Vintage 1925 Vega Soloist tenor banjo with matching serial numbers on the dowel stick and rim, featuring all original hardware in excellent condition and including its original hard shell case. This is a clean example of a popular workhorse professional tenor banjo from Vega's lineup during the Jazz age, and it's held up beautifully over the past century. Its original tubaphone tone ring and genuine skin head combine to produce a classic punchy tone with a vintage sweetness and plenty enough projection to go toe-to-toe with even the most spirited brass section.
Setup to play easily and in-tune up the scale in C-D-G-A tuning, with action measuring 6/64" from the 12th fret to the bottom of the outside strings with .006" of relief in the neck and proper break angle over the replacement bridge. Condition is excellent, with no evident history of structural repairs and wear limited to general worming, checking and scattered chipping in the lacquer on the pie-section resonator and some friction wear on back of the neck in the lower position — nothing major and all in accordance with age and use. Frets are replacements with modern crown width and plenty of life in them. The gold-plated arm rest is original and one of its mounting brackets is slightly bent out of shape.
- 1925
- 11" maple rim
- Flamed maple pie-section resonator
- Tubaphone tone ring
- Flamed maple neck
- Mother-of-pearl fretboard and headstock inlays
- Grained ivoroid binding: resonator & fretboard
- 1-1/8" nut width
- 23" scale length
- Skin head
- Original gold-plated flange plates, hooks, tension hoop, and arm rest.
- Original geared gold-plated planetary tuning machines
- Original Oettinger tailpiece
- 8lbs 11oz
Includes original hard-shell case.
