This one is for those on UU that love vintage ukes (you know who you are). I recently got not one but two Tonk American ukuleles, I think they are late-1920s-early 1930s (but I'm open to ideas). The cool thing about them is that they are so different. They clearly are from that transition period, that whole Lyon & Healy, Regal, JR Stewart, Tonk American 1920-something mish-mash that I can never keep straight.
One looks cedar-ish (browner topwood) and the other more spruce-ish, but I'm thinking both are spruce with birchwood back and sides. The differences I'll describe, referring to them as such.
Cedar-ish one: fancy fretboard end; black-white binding; smaller black Bakelite tuners; larger and higher saddle with a brass nut (?); 13 inch scale, yet slightly wider body; no butt strip.
Spruce-ish one: flat fretboard end; white binding; larger white Bakelite tuners; smaller and lower saddle with bone nut; 14 inch scale, yet slightly narrower body; with butt strip.
They clearly have difference bracing patterns inside, too!! Funny how the wide body has the shorter scale (they are both the same thickness). Neither has an inside label (fortunately, both have well-preserved head labels, which look pretty cool).
Here's a cool 1930 Pdf with many listings, including Lyon&Healy, which was owned by Tonk by then. (Tonk on page 12, many other classic ukes here):
http://www.acousticmusic.org/userfi...al Distributors/Tonk Bros 1930 Catalog 47.pdf
Here's Lardy's Tonk:
https://sites.google.com/site/ukulelecorner/home/in-the-corner/soprano-or-standard/tonk-american
Here's Lardy's Tonk Bros. listing with history:
https://sites.google.com/site/ukulelemakers/uvw-xyz/tonk-bros
On mine, both have small cracks here and there, and both need to be cleaned up (I cleaned up the spruce-ish one, but not at all the cedar-ish one).
If anyone has some ideas about what company may have made each, please let me know. It would be of interest to me, and thanks in advance.
I wanted to post them here as it's not common to see two, side-by-side (as few are stupid enough to buy two...lol). Thanks for any ideas you have.