german or french or....

[Ken Smith]

Two questions I have for you to start.

1, do you now if that is the original varnish? It looks kind of chippy and not French at all.

2, if you take one gear off each side, can you tell if these gears are original to that scroll or do you see some signs that something else might have been there before?

3, one more for the woofer... Is the varnish 100% the same on the Scroll as the back and ribs as far as you can tell? If it was all stripped and re-varnished, you still ight be able to tell under UV light.

If this is a French bass then I would assume something along the lines of the early 20th century after WWI and a lower grade import (export model from France) by maybe the J.T.Lamy firm. Just like the commercial German factories making export grade products, France did the same thing but on a smaller scale from what I have seen but they DID do it for sure.