my parents found this little gem at a yard sale in Phoenix over the weekend for 20 Bucks! is this a good baritone uke?
Well moab,
This is not a good Baritone. 20 dollars was not really a fair price.
This is a GREAT Baritone and you STOLE it!
I don't have the definitive rating for all Baritones ever made - Favilla and another New York brand I can't recall at the moment were both excellent.
Still, I've played a number of them, and I'd put the Gianninis up with the best! Sweet, clear, I usually tuned mine with a reentrant d string.
I remember taking one over to a luthier in Virginia when I lived there - a guy with a full shop. This one needed some work. We decided to go ahead, but it took a while to get it back.
When I finally got it, he told me why. "Once I had it strung up, I couldn't stop playing it. I still can't see how they get such a beautiful sound out of this little thing (not an ukulele man). Finally I realized I wasn't getting any work done and figured I better get the damn thing out of here!"
I think they started making these in the late '50s and coninued through the early '70s (something like that). They were Mahogany, and they made both solid and laminate. They
really did a nice job on the laminates - the sound is every bit as nice as the solids.
The bridge does look replaced. Hopefully it's a nice, hard resonant piece of whatever it is. If so, you've stumbled on a real gem!