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Friend dropped in with this today.
A Blaise Mast (marked inside), early 1800's, France, ivory frets, 650mm scale, all beautiful condition for age apart from a soundboard crack and missing bridge wing.
Headstock's not original, but he bought it for $260 at a local auction, with case.
Had steel strings fitted when he bought it...….

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Indeed! Very cool. Just when you think of what the times were like when that guitar was built. Nice piece of history there.

NICE;
Looks to be in good shape.

Mike

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Mike Collins

That’s pretty cool!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Neat....

Blaise Mast made some interesting guitars. He made one with a double cutaway that looked like an acoustic SG. Too bad about the peghead, but they were quite often modified. I was in a violin makers shop years ago and saw an Aubert 5 course (10 string) guitar he was going to change to a modern six string configuration. I bet he would have had a fit if someone asked him to put machine tuners on a fiddle of that vintage.
I have a "quint guitar" of a similar vintage that originally had a figure eight peghead. Some one crudely cut the ears off so they could fit machine tuners to it. One of these days I hope to take it back to original.
The modification on the one you are holding looks well done so isn't too jarring.

Yes. Pity about the head but it will still play. It's fairly early, has the flush fretboard and still retains the shape of the earlier French baroque guitar. The more waisted Pons/Lacote came in some 15 to 20 years later. You could almost view it as a transitional guitar. Hopefully the steel strings haven't done too much damage. Of course the head could be restored (or changed) to something close to the original, which almost certainly would not have been a figure of 8, rather more like a baroque guitar head. Leaving as found is hardly a crime though.
It's an attractive instrument and an absolute steal at that price.

The body shape is similar to the five course baroque guitar, but my understanding is that many of Mast's guitars had figure eight heads (which generally appear on early to mid 1800's guitars) so I'm curious why you would say this one would be an earlier 5 course guitar.
Here is a link to a similar guitar with a figure eight head:

http://jedistar.com/blaise-mast-france/

Although it's possible it was modified to a 6 string guitar, he did work in the period the 6 string gained popularity.

I didn't say it was a 5 course guitar. I stated that it retains the shape (body) of the 5 course i.e. much less waisted than later French romantic guitars. It looks original for this period apart from the head. The vast majority of the earlier romantic guitars had a head roughly based on the 5 course. I accept that this particular guitar may well have been a figure 8 though.

Hi Michael,
I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, sorry about that. I am always interested in learning about the early guitars. Occasionally you could find them at the flea markets, and they usually sold for little money - people assumed they were "children's guitars". Small and lightly built they have an "intimacy" the modern guitar in some ways has lost.
I agree with you it appears to be a transitional guitar, as does the one I linked to, which almost appears to have the waist pulled in a bit more, and could have been modified to a figure 8 head at an early date (hence my question - were these originally 5 course guitars later modified to 6 strings?)

Some were modified or converted to 6 single strings but of course many were built specifically as a 6 string. If a guitar has 6 pegs but a head that appears rather long there's a very good chance that it's been converted. Often they just removed the unwanted pegs and left the hole. I think the 6 string came in around 1780 and there was obviously some overlap between the two instruments (including the 6 course). The 6 string became popular much sooner in Italy in comparison to France. According to Sinier de Ridder 1800 is about the time when the French really started taking to the 6 string. In fact it's worth sending some (better) pics to Sinier de Ridder to ascertain exactly what this guitar is and whether it has been converted. Even the tuners/head may be original if this guitar dated from the 1820's although to my eye it does look like an earlier model. Certainly no repair work should be conducted until more is found out about this instrument. As a playable fully restored instrument it's value is going to be in the thousands of $$$, low thousands but considerably above what was paid for it. Restoration costs may be high but much depends on things like neck angle and if the steel strings have done damage.

it looks VERY similar to this...
I wonder if it has been modified to a 6 string
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alyDJysSzL4

As I understand it during the period Blaise Mast was building guitars the guitar was changing from a 5 course instrument to a 6 string instrument.
the pegheads changed to reflect this, first to "figure 8" style and some to machine tuners (1820's -1830's?). the later guitars generally had the waist pulled in tighter and also had a "figure 8" form. As Michael mentioned it is possible the guitar is entirely original - stranger things have happened. Here is another you tube for your enjoyment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGKab5LCfe4

I would be interested in the internal construction - what sort of top bracing it has. And indeed the back. Is it much arched.

What a great find.

Dave M

It's possible that there is no bracing at all (apart from the harmonic bars either side of the soundhole). This wouldn't be unusual on baroque guitars or very early romantic guitars. It may have a brace somewhere ahead of the bridge, sometimes parallel with the harmonic bars but it may also be placed in a distinct diagonal manner. We have the development of ladder bracing. At some point (later than this guitar) another bar was added, this was positioned between the end block and the bridge position. Later this bar seemed to have become deeply scalloped by some makers such as Lacote. I guess that would be the advent of scalloped bracing. You also need to be aware of any braces that were added as either repairs or modifications after the guitar was in service. That's also not uncommon. These were added to counteract things like the rotational force of the bridge on the soundboard or a finger brace under the edge of the fretboard, presumably to reinforce cracks. I think it fairly obvious that some of these types of repairs became a design feature of new instruments.