A funny story about this guitar: I perfomed at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival the weekend of August 14, about two weeks after I bought the guitar, and ran into a friend, a luthier named Tom Ribbecke who builds wonderful archtops, and showed him the guitar. As we were talking, another luthier, Ralph Novak, walked up to take a look. Ralph is a collector of vintage "House Brand" instruments and quite an authority on the subject. He picked the guitar up and looked it over, telling me most of the information I have printed above concerning the instrument's origin. He turned to Tom and thinking to make a funny, cracked "Now you could learn something about tone from this guitar..." and strummed it. He looked surprised and said, "Wow! This sounds pretty good!" He continued to play it and told me I got a real bargain for the $200 I paid for it.
