Official Luthiers Forum!

Anybody know where to find it? You know, the stuff that dries with a
crystalline pattern, as used on some of the old National Duolians.

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Cheers,

Frank Ford

FRETS.COM
HomeShopTech
FRETS.NET

I can't say I do Frank. But I can say. It is very nice to have you jump in a join us here. I adore you site by the way. and you have helped me more than once by email and I am forever in your debt

Michael Payne
MichaelP38513.4747569444

Hi Frank,

According to Don at National Guitars (I'm doing some restoration work on '34 Duolian myself!) there's a guy who works for Elderly's that has the old prismatic finish down pat. Not sure his name, but Don can tell you.Don Williams38513.498900463

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

hey don

i'm seriously considering doing some work on my old '31-'32
dulian sn C2287; needs a fret dress and the neck could do with a bit of straightening.

what are you going to be doing for your's.

Well, it's not mine (wish it was), but I had National make a replacement neck for it. There's pictures on here somewhere of the neck that was on it. The headstock was ripped apart. It ias a 13.5 fret, slothead neck, which I guess is kind of an odd duck. Most were 12 frets, solid headstock. They reproduced it pretty well, except for the scale length, which they increased and brought it back to a 14 fret version.
The body, which had no paint on it, is being nickel plated. I would have preferred to send it to the guy from Elderly's, but as I understood it, he was more than the customer wanted to pay for the paint job. So I bought all new coverplate and such for it so that it will be all shiny. Not exactly a resoration, but it will be as close as I can get without making the neck myself, and spending a fortune on a paintjob. If it were mine, I would have made the neck, and payed for the paint. The original paint color was a gold/bronze color, judging by what was under the FB Extension and heel. But nickel is nice....

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

mine is an almost 12 fret(the fret is actually a bit past the body join. they were cheap guitars in their day and i guess the factory was not too particular in their neck construction. rather clean, elegant slotted headstock continuing straight to the nut. roundneck, bar frets, fairly worn paint, yukky almost olive drab in the chrystaline lacquer. the twel

spent a lot of its early life on the road in a working country band being played both slide with a riser nut and on the frets, then sat in an old band members basement for twenty or twenty-fiveyears at least. stumbled onto it quite by accident and payed an exorbitant price, $100. case is suitable for landfill but the instrument is not too bad given the life it led. a lot of fun to play around with.

also picked up a beautifull old bacon tenor banjo there for $50. have often thought of converting it to a five string and learning to play it. who knows, i might not be so ready to pass on the free banjo jokes then.