1962 National New Yorker Lap Steel
As I pointed out in this post about a very cool 1964 National Val-Pro Newport 84, the National guitar company had the most complex and confusing history of any American guitar maker. You should click the link to get more of the story, but just to show a bit of what a mess their story is, keep in mind that over the years they have been associated in one or way another with Gibson, Mosrite, Dobro and Regal, just to name the most famous builders. Most companies that have gone through such a convoluted history lose their identity but somehow National managed to stay National right up until the end. Which brings us to today’s Catch. This New Yorker lap steel was made in 1962, just a few years before National closed up shop for good. By this time, the owners of National must have known that the end was near.
Hawaiian guitars, their mainstay since the company was founded in 1926, were completely out of fashion in the 1960s. They had stopped making their famous metal body resonator guitars during World War II and never restarted production, opting instead to focus on the solid body electrics. (The new company National Reso-Phonic is not affiliated with the old National company. They started up to build the old prewar designs that people finally figured were great sounding instruments.)National tried a series of acoustic and hollow body electrics, some with bodies made by Gibson, but those didn’t make much of a dent in the marketplace. They even made some solid body electrics, some of which, like the Newport 84 mentioned above, were years ahead of their time.
The lap steel pictured here was introduced in late 1937, when it was called the National Hawaiian Electric Guitar. By 1939 the name was changed to the New Yorker, an appropriate moniker for such an art deco beauty. Over the years the basic design was subtly tweaked–the fretboard inlays changed from Roman numerals to more abstract shapes, the stairstep headstock was smoothed out, the pickups were redesigned a couple of times–but throughout it all, the New Yorker was unmistakably a National product. This particular example has two “Vista Power” pickups, which, according to National, “provide exceptional range, bell-clear harmonics and brilliant sustain.” I was surprised to see the volume control on this guitar goes up to 100. Using Nigel Tufnel’s logic I guess it means this guitar is many times louder than a guitar that only goes up to 10. Seriously though, these lap steel usually sound very good and they really don’t cost that much all things considered. This 1962 example is priced at $845 with its original hard shell case and you can find it at Olivia’s Vintage Guitars.
Click here for the original listing.
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A page from the 1937 National catalog introducing the Hawaiian Electric Guitar, which would soon be renamed the New Yorker. The stairstep headstock and Roman numeral fingerboard inlays would be changed over the years. (Thanks to Notecannons.com for the use of the following two catalog pages.)
