Emil Hartung

[Shallow]

Hi all, Please, excuse I'm writing in english, I only know a few words in german for now.

I recently bought an old and wasted guitar needing some care and restoration work. It has a label inside with the name Emil Hartung Jun. Erlbach, Vogtland.



Any info about this maker in your files?

Thanks a lot.

[Johannes Meinel]

Hallo Shallow,

über Emil Hartung gibt es sehr wenig Informationen. Die genauen Lebensdaten sind nicht bekannt. Er dürfte so um 1900 geboren worden sein und war Mandolinenmacher, daneben handelte Hartung mit Musikinstrumenten aller Art, Zubehör und Saiten. Der Handel war wohl die Haupteinnahmequelle. Er wohnte in Erlbach (Gopplasgrün). Das ist ca. 3Km von Markneukirchen entfernt. Er hatte 2 Töchter, von denen 1 Tochter auch heute noch im väterlichen Haus wohnt (nach meinem Wissen). Im II. Weltkrieg wurde Hartung verwundet und kam als Invalide wieder nach Erlbach zurück. Bei einem Verkehrsunfall starb er (so um 1950 oder kurz davor) in Dresden. Allerdings arbeitete er nach dem Weltkrieg nicht mehr selbständig, sondern für eine Markneukirchner Firma (Migma?, Marma?).
Mehr war nicht zu ermitteln.

Viele Grüße aus Markneukirchen

Hannes

[STELOL]

Hy Shallow,

here you can see a german Zither tradet by Emil Hartung!

http://cgi.ebay.at/zither-zitter-emil-h ... dZViewItem

Can you show us the whole Guitar! I´m very interssted to see it! Is it a archtop or a flattop guitar? Massiv wood or laminated?

Regards,

Stefan

[Shallow]

Vielen danke, Hannes.

I love knowing the origin of my guitars. Your info is really welcome.



Stefan, It's a nice floating bridge flat-top. All solid with a really thin spruce top. A great chunky but comfortable neck. It sounds quite good besides the cracks. It really sings.



I took this picture before cleaning it up. It looks way nicer right now. I've never saw any fretboard before with such amount of crud and dirt all over build up over the years.

It's needing a lot of care. It has long crack due to the pickguard holes (I have removed it!) and another stress hairline crack in the top at the lower bout. Also an easy to fix crack in the back. An awfully done partial refreting. It needs a neck reset... and the bad part, the top is collapsing. It seems a brainless monkey went over it trying to make this guitar into a lap steel with some not exactly intelligent "fixings" like pads to lift the bridge and a huge really bad cut and seated nut to raise the action. So the top is sunking due to excesive downward pressure and I'm sure the top cracks came for the same reason. It needs a lot of work to be done, but I love the project and the challenge. It wil take a while, but his beauty will excel again some day.