Style 3 was the least expensive model in Gibson's Mastertone line. It was introduced in 1925 and remained in production through 1937, when its price was lowered from $100 to $75 and it was renamed style 75. By the mid-1930s, the forty-hole archtop tone ring was standard on the style 3 tenor, or TB-3, while the PB-3 plectrum and RB-3 five-string were often seen with the twenty-hole flathead ring. This example is a rare original flathead tenor with an uncut Mastertone label. The tenor neck is no longer with the banjo and it is not known what inlay pattern it had. The wreath inlay five-string neck is by Ronnie Bales and the resonator was reskinned in the 1980s by Jimmy Cox.
