Circa 1950 Voss Archtop

It’s good to know that there are still mysteries in this world such as this archtop guitar. We don’t know where it was made, when it was made or who made it. The best guess is that it was made in Germany, but we can’t definitively rule out Sweden either. It looks like it was made in the early 1950s, but guitars like this were made up into the 1960s. It has a Voss label on the top, but Voss was a distributor and not a builder. The German builder Klira did make guitars for Voss but this guitar doesn’t look quite like the other guitars Klira made. The headstock shape shows up on guitars made by a number of builders as does the red sunburst, so those don’t help. Lots of builders used similar art deco headstock inlays, so that seemed to be a common style at the time and not much help. The cat’s-eye soundholes turn up on guitars made by Gretsch, Hopf, Hoyer and the East German builder Perlgold, but this guitar wasn’t made by those companies.

I got to play this guitar a few days ago and I thought it sounded pretty good. It’s not as loud as a Gibson or an Epiphone but it did have a sweet, balanced tone. It’s in very good condition and plays pretty well. The neck shape is very bulky and square but once I got used to it I found it easy to play. I spent quite a bit of time on European guitar websites looking for info on this guitar and all I could find was information telling me what it wasn’t.  This well-made mystery guitar is priced at $650, which seems more than fair for a guitar of this quality. If you’d like to bring the Voss Mystery home and delve into its secrets, the fine folks at Gryphon Stringed Instruments would be more than happy to help you play detective.