1950s Vega D-100
Vega’s early electric instruments employed some
cutting-edge features for the 1930s. Their guitars were fitted with sound posts
and humbucking pickups as early as 1936, and Vega seems to have experimented
with new pickups through the rest of the decade. The electric mandolin line bore
similar features to the guitars but based on simple, teardrop-shaped archtop
bodies. Vega’s electric mandolins of the 1940s and 1950s followed the same
changes in pickups as the guitars, but the body styles were remarkably
different. While the electric guitar line was based on archtop bodies (first
built by Vega and then by Harmony), the electric mandolins built after World War
II actually reverted to flat-topped designs.
Vega had greatly simplified its mandolin range since the
heyday of its cylinder-backed instruments, so by the end of the 1940s it was
only building one body style. This maintained Vega’s trademark two-point shape,
but the top was now completely flat while the back maintained just a slight arch
applied by the bracing. The resulting L-100 model recalls the 1920s more than
the 1950s, and it’s not surprising that few seem to have been built. A stranger
variation, the L-150, featured f-holes in the flat top and deluxe pearl fret
markers, but even fewer of these can be found today.
The D-100 seems to have been more popular than either of
its contemporary acoustic models, but that’s not saying much. It was simply an
L-100 flat-top with a pickup snuck in between the soundhole and the bridge,
along with volume and tone controls to complete the electric package. The pickup
was appropriated from Vega’s contemporary Duo-Tron guitar line; the early ones
had a wide white cover that gave them a better claim to the “soapbar” nickname
than any P-90. The elevated pickguard and fretboard extension demonstrated the
same high quality and attention to detail that had always characterized Vega
instruments, but neither could hide the fact that this design was an
anachronism.
It appears that Vega attempted to drag itself into the
1950s by creating the instrument shown above. Very few have surfaced: I have
seen one other, modified with a second pickup, and have read about one other
marked whose model number was marked with an “F” suffix. It’s possible that this
archtop supplanted the flat-topped version, but it’s also possible that the two
were offered concurrently. Both archtop D-100s I’ve seen had a later pickup
style with a gold cover, so this may represent Vega’s last attempt to revive its
electric mandolin sales. I have also come across an acoustic mandolin with the
same body style, so it’s possible that they briefly offered the entire mandolin
line with archtop bodies. All of this is speculation, as all the
documentation I have seen references
the more common flat-topped mandolins of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s.
This particular instrument exhibits a strangely wide
range of workmanship. There are no significant flaws that appear to be from the
factory, though more recent repairs have resulted in imperfections in the finish
and the binding (mostly confined to the neck). The body and neck appear to be
traditionally constructed and pretty solid, but the original screw-on output
jack necessitated drilling a large hole in the tail block that might have
fatally weakened a lesser instrument. The hole was rather crudely drilled, and
the same can be said about the holes for the volume and tone pots. Fortunately,
any imperfect workmanship is hidden behind washers and knobs.
For all its quirks, the mandolin sounds excellent; even
unplugged, it has surprising volume for a laminated body weighed down by
electronics. The single-coil pickup is bright but not shrill, with reasonable
output and not too much hum. It has four magnetic slugs inside the coil plus a
fifth one, located off-center, which seems to serve no purpose. At first I
thought it was intended to balance the treble strings against the bass, but
flipping the pickup 180 degrees had almost no effect. The neck has been
heat-straightened and the frets have been selectively filed to improve
playability. The end result may appear jerry-rigged on close examination, but it
works – the playability is excellent.
