for fun, we put it in a drop D tuning and it echoed like the Grand Canyon.) A unique and finely crafted instrument, the B&D Ramona is a rare find for the player and collector alike.

Setup: The frets have been precision leveled, recrowned and polished as necessary; bridge height adjusted; bridge compensation set; string slots at nut and bridge inspected and recut as necessary; bridge foot contour inspected and fit to top as necessary; bridge radius inspected and recurved as necessary; bridgewheels and tuners lubricated; fingerboard and bridge oiled; body and neck cleaned and hand polished.

This instrument is strung with medium gauge bronze strings (.013-.057). The guitar will accommodate lighter or heavier gauge strings, according to preference. String action is set at 5/64" to 6/64" at the 12th fret, with moderate relief for acoustic playing with medium strings. The action may be lowered or raised to your requirements with the adjustable bridge.

Case: Original black deluxe plush-lined hardshell case.

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