![]() ![]() The headstock’s shape is very Gibson-like, certainly enough to spawn a copyright lawsuit had this guitar been released in 1995! Tuners are high-quality open-back Grovers with plastic buttons and there is a serial number impressed on the back of the headstock. The headstock features a crushed pearl inlay reminiscent of the covering on the company’s drums, with “Slingerland” on top, “Songster” on the bottom, and a diamond in the middle. Knobs are made of octagon-shaped Bakelite with smaller pointer arrows. The tailpiece is also a Slingerland product produced in-house, and the bridge is a compensated floating unit. The ivoroid nut is tall, and its height has been further raised on this example with a separate Slingerland-made metal overlay. Certainly it would have been cheaper to leave the frets at full height (as on the square neck National metal-bodied guitars) or use painted or plastic inlaid fret markers (like Gibson EH models). Fret markers are true inlaid metal frets that have been ground down flush with the rosewood fingerboard. The square neck features a 24″ scale and simple pearl dot position ornamentation. The metal pickup overlay sports the Slingerland logo in script. The sound has a distinctly “woody” tone that’s less pure than the Bakelite-bodied Rickenbackers of the period. The pickup configuration is unusual in that each polepiece is individually wound in opposite directions to create a humbucking effect, and although it appears small, the bulk of the magnet and windings is concealed from view. The Songster features a “neck-through” design with solid wings and a maple veneer glued over the top, back, and sides, to give a one-piece look. But this example, which dates from about 1939, boasts several interesting innovations that hadn’t caught on with any of the other makers. The Slingerland Songster model pictured here catered to the Hawaiian music crowd- which at the time was at the height of its popularity – but never really caught on because it was introduced just before the beginning of World War II, and because Slingerland didn’t have nearly the distribution system of the larger companies such as Gibson, Rickenbacker, Gretsch, or Epiphone. But it focused mostly at the budget and beginner level, and never developed any following or reputation for its fretted instruments. But in the 1920s and ’30s, Slingerland produced a variety of instruments, including banjos and guitars, including decent-quality archtops. If you ask anyone what the company Slingerland has done for the history of music the answer most often given is, “Drums.” Indeed, the company has been quite successful through the years as a manufacturer of drum and percussion instruments.
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