This is a very rare & highly unusual example of a mid-30’s fully electrified Archtop Jazz guitar called a New Yorker by the National guitar Company. Its Blonde finish is oh-so rare as most were done in a Sunburst finish. Its maple neck is quite fat in size w/a bound dot inlaid ebony fingerboard w/nice pearl inlays. Its engraved serial # is on top of its headstock. Its got 1 of the 1st pickups w/an intonated rail magnet that’s ever been mounted to a production made guitar that’s placed in the lead position. Its quite fancy having a black laminated headstock w/deco metal covers over their tuning machines. Its got the coolest black & white molded pickgard & its original microphone output jack w/cord keeping it 100% original. In the 1930s a handful of American guitar companies invented the modern electric guitar. It’s true that Rickenbacker, Gibson, National, among a few others, were making solid-body Hawaiian guitars since the early 1930s. Rickenbacher even made a few guitars where they fitted standard necks to small Hawaiian guitar bodies, but those proved to be too difficult to play and they never caught on with players. While primitive by today’s standards, National’s first electric guitar, the Electric Spanish (renamed the New Yorker three years later), must have appeared positively futuristic by 1935 standards, when it made its premiere. Nothing more than a modestly appointed, laminated maple arch-top outfitted with a rudimentary bridge pickup located near the bridge, it was nonetheless one of the first commercially available electric guitars. By 1937 the Electric Spanish guitar’s body was being manufactured by Kay and Valco were supplying their own bolt-on necks. A seldom-seen 4-string tenor guitar version was also offered. By 1939 National had introduced a fancier, short-lived two-pickup model, the Sonora. Discontinued by 1941, it was one of the earliest multi-pickup electrics available. National’s New Yorker Electric Spanish, is one of those guitars that came close to being the first modern electric guitar. At first glance, this looks like a standard electric arch-top guitar, much like Gibson’s ES-150. But if you look closely you’ll see that the New Yorker has no sound-holes. National made similar guitars with f-holes but those tended to feedback at fairly low volumes. The neck is also attached by a combination of glue and screws. (The screws are under the five pearl dots at the end of the fretboard.). One other interesting point, this is the same model of guitar that the great blues musician Memphis Minnie used to play (see her photo). This type of guitar became known as the “Memphis Minnie” model because she (a blues gal) used one of these pretty much exclusively. This NY’er is in really excellent shape overall w/no repairs nor cracks ever. It comes in its original hard case.