Each newly made 1923 F-5 Master Model Reissue crafted by Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville, Tennessee, will come with a Certificate of Authenticity bearing a portrait of Lloyd Loar, the Master Luthier who worked for Gibson for only five years, but whose innovations in that time paved the way for so much that followed.

Company founder Orville Gibson’s earliest known instrument was a 10-string mandolin-guitar, which bears the date 1894. He applied his revolutionary technique of carving the top and back when crafting both mandolins and guitars. He died in 1918, not long before Loar pioneered the F-5.

Billed as “The ‘Strad’ of Mandolins,” a reference to the world-famous Stradivarius violin, the F-5 was sold for $250 in 1923. Game-changing features of the F-5 included the shift from a central soundhole to f-holes, a longer neck that repositioned the bridge further away from the tailpiece, redesigned bracing, and the fingerboard extension raised off the top so it could no longer dampen vibrations.

Lloyd Loar was the director of the Gibsonians, a company band that toured the country promoting Gibson stringed instruments. Loar is pictured here on the far left, holding an F-5, with Dorothy Crane, the singer Fisher Shipp (Loar’s first wife), James H. Johnstone, Nell VerCies, and Lucille Campbell.