# Douglas Guitars-Made in Canada looking for info



## John Vere (Nov 12, 2019)

Found this yesterday in a Thrift store in Kelowna $30 couldn't resist. Solid spruce ( cedar?) top, mahogany back and sides rosewood fret board. Needs set up and a few loose frets, very dried out. Folk style , bridge is off a nylon string but machines are for steel. 

Inside it says Douglas Guitars Made in Canada and 5549.

The serial number is what makes it a mystery guitar. It appears to be sort of home made or almost a cheapo factory made guitar. But why a serial number? 









I contacted Neil Douglas guitars ( New Westminster BC) via Facebook and they say it's not one of theirs.


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## Eric Reesor (Jan 26, 2020)

There were quite a few attempts made by various small Canadian companies to compete with cheap production guitars like Framus, Stella etc etc etc going a very long way back in time. And even later on into the 1960's when the Japanese managed to almost completely take over the market with good cheap instruments.

The problem has been always how to crack the nut. Guitars coming from LaPatrie solved that issue at least for less expensive acoustic guitars here in Canada. Godin is trying to solve the problem with electric guitars and has had some limited success.

But by and large any small attempt to build factory guitars that Sears, Woodwards, Eatons or just any other company that might decided to offer cheap guitars in Canada has ended in dismal failure.

Thank you for salvaging the evidence and keeping it out of a campfire somewhere in BC though! Pics of the guitar might help if you intend to try to salvage it to a playable state.
On further thought.. Take small stick mirror and look at the interior bracing to see if it is intact or if the guitar is really weird in design. For instance bracing that does not look like a steel string. That is the problem with most old factory guitars they usually have strange bracing patterns that the company tried to patent. It can get very interesting looking into old guitars. In Kelowna just watch out for rattlers though.. Cheers from Victoria LOL


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## nospacekey (2 mo ago)

Old thread but I am responding anyway because I can fill in a few details. I have an old Douglas guitar too (#228). I inherited it from my Father who was an early investor in the company. He was an engineer by trade and helped to design one of the Douglas models, although I can't say if his design was put into production. His idea was to apply some principles of construction to the design of the guitar. The struts that support against string tension were set in a way that provided better support using less materials.
Your guitar may have some Brazilian rosewood, which I'm told is quite sought after in the guitar collector community. You probably can't sell it outside Canada though as Brazilian rosewood is near extinct and there are strict regulations on importing and exporting products made from the wood. Quite the find for $30!
I do recall my Father mentioning why the company failed. The owner personally did quality control and most the guitars that came off the line were not up to his high standards. My father also taught guitar and would buy the defective guitars for cheap and sell them to his students. He always said those students got great value even though the guitars may have had a small defect. They were also competing against cheaply priced but decent quality guitars coming out of Mexico and Japan.
You are correct that it was probably made in a cheapo factory somewhere near Toronto. I believe they were trying to setup a proper factory in the states somewhere but, unfortunately, the company went bankrupt.
I've included a photo. This is the prototype using my Father's designs. He also made the neck extra wide. Takes a bit of getting used to but very comfortable for those with large hands. If anyone is really interested I can try to get a picture of the inside struts next time I change the strings.


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## alphasports (Jul 14, 2008)

With necks that flat and wide, and that bridge it clearly seems they were built for nylon/classical and someone stuck steel strings on them...not a healthy long term plan!


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## Eric Reesor (Jan 26, 2020)

alphasports said:


> With necks that flat and wide, and that bridge it clearly seems they were built for nylon/classical and someone stuck steel strings on them...not a healthy long term plan!


Wrong. A wider neck has no bearing whatsoever to the stability of a guitar top which is a function of the wood thickness of the guitar and the bracing strength.

The only reason why narrow necks exist is for solo note play and to facilitate smaller hands playing chords. Martin "parlors" were designed for fingerstyle and the very early ones were designed for use with gut strings.

The 14 fret acoustic steel string guitar in fingerstyle is not a powerful setup and most steel string guitars started to become built for more powerful chord strum and single note plectrum style playing with narrow necks and longer string length that requires 14 frets to the neck joint. 

Today there is an ever growing market for slightly wider necks on acoustic steel strings for the purposes of fingerstyle playing. It seems that the Douglas guitars may have been an experiment to deal with this issue and they flopped because then as now most people cannot play effectively with nails on steel strings with very rare exceptions. The Douglas guitars may very well be designed for use with moderate tension steel strings or higher tension nylon strings by increasing the strength of the bracing and perhaps the design of the neck joint and slipperfoot dimensions and designs.
I would need to examine one and do some gauge measurements to see if this was the intention.

Further to this a twelve fret design is much easier to create a great sounding fingerstyle steel string that responds well in all registers and is not overpowered by the bass register and weak in the mid range the way the traditional x braced 14 fret design of a D18 is. When you strum a guitar the weakest sounds come from the 4th third and second strings which act as harmony notes. Playing the guitar with a pick or strumming is not the same as using P, i,m,a to comp chords. A good fingerstyle player with great technique can accentuate an inner voice in a chord in a way that is not possible with a fast plectrum strum. A great plectrum player can accentuate the top note of a chord or the bass note but accentuating an inner voice is not possible unless the chord is played as an arpeggio. So the advantage in great fingerstyle technique is in the ability to effectively play accentuated polyphonic music on the guitar.


The sizing and dimensional designs of Torres create a guitar which is balanced across the register the change to steel strings on this design has been done especially in South America where the incredible Agustin Barrios was know to play a strengthened Torres design with steel strings. He did play gut strings mostly, but he had a hard time getting concert quality Pirastro gut strings so he also played on steel strings on a classical built for him. He was famous before the advent of nylon and his technique was astounding. Segovia did give him a few sets once to play but most of the time he had a hard time getting European made gut strings and the American made ones of the time sucked but the steel strings were cheap and of great quality. At that time silk was used in combination with silvered copper alloy wound basses thus the most common steel guitar strings of the time were called "silk and steel" and were not as of high tension as the "jazz" all metal strings of the era used by jazz guitarists like Charley Christian.
Plectrum play is great for solo note and strum but not useful for playing music like this: Whether or not this famous work of his was originally recorded with steel strings or gut I do not know but Barrios was known to play effectively on both.


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## Eric Reesor (Jan 26, 2020)

nospacekey said:


> Old thread but I am responding anyway because I can fill in a few details. I have an old Douglas guitar too (#228). I inherited it from my Father who was an early investor in the company. He was an engineer by trade and helped to design one of the Douglas models, although I can't say if his design was put into production. His idea was to apply some principles of construction to the design of the guitar. The struts that support against string tension were set in a way that provided better support using less materials.
> Your guitar may have some Brazilian rosewood, which I'm told is quite sought after in the guitar collector community. You probably can't sell it outside Canada though as Brazilian rosewood is near extinct and there are strict regulations on importing and exporting products made from the wood. Quite the find for $30!
> I do recall my Father mentioning why the company failed. The owner personally did quality control and most the guitars that came off the line were not up to his high standards. My father also taught guitar and would buy the defective guitars for cheap and sell them to his students. He always said those students got great value even though the guitars may have had a small defect. They were also competing against cheaply priced but decent quality guitars coming out of Mexico and Japan.
> You are correct that it was probably made in a cheapo factory somewhere near Toronto. I believe they were trying to setup a proper factory in the states somewhere but, unfortunately, the company went bankrupt.
> ...


Great post! If the design was as I suspect to take either medium steel, "silk and steel" or high tension classical strings then changing from a traditional Torres brace system would make some sense. Using bridge pegs is not necessary with lower tension steel strings but the use of bridge pins makes the use of high tension nylon strings impossible. 

AND WELCOME to the forum and thank you for confirming my suspicion that the guitars were an attempt to create a new Canadian made and designed instrument!


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