It has a banjo mandolin tailpiece. Do you have a photo of the entire instrument?

Maybe someone replaced a mandolin neck with a tenor neck.

The steel rod looks a little out of place. Do you have an inside photo of the neck end of the pot?

It does look like a low-end Gibson. Few other companies were using coordinator rods before WWII, most notably Epiphone and Puntolillo, and this is not either of theirs.

The tailpiece is not original. It's not a banjo-mandolin tailpiece, but a mandolin tailpiece that's been bent for use with a banjo.

It's a 1925-26 Gibson made TB 0.

Made for Monkey Wards, so no "Gibson" on the headstock, and probably no number stamped in the rim.

Here's one...... http://earnestbanjo.com/wp/gibson-tb-0-8014-40/

Except for the headstock shape and binding on the inner lip of the pot, it looks similar to a few Kalamazoos I've worked on over the years. This one is screaming Gibson to me. 

That Waverly tailpiece was used by many including Gibson. If you straighten out the sheet metal, you’ll see that it was also used on Martin and low end Gibson mandolins. Bent up like this, it was used on banjos. I pulled this one from a 1930s Kalamazoo plectrum. It’s missing its “cloud” cover. All versions had the same 8 fingers.

I normally add a second co-rod to these. Easily done and increases stability.

Thanks, All,

lapsteel - here's a picture of the inside of the pot where the neck joins.

RioStat - thanks for pointing us back to Greg's site. This is basically it, minus all the official Gibson identifiers.

mikehalloran - I have bunch of Kalamazoos and Orioles and this tailpiece does show up on some of them.

Does anyone know for sure when the contract with Montgomery Ward started? In my mind, it was more in the 1930s. So if this is a essentially an unbranded 1925 TB-0 sold through M. Ward I wonder if it was lingering at Gibson for a while.

Also, there are two holes for an 'L' bracket (plus others) for mounting a resonator. Maybe a bit of a floor sweep model?

Thanks!