Gibson Roy Smeck Stage DeLuxe w/ Rosewood Back & Sides 1935, Sunburst

The Gibson Roy Smeck Stage De Luxe is a rare pre-war flat top acoustic 

guitar produced from 1934 to 1942.  It was designed as a Hawaiian-style 
lap steel guitar during the height of the Hawaiian music craze and is 
closely related to Gibson’s early Jumbo Models.

Gibson produced two models, the Stage De Luxe which featured an 
Adirondack red spruce top, mahogany body, and a very wide 2-2 ½ inch 
neck and raised nut and high action above painted on frets and played 
with a lap steel bar.  The more expensive Radio Grande featured a 
rosewood body.
A few Stage De Luxe’s were reportedly built Spanish style but it was 
Jackson Browne and Norman Blake that really popularized converting these 
guitars to Spanish style by resetting the neck (often shaving its width 
down) installing frets, bridge and nut to accommodate modern play with 
lowered action.

This 1935 Gibson Roy Smeck Stage DeLuxe (Batch Number 65A XX) is an 
exceptionally rare variation, built with Indian rosewood back and sides 
rather than the typical mahogany. Reportedly one of approximately three 
made with this configuration, it features a spruce top, mahogany neck, 
Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, rosewood bridge, original Grover 6:1 
tuners, and the massive V-shaped neck and nearly 2⅛ nut width associated 
with the model’s original Hawaiian-style setup.  The Indian rosewood 
body comes from a batch of early 1935 Radio Grande models and the neck 
is a factory installed Stage De Luxe neck.  While it is known that 
400-600 Stage De Luxe models were made, fewer than 100 Radio Grande 
models were produced.

This guitar has undergone the extensive conversion to Spanish style 
which required a neck reset, installation of frets, a replacement nut, 
bridge plate, bridge pins and tuner bushings.  The back has previously been 
skillfully removed to repair several cracks in the spruce top and the 
guitar has been over-sprayed across nearly the entire body and neck. 

Additional repairs include re-glued bracing and the bottom tone bar is missing.

This is an extraordinarily scarce pre-war Gibson with a particularly 
unusual rosewood body configuration and includes a non-original 
hardshell case.  It is loud, nicely balanced and produces a full and 
rich tone.