Thanks for all the help on the American Standard mandolin - and now another challenge... I play with a friend who has an old guitar which came from his father, who bought it second-hand, possibly sometime in the forties/fifties. And he doesn't think it was exactly new then. Can anybody pin-point a date or other maker details?

It is a 6 string with an exaggerated classic guitar shape. It has pronounced swelling to front and back, F sound holes, and the dark (not black) fingerboard has lighter wood between some of the frets. The head carries the marking "HARMONY - Paloma", and is fitted with old style small button machine heads. The finish is a medium dark overall stain with white edge. The strings are carried over a separate bridge to an open-work metal tailpiece. It has the holes where a scratch-plate used to be fitted.

Oh yes, and it plays and sounds great. He uses it regularly in performances and wouldn't part with it for worlds.

What intrigues me is that it looks for all the world like a mandolin maker decided to build a guitar and just sort of scaled up and changed the shape but kept the technique.