(Maccaferri) Mastro TV Pal

The mystery is - Will it Come?

And I ask that question not because I have said I wasn't going to get a TV Pal. Lets face it there are plenty of examples in Ukulele corner of me being unable to resist a bargain and having the TV Pal doesn't mean I can't get an Islander Deluxe as well and I thought the faux wood brown soundboard would be different It's because of a "buy it now" not working issue, (that seems to happen a lot when I click buy it now?) Anyway I say a nice Islander Deluxe on eBay last week in the toys section for $10 and I put a bid in hoping no one else had seen it and I would get it for $10. I had also seen a Baritone TV pal and put in a bid for that, so when I saw a nice soprano TV Pal, again in the toys section I thought why not and put a bid in too. Long story short; I wasn't the only one to spot them and I ended up coming second on all three! And in having a look today I came across another TV Pal not quite as nice as the first one, (it has a damaged tuner and the picture was so poor I couldn't see how bad so I took the seller's word that it still worked and that was the only fault). This one though had a buy it now price that was less than I had bid for the last one so after a few minutes thinking about it I took up the offer.

Its here now and the tuner is not too bad, I need to have a go at it with some super glue. There is a bit of "bellying" after the saddle and it needs a good clean. On the plus side it came with the original (Fin-Der rip off) multi Colour strings. I shall probably replace them when I clean it, the yellow one has almost faded to clear and they don't look particularly good, (well they are 60 years old), but I will keep them safe for the next custodian.

Sadly that was at first glance and my optimism has been a little dashed! Now I've had a go at cleaning and looking at the broken tuner I see the tuner is not repairable. I would guess that when the last person tried to glue it some glue got into where it wedges into the headstock and its stuck fast. In trying to free it it has broken more and I still can't move it. I'm thinking I'm going to have to drill it out if I ever want to put 4 playable strings on it. A pity really because apart from that its cleaned up beautifully.