Did someone say "Oahu"?
Pardon my French - j'espère que anglais est OK?
I have had three Oahus:
1. An early 1930s roundneck student model (sometimes called "Model 50") with a nut extender. Made of birch with sunburst finish.
2. A 1930s-40s squareneck student model. Also birch with sunburst finish. Here they are:
These are really cool guitars and they were really cheap ($81 and $104 respectively!). The old birch (most old bluesmen played cheap birch guitars) has a really dry, growly, warm tone that is very cool. They both have cast aluminium bridges.
I still have the roundneck - my favourite. The squareneck I gave to my beau-frère for his 30th birthday.
3. My third Oahu was made between 1926-1931 by Stromberg-Voisinet and had a cool "Venetian" headstock (looks cool, but not so cool to restring
):
Also a birch guitar, but stained to look like mahogany. You can hear this guitar in the song "Metal In The Desert" on my myspace page. I sold it on eBay a few months ago as I didn't really need it after I got my Lazy River Weissenborn.
Also, the video they mentioned above is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvdJ9n0QMQ.
And -
especially for you guys tonight! 
- here is Monsieur Paolo CONTI demonstrating the earthy bluesiness of my $81 Oahu!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFoJ1J_mivk
Anyway, some info about the Oahu guitars:
Oahu Publishing Company, in Cleveland, Ohio, was one of many companies that cashed in on the Hawaiian music craze of the period from 1915 to the 1940s. They published sheet music and sold all the accessories necessary to play Hawaiian guitar. They did not make the guitars themselves - they were made for them by various manufacturers (this was common back then - Regal built for Dobro etc.). These acoustic models were made from the early/mid-1920s up until the time around the USA's entry into World War II in 1941. After that electric lap steels were the only Oahus offered (made mainly by Valco - who made Nationals, Supros etc. from the war years onwards).
There were fancier models than the once I showed above. Mostly made of mahogany. Some with jumbo-sized bodies, and some with very fancy inlays.
The charm of the student models to me is that the ones I have played have had a really cool sound, and they are soooo cheap.
In my opinion, it is much better to start out with a cheap Oahu that sounds cool than a not-as-cheap Asian Weissenborn copy that is most likely to sound unsatisfying and has a low resale value (apart from the humanitarian and environmental reasons not to support Chinese industry).
I hope that helps! Je suis fatigue - perhaps I forgot some important info.
Bonne nuit!
Fred
Accueil 
la voiture, l'assurance, et puis y'a pas que la weissenborn, d'autres grattes....