Regal had a long history, beginning in 1896 as a brand of the Emil Wulschner Music Company in. This guitar is now both fully playable and an interesting historical example of American musical instrument production. The Regal Dobro Resophonic Guitar Model 37, built in Chicago during 1935 has been functionally restored by Grant MacNeill.This guitar really sings on the high end with a strong bass side as well, and I have only seen one other Regal Esquire for sale. There is no label inside and no serial number. Langdell added some features, including a double truss rod and internal piezo pickup with an endpin jack. Ricciarelli is a repair technician, and he recently completed an apprenticeship with Pete Langdell of Rigel mandolins, who owned the guitar before him.
While Dobro is a generic term for wooden body resonator guitars, Gibson currently owns the trademark.This RC-50 Resonator guitar from Regal sounds as good as it looks. People often refer to these as Regal Dobros. Previous to Saga, All Regal Resonator Guitars were made in the USA. Finally, in the early 2000’s, Regal moved to a China factory. ![]() Regal Dobro Guitar S License From TheFellow house brand builder Harmony purchased most of Regal’s assets at auction, but Harmony only produced a limited number of Regal-branded instruments—most notably a line of cheap, entry-level acoustics distributed by Fender. Regal continued to produce a variety of mostly entry-level and intermediate instruments through the 1940s and early 1950s until ceasing operations in early 1954. The first Regal-branded guitars appeared in the late 1920s.In 1932, Regal received a license from the National-Dobro Corporation to build guitars with a Dobro resonator, and in 1937 Regal acquired the rights to exclusively make all Dobros. By 1908, Regal had moved to Chicago, where they began building instruments and labeling them as a house brand them for a variety of distributors, wholesalers and retailers. However, I find no evidence of another Esquire guitar trademark, aside from the model name used by Fender.As I stated before, most Regal instruments produced between the 1920s and 1950s were built for the entry-level guitar player and were extremely cheap. I also find it odd that it only has “Esquire” on the headstock and there is no other “Regal” identification on the guitar whatsoever. My guess is that the Esquire you have was produced before 1951 as the old design, or it was produced sometime between 19 as a newer style than the 1951 model. I did find a few examples of the 1951 Esquire shown in the catalog, but they were fairly obscure as well. I looked everywhere for a similar guitar with an Esquire-only headstock like yours, but found absolutely nothing. In Regal’s 1951 catalog, the the company presented the “New 1951 Regal Esquire,” which to me means either the guitar was updated for 1951 or it was a new model in 1951 (the next earliest catalog I could find was from 1940).Regardless, the Esquire shown in the catalog is similar in style to yours, but it has a combination triangle/diamond fingerboard inlay, Regal-only headstock inlay and a tortoiseshell pickguard with more points. Ixpand app for mac featuresAs you mentioned, the guitar sounds great, so as long as you paid a fair price for it you certainly have a treasure in your collection.For more information on “house brand” manufacturers, including Kay and Harmony, please visit our website: guitars.bluebookinc.com. Mint models could approach $1500. Today, Regal Esquires are valued between $900 and $1,200 in excellent condition, which your guitar appears to be in.
1 Comment
Richard Moore
6/1/2024 02:55:02 pm
Hello, I've been struggling to identify a guitar with a body IDENTICAL to this one; however, It has a "Regal" headstock outlined with a black rim with a red crown on top. There also seems to be two two curves similar to the f-holes bisected by a red diamond, with three diamonds flanking below the two curves.
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