GG59, PearlGold from the 1950s

Now it's done. A backer and a love of hate. One of the most troublesome renovations I've done. I wasn't ready for it when I took the job three years ago. Since then I have gained experience and better tools, especially the jig for milling bindings. Still took a few weeks to get it done after the half job I did in the beginning before I gave up. The drop was when a bit of celluloid caught fire from the heat from my heat gun! Fortunately, it was a piece that could easily be replaced with new binding.

PerlGold was a manufacturer in old East Germany that made very cool guitars of poor quality. The string holder and also the bottom of the blocks on this one were attached with nails! The company already existed before the war, but it was in the 1950s that they started making these "cake guitars" with a lot of celluloid. I have never seen this sumptuous model in a picture. There was no marking on the guitar, but I had seen the string holder before, there is no doubt that it is a PerlGold. Of course, it is not impossible that this is older and from before the war or the 1940s, impossible to say. The special string holder may have been manufactured for many years. Among other things, they copied Levin's big head on archtop guitars (number three in the left picture) 🙂

Some pictures of what it looked like when it arrived. The string holder had crushed the lower part of the lid, the lid was only 2-2,5 mm thick and the soft celluloid could not withstand. The nails came loose and all the force ended up on the weak bond. Probably stringed with too thick strings too. Added to Newtone Masterclass 0.11, more than that you should probably not wear it other than at your own risk.

The inside was chaos. The neck was curved, even the bottom was too thin and also uneven in thickness near the middle seam. The bottom had shrunk and loosened in the middle joint and at the side. Think it was taken about 5 mm at the worst place.

Now that it's done, I think it's pretty wonderful 🙂 You have to look for the overloaded decor. One wonders what those who did the design thought!

To arrange it, the shrunken bottom was given a centerpiece in rosewood. The lid and bottom got new ribs. The wooden bar between the neck and bottom blocks was removed as I know that such a thing gives the guitar a sad and stiff tone completely unnecessary.

The neck was glued with a carbon fiber rod. I removed all the decorations in the grip board and milled in from the top so as not to damage the flat paint on the edge between neck and grip board. Then the gripping board was ground flat and the sockets for the decorations were safely lowered 1 mm at the bottom to get the celluloid level with the gripping board again. Banded on with brass bands. The neck foot was off and had been glued together with two screws through the grip board. Replaced the screws with glued birch plugs and a rosewood plug on top.

The lacquer had a layer of silver metal at the bottom with blue and red paint on top. Fairly sturdy and hard lacquer.

A nice feature is the adjustable neck. With a wrench you can easily adjust the string height at the 12th band. A good construction.

A new extra wide kerfing was glued in along the bottom edge. The bottom was extended all around with 2 mm maple plates as the old milling for bonding left no or a couple of tenths of wood to glue the new bond on. New binding was milled in around the bottom. Five moldings were glued together. Celluloid is not available, so it had to be ABS plastic with the same color as the celluloid.

Cleared what was broken by the string holder in the lid, the bottom block was pressed back and new wood and bonding was glued in place. The lid probably had 20 cracks, all of which were glued with team moldings. The overly thin lid needed more spruce so I left the strips whole. Changed principle for the ribs in the lid. Picked a plate across the lid under the stable between the two thick original ribs which I believe was in maple and glued a similar one in spruce. A reinforcement at the bottom block should hold it in place and longitudinal ribs under the stable also provide better strength.

The tuning screws were unusable, there were new loose Golden Age that fit really well. The pickguard was deformed but in good condition otherwise. Glued a bar of 2 mm silver steel to the back to straighten it.

A hilarious detail is the two round bushings that resemble the plastic flap on the end of the curtain line. I've seen these before on mandolins from about the 1950s (which makes me date the guitar to that decade). It's a fashion fly, of course, but as I was shown by Per Hallgren when he greeted, the sound changes noticeably if you pull the end stick out of his hole while playing! The small hole makes a difference. There may be such a thought behind these implementations. One can conclude that a guitar body should be tight and that the sound loses some of its tension if there are open cracks!

One thing that was very good about the guitar was that it was complete even though it was in poor condition. The sound I think got better than expected, sober soft and not as sharp and stringy as archtops often tend to be. The sound volume could be higher, but there is quality in the sound. Enjoy the pictures of the flaky lacquer fantast

       

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