Albert Houdlett & Son
Nu Way

Now the two things I know about this firm  are that a) This was the firm where Fred Gretsch started out before founding his own company, and b) This particular model was supplied to Ditson to re-brand. and Ditson didn't put their name to anything that wasn't top notch, so I'm hoping that although a bit plain it will be well made and very good tonally; we shall find out when it arrives.

I took a bit of a gamble when inviting this as this was one of those eBay auctions where there was a "buy it now" price as well as the opening price for the auction. The buy it now price was very reasonable and I was tempted to go with that, but in the end I just put in the opening bid for the auction. A risk certainly, as well as not winning when the "Buy it now" was a sure thing, you never know if someone is willing to go higher than the "buy it now" price for it so you end up paying more to win. I was safe though and no one did so I got it for the opening bid which was less than half the buy it now price; result!.

Now it's here and it has had some "interesting" repairs! I thought from the photos that the skin looked like it had a tear, but it seemed to sit oddly, like it wasn't a tear just some kind of blemish so I didn't worry much? Now its here I can see it is a tear, but someone has glued what is left of the vellum to the pot! So it needs a new vellum but I fear getting the old one off with all of that glue may be a problem? It is also missing the bit on the back of the pole that enables the neck angle to be changed; and that will be a bugger of a job to find a replacement.