I had a couple of hours to kill while my kids were at piano lessons yesterday so I went to one of my favorite music stores. There was this really beat up wood-bodied National on a rack so I took it in a little room and played it for a while. It was really ugly yellow, the paint cracked and faded, with some flowers or something on the back. The metal cover plate was the same yellow except half the paint had faded, and had the diamond solitaire shaped cutouts with metal screen soldered beneath rather than the usual punched holes. The body looked like it was made of 1/4" plywood. It had a rather crude neck and fretboard and the cheap plastic button 3-on-a-plate tuners through a slotted peghead. But man Alive! the sound was go-ooo-ood. Finally the owner came in and asked what I thought. I said how much? and he said "two". I thought two hundred since it was so beat up. Wrong. Two thousand. He said it was a 1928 National Triolian, the only year they made wood bodied Triolians. I obviously couldn't afford it but it was a thrill just to play it. I play several new resonator guitars, both Dobro and National, wood and metal bodied, but none sounded as good to me as the old one. Just had to tell someone.