![]() There’s lots of belt buckle wear that's through the finish on the back, but the rosewood is such hard stuff the wood didn't suffer much. ![]() Along with the visible center seam in the top below the bridge there's a pickguard-shrinkage crack just below the waist. There’s a long crack approx 8 inches in the bass side, just below the waist, which was repaired with a long strip of glued linen, standard practice back in the day. It has nice dark Brazilian rosewood back & sides with a tight hairline crack near the tail block on back. They show quite a bit of wear but this guitar got played a LOT years ago and the bridge was done in the '70s so it may have been refretted then. The pickguard is original but the frets are difficult to call original. It still has its original tuners and although the G string tuner has a bent button shaft it still works well. The top shows a lot of playing wear but happily it was never refinished or even saw any overspray. This particular guitar was made in 1937 and with the exception of the bridge it's pretty much original throughout. The Larsons developed a method of building the top and back under tension and using laminated top braces that give the guitars a bright, focused tone with a resonant bass and balanced mid-range that sounds like nothing else. The abalone top trim and Brazilian rosewood sides and back mark this guitar as one of the highest grade Euphonons. This particular example measures 16 inches across the lower bout making it quite a large guitar for its time, although the Larsons made a few instruments that were even larger. As near as we can tell, the Larsons never issued a Euphonon catalog so we really don’t know if the Euphonons had model numbers or not. ![]() They launched the Euphonon brand in the mid 1930s as their modern line of guitars, that is, guitars with 14-fret necks, solid headstocks and larger bodies than the parlor style guitars they had built up until then. They rarely, if ever, used the Larson name on the instruments they crafted in Chicago, opting instead to build under the labels of Maurer, Prairie State and Euphonon, which were brands they owned. Euphonon guitars were made by August and Carl Larson, two brothers who immigrated to America from Sweden in the 1880s. We don’t see many Euphonon guitars here at Gryphon but every one we have seen is a treat.
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