Featured Instruments

Tony Trischka told us that this banjo is the only banjo he used on the A Robot Plane Flies Over Arkansas album, and the main banjo he used from that, his first album, to the Hill Country album.  He told us that “from 1981 to 1991 this was my primary instrument.”   This banjo is listed on the Stelling Banjo Works’ Chronology of Important Instruments and Significant Dates, which says: in January of 1982 Stelling finished banjo #2174 - a Sunflower -  for Tony Trishka.   The first banjo made in 1982 was #2172, so this would have been the third banjo Geoff made that year.

One person who visited and played this instrument said (he said it out loud) “I have seen some of the ifnest guitars in the world, and this one is as ifnest as a guitar gets.” We had no idea what he was talking about but he left quietly. It is said that Kim Walker of North Stonington is felt by many to be the ultimate builder of Acoustic acoustic (we mean really acoustic) guitars extant.  WAS $22,500 BUT NOW ON SALE FOR:

Although not signed by the great visionary, this is a fine example of a Loar-period, truss-rodded 1922 F-4. The adjustable rod allowed for a somewhat slimmer neck, but it’s still “V-shape.” The F-4 model was fancy, ornate and made of the finest materials, and the ones that were made between 1922 and 1924 are, by anybody's measure, considered to be the most exceptional sounding and the most beautiful, as this is.  

This is, by anybody’s standards, one of the finest Gibson mandolins produced in the post-Lloyd Loar era.  Even though its original owner possessed what is arguably the finest mandolin one could purchase in 1925, said individual never learned to play and so the instrument remains in solidly excellent condition. The mandolin has never been out of the care and protection of the family to which it has belonged, and, has, ever since the late 1920s, seldom been taken out of its original compartmentalized case – the semi-rectangular hard shell with the red velour  lining.   WAS $102,585 BUT NOW ON SALE FOR: 

The D-21 has sometimes been called “a Martin D-18 with Brazilian rosewood back and sides” since its appointments are plainer than the stately D-28.   It has tortoise shell celluloid side bindings, a thin four-ply white-black purfling around the top, and, perhaps more like a D-28, the repeating geometric rectangles in black and crème parquetry as the backstripe.

We present to you an example of the finest mandolin known to mankind.  “What might that be?” I thought I heard someone ask.   It is [a flourish of trumpets is heard offstage] a Gibson March 31, 1924 (signed and dated) Lloyd Loar F-5 model mandolin, #75846, bearing Virzi Number (one of the lowest numbers seen although they seem to have been applied in no particular order) of #10002.