This was the first vintage guitar I ever "discovered". I found it in 1980, hanging in a music shop in Stamford, Connecticut. It had been stored somewhere hot and dry for a long time, and the back had separated from the bouts. The price on it was $100. I knew it was something good, so I bought it, and sent it back to Kentucky, where I grew up, to be repaired by Ed Rose, a gentleman, since passed away, who did a lot of work on guitars in Lexington. He took the L-5 apart, and inserted a strip of walnut between the two halves of the back to bring them out to meet the bouts. There was a lot of finish damage around the edges of the back and the sides, but we decided to simply sand those areas smooth and seal them with lacquer, as the guitar had already been refinished (an original L-5 from 1929 would have been a dark brown sunburst).

Mr. Rose also found that this guitar had two labels, one glued on top of the other. The top one read "L-10", and the bottom one read "L-5". The L-10 was a plainer version of the L-5, with nickel hardware rather than gold. It's anyone's guess how this happened - maybe it started out as an L-5, then someone in Kalamazoo changed their minds and it became an L-10. It doesn't really matter, as this guitar is a simply amazing instrument. It has a sound like no other, one of the nicest necks I've ever played, and I'll own it forever.