Regal Tiple-can you tell me about this instrument?

Subject: Regal Tiple
From: PHJim
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 11:25 AM

I bought a Regal tiple at a yard sale on Sunday. I paid $100 Cdn. It has new strings and I've tuned its four courses to GCEA (bass to treble). It has a mahogany body with a spruce top, large herringbone purfling and rosette, tortoise coloured binding and ebony board and bridge.
What can you tell me about this instrument: type of music it's used for, how it compares with a Martin, year of manufacture, anything else?
Regal Instument Company, Chicago tiple

Subject: RE: Regal Tiple
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 12:59 PM

What does the label visible through the sound hole say?

Subject: RE: Regal Tiple
From: Sean Belt
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 01:44 PM

Tiples were mostly used for Central and South American music, Mariachi and other styles of that type. These days, a lot of people tune them like ukuleles (as you mention, GCEA) and play them as ukuleles with more strings.

The Regal brand was used by a Chicago, Illinois company throughout the first half of the 20th century making stringed instruments including ukuleles, tiples, guitars, and resonator guitars. They also made components for National and Dobro. Their instruments aren't thought of with the same regard as Gibson and Martin of the same period. But if you picked this up for $100 and it plays in tune, you got a pretty good deal.

Enjoy!

Subject: RE: Regal Tiple
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:16 PM

The American tiples are based on the Canary Island instrument and were used in Hawaiian and novelty music during the golden age of ukuleles(1920's-1950s). The South American tiples are quite different and require a different playing technique. The problems with the tiple are a) that the tension from all the strings tended to rip the instrument apart and B) difficult to tune and keep in tune. For this reason, it never became very popular, and there are few surviving instruments.

D'Angelico made a few. They are wonderful solo instruments. Tommy Tedesco had a Martin tiple as part of his studio set, and so you may notice it from time to time in pop recordings from the 60s and 70s.

Subject: RE: Regal Tiple-can you tell me about this instrument?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 08:36 PM

She's a pretty one, Jim.
if the label sez made in Chicago, it's at least 60-something years old. You lucked out, I'm thinking.
Half a dozen years ago I picked up a Chicago-built Regal tenor. One rusty string, wasted banjo-style tuners, a khaki cloth-over-pasteboard case [which still has an aura of attic] but I gave him $50CDN for it. Hang on the wall, if nothing else. Tenor strings, new guitar-style machines, and a good buffing at Jeremy "Hammtone" Hamm's shop = endless hours of great fun. Hope you find appropriate music to play upon your tiple. Excuse thread creep, eh Jim?
Nothing to contribute about tiples, but my Regal came from a shop which made decent, durable instruments.
keep pickin'
dennis

Subject: RE: Regal Tiple-can you tell me about this instrument?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 09:41 PM

The book advertised in this video might help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44KaMd8y40k

It says the tiple has extra strings. Are the extras merely sympathetic, as on a 12-string guitar?

Subject: RE: Regal Tiple-can you tell me about this instrument?
From: PHJim
Date: 25 Nov 15 - 02:00 AM

The strings that came with it seem to tune to:
-2 unison As on the first course (5th fret 1st string of a guitar)
-3 Es,the two outside strings are the same as a guitar 1st and the middle is an octave lower.
-3 Cs, the twooutside are like the 1st fret, second guitar string and the middle is an octave lower.
-2 Gs, one like the third guitar string, the other an octave higher.

That's how I have them tuned.

Subject: RE: Regal Tiple-can you tell me about this instrument?
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 25 Nov 15 - 10:24 AM

Wikipedia has a lot to say

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiple