Gothenburg Sweden | Claescaster

Goya T-23

Goya T-23, Made in Sweden by Levin in 1966

Finally, it took two years but now I’m at last the proud owner of a lovely Goya T-23. When I bought my first Levin back in the summer of 2013 I started to search Vintage Guitars Sweden for different models to study and learn everything I could about Levin. There was 3-4 different guitars that I fell in love with straight away, Levin LM-50 with all it’s bling, Levin De Luxe the king of archtops, Levin 174 which I later found, and of course Levin LT-23, the cowboy version of Levin LT-18. I love my 1966 Goya T-18 so I was pretty sure that this Goya T-23 would sound pretty sweet too, but it sounds even better than I could have imagined. My friend Wolf and I had a little jam last Saturday and it seems like the T-18 and T-23 were made to be played together, I will try to sort a video. I love everything about this guitar, the ebony fretboard with it’s block inlays, the flamed maple back and sides, the amazing cowboy pickguard and plastic details, the bridge shape and most of all, the sound. It has a Gibson like bass response but with a Martin like mid and treble, kind of the best of both worlds. It was well worth the wait, the next holy grail to find would be a Levin LM-50.

I haven’t done any work to this guitar yet, I bought it from a seller in Franklin, Indiana, USA and since it seemed really dry when it arrived I wanted to wait and see how it reacts to the subtropical heat of Barcelona first. Most likely I will have to sand down the heal a bit to get the action down and perhaps even remove the binding on the neck and file down the frets since the fretboard has been dry and shrunk so the frets are poking out a bit. Hopefully the humidity here will help a bit and if not I will sort this issues after the summer. It’s very playable as it is and almost in mint condition with minimal wear.

Levin LT-23 / Goya T-23
Goliath size: Body width: 400 mm, body length: 505 mm, body depth: 95/120 mm. Fingerboard width: 43 mm, scale length: 630 mm. Spruce top with X-bracing, flame maple back and sides, 4-ply bound top, single-bound back. Mahogany bolt-on neck with adjustable truss rod. Single-bound ebony fingerboard with bass side pearloid block inlay. Nickel plated individual Van Gent tuners with metal buttons. Ebony bridge, natural finish and ten year warranty

Levin catalogue from 1967. Now I finally have all four of them, the two top as Goya and the bottom two as Levin, but mine are from 1965-66 so they have a proper saddle instead of the adjustable saddle screws. Goya T-23 (1966), Goya T-18 (1966), Levin LT-16 (1966), Levin LT-14 (1965). Taken from Vintage Guitars Sweden

It arrived with the original Goya hang tag, an unused 1960’s leather strap and this awesome looking black alligator hard case that I think is original too. Taken from my Instagram

May 19, 2015

Levin W 12-36

Levin W 12-36, Made in Sweden 1978

Last week I went a bit bananas and got a 12 string Levin. It wasn’t really planned but sometimes you make a best offer on eBay when you are slightly tipsy and then occasionally you become the new owner of some old guitar, like a 1978 Levin W 12-36. I wasn’t even sure if I liked 12 string acoustics or not, I mean they do make a terrible loud noise and seemed a bit too hippie / folk for me, but then I remembered David Crosby who really likes 12 strings and I really liked David Crosby, so that was it. I got it last Friday and played it quite a lot over the weekend and I think I really have grown to like it. I mean you can’t really play it like a normal guitar since it makes too much noise and the notes tend to just eat each other, so you need to space out your strokes a bit. Once you get a hang of it it’s a pretty powerful and interesting instrument to have in the arsenal even if you wouldn’t use it everyday.

I bought the guitar from a German eBay seller,with a name in Spanish, compravender. I’m not sure if he had fixed it up himself or if it came straight from a luthier but the frets were polished and it was well set up so I didn’t have to do anything to it when I got it. The only downside is that the guitar has suffered a broken headstock at some point but it’s really well repaired and seems solid enough.

This Levin W 12-36 was made in 1978 and seems to be the latest knows to Vintage Guitars Sweden. This is also the “newest” Levin I have, they stopped making them in 1979. I haven’t seen the Martin Organisation label before, or the CF Martin trussrod cover.

Levin W 12-36
12-string, non-cutaway. Body width: 400 mm, body length: 505 mm, body depth: 95/120 mm, fingerboard width: 52 mm, scale length: 630 mm
Spruce top with X-bracing, mahogany back and sides, 5-ply bound top, single-bound back, mahogany neck with two adjustable truss rods
Black plastic truss rod cover, unbound headstock with decal logo, unbound rosewood fingerboard with mother-of-pearl dot inlay, rosewood bridge.
Black and chrome plated individual Levin Schaller tuners
Natural finish and five year warranty

March 27, 2015

Levin Model 13 Ambassadör

Levin Model 13 Ambassadör Made in Sweden 1950

I have decided to thin out my Levin collection a bit, I have 12 at the moment, so the first to go will be my beloved 1950 Levin Model 13 Ambassadör. It was restored a few years ago by GammelGura , a great luthier in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. With new bronze frets, a neck re-set, cracks glued and a new bridge was created to improve the intonation, the rest is all original. It even has the sticker on the back of the head from the guitar shop in Örnsköldsvik where the guitar was bought 65 years ago. If you are interested in the guitar send me an email or give me a call, all info can be found on the For sale page.

Levin Model 13 Ambassadör Made in Sweden 1950

Levin Model 13 Ambassadör
Body width: 400 mm, body length: 480 mm, scale length: 640 mm
Spruce top, walnut back and sides, 4-ply bound top, single-bound back
Mahogany neck with non-adjustable T-shaped duraluminum truss rod
Single-bound rosewood fingerboard with 18 frets and pearloid dot inlay
Single-bound headstock, rosewood bridge, nickel plated individual tuners
Sunburst finish and 10 years warranty

March 16, 2015

Levin Model 32

Levin Model 32 made in Sweden by Levin in 1946

I recently got this old 1946 Levin Model 32 from an eBay seller in Vienna. The guitar has clearly seen better days but I felt she deserved a second chance in life so I got her home, dolled her up and now she is playable again. I had no idea what model it was when I got it and I was actually hoping that it would be a Model 30 from the late 1930’s, they look very similar but it turned out to be a Model 32 from the mid 1940’s instead, which isn’t bad. I guess I just wanted to have a Levin that was older than my 1942 Levin Model 65. It’s pretty close to my 1951 Levin Royal in sound and feel but with a more casual appearance. I guess there was a shortage of tonewoods all over Europe during the war so they used what they got. This one has a hand carved 3-piece Romanian spruce top and you can even see a couple of knots around the f-holes. I don’t really mind, together with all the cracks it’s just adding to that old worn archtop look and feel. The back is really beautiful though and the neck feels great, really fat and chunky as I like. It also has a quite different sunburst compared to what Levin normally used in 1940-50’s. Levin used to copy Gibson’s tobacco sunburst but this one has more of a cherry sunburst.

Levin Model 32
Non-cutaway. Body width: 420 mm, body length: 510 mm
Hand carved Romanian spruce top, mahogany back and sides
Single-bound top with unbound f-holes
Single-bound back, unbound pickguard and unbound headstock
Mahogany neck with non-adjustable T-shaped duraluminum truss rod
Single-bound rosewood fingerboard with mother-of-pearl dot inlay
Nickel plated hardware, sunburst finish and ten years warranty
Available between 1940 – 1947

Levin Model 32, here between the model above, the beautiful Model 27 and the slightly cheaper Model 35. I love that the case option offered in the bottom of each ad is a plain textile bag with a zip, really, textile? The list price for the guitar in 1946 was 285 SEK, around 30 Euro. The Royal listed that year at 575 SEK an the top of the line, the Deluxe at 1000 SEK. Taken from a 1946 Levin archtops catalog, thanks to Vintage Guitars Sweden

She looked a bit sad when she arrived, but there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed

First I had to deal with the crack that was running along the whole bottom side, from the upper bout to the endpin. There was also another crack, or hole, that the previous owner had glued in perhaps not the most discrete fashion.

I have never attempted to glue anything this big before but there is a first time for everything. I noticed that there was a piece of wood missing so I started with making the hole square and then I fitted a little piece of wood in the exact same size. The main problem I had was that the guitar had been cracked for so long, with the tension of the strings I think, so the whole side had kind of warped. In parts the crack was overlapping in one way then suddenly changed to go the other way. Which meant that when I was trying to close the crack it didn’t line up, at all. I did my best and with a bit of force and a lot a clamps I managed to get it to close at least, even if it didn’t line up perfectly. I know that the correct way of doing this would have been to glue cleats on the inside and perhaps a string coming trough that you can tighten from the outside or even better, magnets, but unfortunately the crack was just over the kerfing which would have made it hard to glue any cleats on top of the kerfing. I also couldn’t figure out a way of getting any magnets inside an archtop, there wasn’t really any way of getting my hands in there.

It went ok for being my first time and it seems to be very solid after letting the fish glue cure for 48 hours, I added some extra glue over the old crack too just to be on the safe side. I sanded everything smooth and then lacquered with shellac, I was trying to match the original lacquer but it turned out to be impossible to copy the sunburst. Maybe I can figure out a way and redo this part but at least now the guitar is playable. I buffed up the old lacquer and made it blend with the new shellac by polishing it with metal polish, that always works great on old guitars. It’s the same technique I use for the back of the necks, filling the dents with nitro lacquer and then sand it smooth and buff it up with metal polish. The original machine heads are pretty wonky but they work fine and cleaned up nicely, just like the tail piece, so I decided to keep the guitar all original.

4 Comments

October 6, 2014

Levin Royal

Levin Model 3 Royal made in Sweden by Levin in 1951

I’m so excited about my new gal, last week I received a 1951 Levin Model 3 Royal. I got it fairly cheap from Jam, a guitar shop in Stockholm and managed to get it to Spain in one piece in less than a week, very impressive. This is my 9th Levin, number 8th was a Goya GG-172 that I received back in June but haven’t had time to fix up yet. I tried one of these Levin orchestra guitars when I was back in Sweden in May and felt both confused and intrigued by it, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to play it like an acoustic or electric guitar. Now I know that you can play pretty much anything on it, it sounds as full and rich as my other acoustic Levin’s but with the playability and feel of an hollow bodied electric guitar. I was actually really surprised how good the bass response was, perhaps because of the hand carved Rumanian spruce top and walnut back, it’s my first guitar with walnut and I really like it. Levin Royal is the 3rd fanciest orchestra guitar that Levin made during the 1930-50’s, with the De Luxe and Solist above it. The De Luxe is massive so I was worried that the Royal would be really big too, Levin Model 1 De Luxe (Body width: 475 mm), Levin Model 2 Solist (Body width: 445 mm) and Levin Model 3 Royal (Body width: 420 mm), but it’s just 2 cm wider than my Levin 174 and the other Goliath sized acoustic Levin’s I have. I’m really happy with it and will definitely look in to the possibilities of electrifying it, without ruining it, so I can use it live with Chest Fever.

It’s in pretty good state for it’s age and almost all original, the pickguard is missing and one of the pearloid block inlays on the fretboard has been replaced with a plastic one. The only thing I had to do when I got it was to raise the action, it was way too low for me, polish the frets and even out the ebony fretboard a bit, some of the inlays was sticking up. The neck is pretty straight, it does have a T-shaped duraluminum truss rod inside but it’s non-adjustable so there isn’t much you can do without heating and reshaping the neck but that’s not needed yet.

Taken from a 1948 Levin archtops catalog, thanks to Vintage Guitars Sweden

Levin Model 3 Royal
Body width: 420 mm, body length: 510 mm
Hand carved Romanian spruce top with mahogany or walnut back and sides
4-ply bound top with double-bound f-holes, 4-ply bound back, triple-bound pickguard
Mahogany neck with non-adjustable T-shaped duraluminum truss rod
Triple-bound headstock with perloid music sharp sign inlay
Single-bound ebony fingerboard with pearloid block inlay
Grover Sta-Tite style tuners, gold plated hardware
Sunburst or natural finish and ten year warranty

This is how awesome I think I look with my new guitar. Django Reinhardt is playing Fred Guy’s Levin De Luxe backstage at the Aquarium in New York City 1946. © William Gottlieb

6 Comments

July 31, 2014

How to… carve a bridge

Levin Model 65 parlour guitar Made in Sweden 1942

Last weekend I decided to make a new bridge for my 1940’s Levin model 65. I actually did the same thing about a year ago but with less success, you can read about it here. This time I had more tools, better material and at least some knowledge of working with wood.

I started with a rosewood blank that I carved roughly to the right height with my trusty old Mora kniv, a cheap Swedish knife that solves most of my guitar related problems. Then I carved the shape of the edges, I just marked where to start and then carved it in to a rounded slope. I got the top in to a nice triangle shape with a narrow chisel and then cut out the arch in the bottom with a round file. I compared it to the old bridge to get the string spacing right and then just made little groves with a small triangle file. After a bit of lemon oil I was ready to try it out and it worked perfectly.

The final result, a new bridge for not only the oldest Levin I own but the olderst guitar I’ve ever actually had in my hands.

2 Comments

March 14, 2014

Levin information pages

Levin guitars, from left to right: Goya Model 163 (1968), Goya T-18 (1966), Levin Model 13 (1950), Levin LT-16 (1966), Levin Model 65 (1942), Levin LM-26 (1959), Levin Model 174 (1972), might be the greatest Levin collection in Spain.

If there is anything you would like to know about Levin guitars, then Vintage Guitars Stockholm is your best bet. They have the Levin information pages where you can find pretty much every model Levin ever made, serial numbers, history, photos and information. Rikard who runs the place just put up photos of my three latest Levin guitars on their site so now you can find all seven online. Here are the links: Levin Model 65, Levin Model 13 Ambassadör, Levin LT-16, Goya T-18, Levin LM-26, Goya Model 163, Levin Model 174.

February 21, 2014

Levin 174

Levin Model 174 Made in Sweden 1972

My latest acquisition, a 1972 Levin Model 174. The story how I got this guitar is pretty amazing. I wrote a post about Levin guitars back in August 2013 when I had just started to collect them. In the end of the post I mentioned that I would love to find a Levin Model 174, it’s basically a Levin LT-18 but with a massive head. There is something about that huge head that I find very appealing, I guess it reminds me of old an archtop guitar from 1930-40’s and it’s almost a bit Art Deco. Three months later, in the end of November, I got a comment from a Danish guy called Orla saying that he had one for sale. We started to email each other and he told that a few days earlier he had seen a guy about to throw a guitar case in a skip so he had gone up to him and asked if he could have it instead. Orla took the case home, opened it and found a 1972 Levin Model 174 in pretty good shape inside. He Googled the name and model and pretty soon found my blog post saying that I was looking for one. Since Orla doesn’t play guitar himself, he just wanted to save it from a certain death, he contacted me and offered me to buy it and I’m very grateful that he did. It was a bit scary to buy a guitar from a guy I didn’t know who had contacted me through my blog, it felt a bit fishy somehow. A part of me thought it was a Nigerian email scam in disguise and another part said that I should trust the good in people, especially a Northern neighbour like Orla. In the end I decided that it was an offer I really couldn’t turn down, especially since most of the 174’s I had seen for sale were all Goya labelled and made later in the 1970’s. It took some time to get the guitar down to Spain, we had some logistic issues but finally it arrived about two weeks ago and I was stunned. Since Orla doesn’t play he couldn’t give me any info about what state the guitar was in, he had sent me some pictures but it’s pretty hard to get an idea if it’s even playable from just that. Luckily it was in a really good state and it both sounds and feels great.

Levin Model 174 /Goya Model 174
Goliath size: Body width: 400 mm, body length: 505 mm, body depth: 95/120 mm
Fingerboard width: 43 mm, scale length: 630 mm
Spruce top, flame maple back and sides, 4-ply bound top, single-bound back
Mahogany bolt-on neck with adjustable truss rod
Single-bound headstock with mother-of-pearl inlay
Single-bound ebony fingerboard with bass side pearloid block inlays
Rosewood bridge with individual height adjustable plastic saddles
Nickel plated individual Van Gent tuners with metal buttons
Natural finish and ten year warranty

Introduced circa 1969 as a replacement for LT 18

I didn’t have to do much to it, the action was really good as it was. Which was very lucky because this 174 doesn’t have the Levin bolt-on neck system, they stopped with that in the early Seventies. The original Van Gent machine heads had been changed at some point, probably in the 1970’s, to Schaller’s and I really don’t like these type of buttons so I changed them for Wilkinson WJ-309 in gold, to make it look even more Art Deco. I also installed an endpin jack so I can use it live with my LR Baggs M1. I had to clean it a bit, polish the frets and oil the fretboard but overall it was pretty good from the start. There was a note hidden under the trussrod cover saying, Her blev sedlen lagt 4th of February 1995. I assume that’s referring to that the nut was raised a bit 19 years ago, something I need to redo at some point because they seem to have used some paper like material instead of bone.

The whole Levin family, Goya Model 163 (1968), Goya T-18 (1966), Levin Model 13 (1950), Levin LT-16 (1966), Levin Model 65 (1942), Levin LM-26 (1959), Levin Model 174 (1972).

17 Comments

February 18, 2014

Goya 163

A very early Goya Model 163, they were introduced in 1969 but the serial number puts this one to 1968. That would make it the earliest known example on the Vintage Guitars Sweden site. Levin serial numbers / Goya serial numbers

I thought I might as well post some images of the Goya 163 I received back in January. There was some work to be done, actually quite a lot. First I had to reset the neck to get the action down and then I had to remove the bridge and redo the saddle screws. I cut a new pickguard over the weekend, well it’s not perfect yet, I’m still looking for a better material but it will do for now. I bought this Goya from a girl called Marilyn Moser in Maynard, Massachusetts. She had used the guitar for some live gigs in the New York area but gave up on it because of the high action, it was fairly unplayable when I got it. The guitar came with a nice handwritten note to me, the new owner, that’s why I got curious to find out a bit more about her. Here are links to some of her music and her awesome 1960’s bl og.

Goya Model 163, made in Sweden by Levin in 1968

Levin 163 / Goya 163
Goliath size: Body width: 400 mm, body length: 505 mm, body depth: 95/120 mm
Fingerboard width: 43 mm, scale length: 630 mm
Spruce top, flame maple back and sides, 4-ply bound top, single-bound back
Mahogany bolt-on neck with adjustable truss rod
Single-bound rosewood fingerboard with bass side pearloid dot inlay
Rosewood bridge with individual height adjustable plastic saddles
Nickel plated individual Van Gent tuners with metal buttons
Sunburst finish and ten year warranty

I still haven’t found a good pickguard material. Well the red plastic that I happened to find in the street is actually perfect but who wants a red pickguard. I’ve managed to find 0.8 mm thick matt black plastic but I need something around 1-1.5 mm and preferable in high gloss jet black or even better in red tortoise. I fitted a strap button in the usual place, and then I painted the new bone nut orange to match the original Levin Galalith nut.

Update: March 21, 2014 The pickguard material I ordered from China looked a lot classier than expected so I cut in to shape and put it on

19 Comments

February 10, 2014

Ad of the day

Back from the grave, Goya 174 ad from 1970

It seems like I will soon be the proud owner of an early 1970’s Levin 174. A nice Danish chap by the name of Orla wrote a comment on my previous post about Levin, saying that he had one for sale. I will write more about it as soon as I get it but for now, enjoy this Goya ad for the same guitar from 1970.

Claescaster

Tag: Gothenburg Sweden

June 12, 2015