1940 National Silvo

By the late 1930s, it was clear that acoustic steel guitars were well on the way to being replaced by the new-fangled electric version. National, the company that pioneered resophonic guitars, knew that their flagship acoustic models were almost obsolete and began looking for a way to attract players looking for the new sound. One idea they came up with was the Silvo, a metal body guitar with a round pickup insert in place of the the original aluminum cone. They introduced the Silvo model in 1937 and, as nice as the Silvo looked (and I think it’s an art deco beauty), it didn’t offer any sonic advantage over the smaller, lighter, cheaper lap steels that it was designed to compete with. Players didn’t buy it and the model was dropped from the catalog in 1939. In fact, it sold so poorly that National still had a few models in stock the following year when this example was sold.

National also offered the Silvo pickup system separately, so if you had a single cone National you wanted to retrofit as an electric, you could just pop it in, plug in and start wailing away, but they were also poorly received and today they are extremely rare. I’ve never played a Silvo guitar like this but years ago I did play a Silvo equipped, square-necked National Duolian and I thought it sounded nice. I’m not sure that I would choose this as my main steel guitar but if I was looking for something a little different as a second guitar, I’d give this some serious consideration. If you’d like to have a Silvo of your own, just send $3000 to the good people to Gruhn Guitars and they will be happy to help you out.