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Lloyd Loar
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Lloyd Allayre Loar (1886-1943) was a Gibson sound engineer and master luthier in the early part of the 20th century. He is most famous for his F5 model mandolin, L5 guitar, H5 mandola, K5 mandocello, and A5 mandolin.
Loar worked for Gibson from 1919 to 1924. His contributions include building the instrument top with F-shaped holes, like a violin; introducing a longer neck, thus moving the bridge closer to the center of the body; and floating the fingerboard over the top, a change from prior Gibson instruments that had fingerboards fused to the top.
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Encyclopedia
Lloyd Allayre Loar (1886-1943) was a Gibson sound engineer and master luthier in the early part of the 20th century. He is most famous for his F5 model mandolin, L5 guitar, H5 mandola, K5 mandocello, and A5 mandolin.
Loar worked for Gibson from 1919 to 1924. His contributions include building the instrument top with F-shaped holes, like a violin; introducing a longer neck, thus moving the bridge closer to the center of the body; and floating the fingerboard over the top, a change from prior Gibson instruments that had fingerboards fused to the top. He also pioneered the use of the Virzi Tone Producer, a spruce disc suspended from the instrument top that acts as a supplemental soundboard.
After leaving Gibson, Loar created and patented an electric instrument with a coil pickup, and co-founded the ViviTone company. He died in 1943.
Famous Loar Mandolins
The F5 model was made famous by the bluegrass music of Bill Monroe who used a Gibson F5 model signed by Loar during most of his career.
Mandolin player Chris Thile is known to have recently acquired a 1924 F5 signed by Loar. This mandolin was an extremely rare find as it was rarely, if ever, played - the price tag was approximately $200,000.
Only one A5 mandolin is known to have been signed by Loar, although it has been widely copied. The Loar A5 was previously owned by Tut Taylor and is now in a private collection.
Collectability
As of May 2007, Lloyd Loar signed mandolins in original condition are priced in the $175,000 to $200,000 range and are highly sought after by musicians and collectors. Lloyd Loar expert Darryl Wolfe, who maintains an F5 historical journal, thinks 228 Lloyd Loar-signed F5 mandolins have been documented of the 326 that are believed to have been made. One 1924 F5 recently surfaced in Kansas, a family heirloom, that is being brokered at around $165,000, considered to be an extremely low price for these instruments, which are likely to gain a legacy like that of Stradivarius violins.
External links
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- Gibson history
- A project to document all Loar F5 mandolins
- by mandolin builder and author Roger Siminoff
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