6-String, Acoustic Guitar, Lacquered spruce top with maple back and bouts, spruce neck with black walnut fret board and saddle, pearl and steel tuning keys, pearl inlay along fret board and neck strap button, raised steel nut, and Bakelite strike plate.
Alkire used this guitar during his radio broadcasts with the Oahu Serenaders from 1930 until 1934. He nicknamed the instrument “Sol” after the steel guitarist Sol Ho’opi’i, whom Alkire referred to as “the greatest steel man of all time.”
Watch a performance by Sol Ho’opi’i below:
Due to the lack of a maker’s mark, this instrument’s origin is unclear. However, Alkire did enroll in the Hawaiian Conservatory of Music correspondence course, which offered new students a guitar made by the Oscar Schmidt Company, so it is possible that this is a Schmidt guitar.
