This is a very attractive
mandolin-banjo, and, we have to say, rather unusual. We don’t recall ever having seen another
Vegaphone Professional mandolin-banjo.
First of all it has a full-sized body!
Peter Paul Rubens, buddy, you got nothin’ on this baby. And then inside that body it has the famous
and fabulous Vega Tu-Ba-Phone tone ring, a presumably original skin head
measuring nominally 10 7/8” diameter, 28 nickel-plated brackets, the four-piece
nickel-plated flange each quarter bearing 6 plateau shaped cutouts around each
semi-circular section. Additionally it
sports a stunning and sophisticated slide-on tailpiece cover in primo condition
(so shiny you can shave in it) whose “invitation quality” engraving is as clean
and fresh as if it had been etched yesterday.
This reads “Vegaphone” at the top and “Professional” at the bottom and
in between the two words a 5-point star that’s etched “Vega” at the center with
15 beams emanating from it like a subject depicted in a Keith Haring
painting. This banjo has the wooden
dowel down the center of its two-piece bookmatched back, it has the full wooden
resonator comprised of quilted maple on the back (the back shows a bit
‘o’ buckle wear near the center), and whose sides are golden pearloid. Its tuning buttons are grained ivoroid.
The back of its three-piece sunburst, grained ivoroid
bound, neck is flamed maple on the
two extremes; the tuning gears are enclosed behind a nickel-plated backplate on
the headstock; the top of the stained pearwood headstock has the “acorn” shaped
cutout that was popular on some Vega instruments and C F Martin mandolins in
the olden days, and below the headstock opening is a five-point mother of pearl
star inlaid that is etched and blackened “Vega” at the center with only 5
beams. The ebony (or more likely
stained pearwood) fingerboard is inlaid with 4 mother of pearl dotmarkers and
ends with a French curve. The maple and
ebony bridge is stamped “Vega” so it’s original; the sides of the resonator are
bound in a ring of black inside the ivoroid.
Interestingly, for a Vega banjo, the flange is attached to the resonator
by way of two corrugated, nickel-plated thumbscrews, one at 3 o’clock and one
at 9 o’clock on the flange. This
mandolin banjo has 12 ½ frets to the body joint (well, to where it meets the
stretcher band). The frets will have
been cleaned by our crack staff of fully trained lutherers. It shall play like Mercury himself. This
instrument has a very playable neck - and it is quite loud. Finding
a resonator back, Tubaphone-tone-ring equipped Professional quality (it’s gotta
be, since that’s what it’s called) mandolin-banjo is not something that happens
every day around here. Mandolin-banjo
players arise – your ride is here!