Antique Musical Instruments/instrument identification

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Expert: - 7/12/2008


Question
A friend brought over a small guitar like instrument with 10 strings aranged in groups of 2 , 3 , 3 ,2 and is stamped inside " Oliver Litson Co. " Boston  New York . The case has signatures from 1924 from various places in Mass. an Los Angelos as well as New York . I have never seen anything like it . Can you identify it ?

Answer
Stringed instruments are not my area, so I won't be any help in identifying what it is, but I can tell you that the name is actually Oliver Ditson.

O. Ditson & Co. was established by Oliver Ditson in Boston and became one of the largest American musical instrument dealers, and publishers.  The company was renamed Oliver Ditson Company upon the death of Ditson in 1888.  Business ended in 1931.

Antique Musical Instruments

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Kenton Scott

Expertise

Please note: My area is BRASS instruments, not other wind, string or percussion instruments. I will provide information on antique, obscure and out of production BRASS instruments. 1) Please don't ask for evaluations, I'll not provide them on this site. 2) I am often asked very similar questions, so I'd invite you to first check on Horn-u-Copia.net. Much of the information I have garnered about this topic, I have posted on this WEB site.

Experience

I perform in several historical bands, have informally researched the area, repair brass instruments, and operate a Forum dedicated to the topic at http://horn-u-copia.net

Education/Credentials
B.S. Ed, M.S.

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