Danny Roberts with his 1922 Gibson F5 Loar Mandolin.

Danny Roberts of The Grascals fame finally possesses what the mandolin world considers the Holy Grail — a Gibson F5 made by or under the supervision of Lloyd Loar.

But the prized instrument didn’t simply fall into Roberts’ very capable picking hands. In fact, its odyssey and Roberts’ quest to own the Loar make for adventurous tales.

For those living outside the mandolin realm, Lloyd Allayre Loar was a Gibson sound engineer and master luthier in the early part of the 20th century. He is most famous for his refinements of the F5 model mandolin, but also known for his work on other Gibson products, including the L5 guitar, H5 mandola, K5 mandocello and A5 mandolin, according to Wikipedia.org.

While working for Gibson from 1919 to 1924, he designed the F-style mandolin top with F-shaped holes, introduced a longer neck and floated the fingerboard over the top, a change from prior Gibson instruments that had fingerboards fused to the top.

The mandolins made under his supervision — estimated to be around 200 — are highly sought-after possessions that command prices well in the six-figure range.

“My mandolin was originally owned by a nun who played in a mandolin orchestra,” Roberts said in a recent interview in Gibson’s Nashville instrument factory and showroom. “She sold it to a family in Florida. … The cool thing is, I got the letter where she sold it to the family in Florida in 1939. It went down there and the guy that she originally sold it to, he played it but his son or grandsons never played it.”

Danny Roberts said his Loar was made in 1922, and originally contained a Virzi Tone Producer. The Virzi was a spruce disc suspended inside from the instrument top that served as a supplemental soundboard.

Roberts, whose own name appears as the maker of several modern-day Gibson mandolins, said the Virzi gizmo was about six inches in diameter that had two F-holes cut in it.

“It quieted them down some definitely and (gave the instruments) a little different tone,” he said. “They still sound great. I’ve played several Virzi mandolins that sound very good. A lot of people had them taken out.”

Danny Roberts' 1922 Gibson F5 Loar Mandolin.

Danny Roberts, with some research assistance from vintage instrument dealer George Gruhn of Nashville’s famed Gruhn Guitars, even has an idea when the Virzi was excised from his mandolin.

“I think that’s why it went back to the factory in ’28. That’s when George Gruhn thinks it went back,” he said. “When they took that (Virzi) out, they took the back off, they took that (Virzi) out and put the back back on.”

Here’s where the mandolin’s story takes on perhaps a shade of corporate jealousy, considering the fact that by 1928, Loar had left Gibson’s employment.

“Anything that went to Gibson after Loar was gone, they took his label out,” Roberts said. “So, they pulled his signature label out of it. When they put the back on it, they got some overspray, some lacquer on it too. They stopped using varnish after he left.”

A decade after the Virzi was removed and returned to the nun, she sold the instrument to the family in Florida.

“It was down there until … I guess it, would’ve been probably about 4 years ago,” he said.

That’s when Joe Vest, who worked at Gibson’s Nashville facility at the time, took a call from a man in Florida who said he had a Gibson mandolin and wanted to know its value.

“He gave Joe the serial number and it was a Loar number,” Roberts recalls. “Joe flew one of the guys from the store down and picked it up and brought it up here to put it in the store on consignment.”

When the mandolin came to the Gibson shop, technicians checked it out and were able to discover what had been done to the instrument over the years.

“It’s got an original brochure that came with them” when they were sold, Roberts said. “Some neat things like that came with the mandolin. It was just a great sounding mandolin. When it came in. I was like ‘Wow, I’d love to get a hold of that.’”

But Roberts didn’t have the cash on hand to purchase the prized instrument.

“I’ve always had lots of instruments but (I’m) one of these guys without any cash, you know,” he said. “So, I was always willing to trade ’cause I’ve got stuff to trade.”

Charlie Derrington (courtesy Gibson.com)

Charlie Derrington started with Gibson in the late seventies, right after Gibson was bought out by Norlin Industries. He came into the custom shop as a luthier to do custom work. A few years later, when Bill Monroe’s mandolins were vandalized, is when Derrington’s notoriety evolved. Derrington was the person that put them back together.

Danny Roberts was working at Gibson when that happened, and saw when they brought Monroe’s famous F5 into the shop. Roberts recalled “They brought the pieces of the mandolin into the shop in plastic baggies. Charlie went through it all with magnifying glasses and tweezers. He sorted all the tiny shreds of wood that used to be the top of the mandolin, and put it all back together. Bill had scraped all the finish off the mandolin over the years, and to get it back to that worn color, I believe Charlie put some dirt in it to blend the colors. If you have seen before and after shots of the mandolin, it is virtually impossible to see the difference.”

The Monroe repair job brought Derrington into the spotlight at Gibson.

Derrington held several positions with Gibson over the years from head of sales, overseeing purchasing and eventually into upper management. According to Roberts, Derrington left Gibson around 1990 and started his own shop in Bellevue [ a suburb of Nashville]. Charlie ended up coming back to Gibson sometime in the mid nineties, heading up the mandolin production.

Roberts credits Charlie Derrington with bringing the quality of Gibson mandolins back to there full glory. “The stuff they were building in the 70s was so terrible. In the 80s and 90s they started doin some things out in Montana. They built nice instruments, (Flat Iron) but they weren’t Gibson… the real Gibson that was patterned after the Loar. Charlie pushed and finally got us back to the compound dove tail neck joints like in the Loar Mandolin. Using the same woods, the same graduations.

A Gibson luthier, the late Charlie Derrington, wound up with the instrument.

“Actually, the first person that got it from the store was Brian Auldridge, another great mandolin player (playing with Dry Branch Fire Squad at the time) and a Loar collector,” Roberts remembers. “He got it and he had it a short time, and Charlie traded him out of it. They did some deal, Charlie had an unsigned ’25 (Loar) that he traded him for.

“Charlie had always wanted me to have a Loar,” Danny Roberts said. “I was always, ‘Well one of these days, maybe, and he’d always be telling me about one for sale. And I’d ask, ‘Are they willin’ to trade?’

“So, this went on and one day he started talkin’ to me about this one. He was like “I’m gonna get me another one. You ought to get this one. It’s a great player’s mandolin. You love the way it plays.’”

“I said, ‘Well let’s do it. Let’s talk turkey.’ We got to discussing instruments and things I had that he wanted. Next thing I know … I was one mandolin away from being able to do a deal with him.”

Thanks to a generous friend of Roberts’ in East Tennessee who was willing to throw in a varnished Collings mandolin on the deal, the Loar was within reach.

“I called Charlie, it was right at 6 o’clock (in the evening) with news of the Collings mandolin addition to the deal.

Roberts remembers Derrington’s words on hearing the news: “Cool, man. Looks like you got a Loar.”

Danny Roberts also remembers asking Derrington if he should bring all the instruments he was trading to their Gibson workplace the next morning so the deal could be sewed up.

“Charlie said, ‘No. Don’t bring all that in,’ cause it was lots of instruments that I was trading him. He said ‘Just wait and bring it all to the house, but I’ll bring you the Loar tomorrow so you can play it over the weekend” with The Grascals.

“About 8 o’clock, they called me and said he got killed,” Roberts said. “I wasn’t concerned about the mandolin and I didn’t bring it up to his wife. I knew he was like me, my wife, she never knows about all the instrument dealings I’m doin’ and stuff. So I wasn’t about to bring it up. I just didn’t say any more about it.

Derrington had been out riding on his motorcycle when he was hit by a drunken driver who was on the wrong side of the road.

Close to the two-year anniversary of Derrington’s death, his widow was preparing to go on a vacation and asked ace bluegrass fiddler Aubrey Haynie if he would keep the Lloyd Loar mandolin at his house while she was away. Haynie agreed and said he would get the instrument appraised while she was on vacation.

“He took it and fell in love with it,” Roberts said. “He took it to the studio and recorded some with it … He called me and said ‘I’m gonna talk to her about seein’ if she wants to sell it, ’cause I want it. Is that going to bother you?’

Roberts assured his friend Haynie that he would hold no ill will about such a sale and told him he would like to see him take possession of the instrument. Haynie did purchase the mandolin.

“He only had it maybe a month and he called me one day and he was talkin’ about the mandolin,” Roberts recalls, adding that he didn’t hear from his friend after that call for several days. So, Roberts called Haynie.

“I said, ‘You stuck up now, you Loar owner? Won’t talk to people who don’t own them?’ I just (like to) aggravate him like that.”

Danny Roberts cuts loose at the Withlacoochie Bluegrass Jamboree earlier this month near Dunellon, Fla.

Later, Haynie placed another call to his friend Danny Roberts, to tell him he had been playing the Loar during recording session. He remembers Haynie telling him: “I just feel like this should be in a mandolin players hands. … I’m a fiddle player that plays mandolin … What I’m tryin to tell you … If you want this mandolin I’d like for you to have it.”

“Aubrey, I’d love to have it but…” Roberts remembers telling his fiddling friend, before Haynie interrupted his response by saying he was willing to trade “a bunch of your stuff” for the historic mandolin.

Roberts gave Haynie several Gilchrist mandolins “and some stuff that I’ve collected over the years,” and sewed up the deal for the long-sought Lloyd Loar F5.

“It was so cool,” Roberts said. “we were playing the TV portion of the Grand Ole Opry. Vince Gill (who appears on The Grascals‘ new CD “Keep on Walkin‘”) … was going to be on the Opry and we were going to be on with him. Aubrey was there that night fillin’ in with the staff band and he brought me the mandolin … The first place I got to play it was on the TV portion of The Opry.

“That’s been, I’m guessing 3 or 4 months ago now. It’s been just great,” Roberts said.

Danny Roberts credits his friend Aubrey Haynie for finally taking possession of his prize.

“If it’d been another person in the world besides Aubrey that had gotten it, I would’ve never got it,” he said, adding that David Grisman had inquired about purchasing the instrument as had a couple of collectors.

“God has his ways to work and it was a meant-to-be thing with me and that mandolin or it wouldn’t have happened,” Roberts said.

Now, the mandolin isn’t going anyplace.

“Unless there’s some catastrophic illness or something like that, it’ll never leave me,” Roberts said. “I’ll have it until it’s handed down. It’s one of those things I’ll keep.”

He believes his late friend Charlie Derrington would also want him to keep the mandolin forever.

“Charlie was one of my best friends in the world. He got me on at Gibson the first time, back in the ‘80s when I went to work there and got me back here the last time,” Roberts said. “Sometimes, it’s still tough for me to walk around that shop and look at the things and think, ‘I remember when we built that fixture. And I remember when he taught me to do that … Everything I learned was from him.”