Wayne Australia Custom Resonator

This guitar was made sometime between 1935 - 1938 according to local knowledge. The story behind the mysterious Mr. 'Wayne' (his name appears on the headstock of most of his builds)goes something like this: Apparently he traveled around Eastern Australia in the 1930's building guitars for people on an order by order basis. He had the resonator's shipped from the USA and built each guitar to order from local Australian timbers. Mine has an Australian Blackwood top and back with Ash or similar sides and a three piece laminated neck [Maple or similar]..Solid as a rock!!!!

I installed a Schaller magnetic P/U and play this through a Tech 21 Tri-OD through the Brit channel turned off [effectively through the speaker emulator only] and into a Roland JC 120. This sounds at its best when I fingerpick/slide through the amp, it gets some really nice overtones, and keeps me interested in playing for long times at a stretch. The sound really has teeth if I play it hard, which is really good for some things, so for an 'acoustic' it has a very expressive range of tones. I play mostly clean styles, country, MOR, folk, Blues, mainly for my vocal accompaniment. These days I write Christian 'chant/mantra' style music and I compose with guitar and voice.

You can tell by the headstock that this was hand made, its not perfectly symetrical, however the joins are all still good as new. There is one small 'dent' on the side and signs that a similar dent was repaired long ago, and the resonator has been rechromed. The action is very high past the 3rd fret as it has been set up for slide.

Its 70 years old so Mr. Wayne must have done something right....I still play it regularly, anywhere - cannot think of any reason I would need a backup with this.

The guy has been dead for a long time.
I have seen 3 or 4 of these around Melbourne in the past 15 years, so their survivability is pretty good. Most are in collections now I think, and it would be good to hear from some other 'Wayne' owners either through this site or otherwise.

I have been playing for 30 years, the past 15 of them seriously. My other guitars are a G&L ASAT 'thinline' style and a Taylor 510[a very early one]with a Martin thinline and an external Fishman preamp. I use my JC 120 for everything and play the G&L and the Wayne through the Tech 21 and the right/chorus channel and my Taylor through the left/clean channel with an external chorus pedal. The sound of the Wayne un-amplified is more mellow than a National, but it has a very 'musical' tone if you know what I mean. This is due in part to the fact that someone decided to put a beeswax finish on it to show off the beautiful timber. The only reason this gets an overall 8 is because the original finish is no longer there, however, when amplified through my setup 'who cares?!!" This thing can sound like anything from a butterfly to a freight train.