Beare and Sons B&S Masters

UK Made
by GH&S

This is a Beare and Son pre war Soprano under the B&S Master branding; and is British not US made like the Michigan. 

Now I have it I can see it's not made by George La Foley, (I was vaguely hopeful), most likely George Houghton, (I know B&S distributed their Banjos; and rebrand them too)? There is also more damage than I first thought too, The heel has an old repair as well as the current issue of needing a reset and this old repair might make that a trickier job. It looks like the bridge is lifting a little and it baaadly needs a fret dressing. Still it has a lovely subtle sunburst type finish and there are no cracks or structural issues like that to worry about. One thing it does suffer from, and there is nothing I can do to fix, (even if I wanted to and I'm not sure I do), is the very sloppy placement of the tuners on the headstock. If this were from a Chinese factory today, even a Chinese QC would reject it.