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I thought I had a J-35


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I always thought it was a J-35. Now I've been told by very knowledgeable people that I inherited a 1936 Trojan. My guitar is a bit puzzling because like a Trojan, it has no back binding, a 3 3/4" sound hole, French heel and "V" neck, along with the original Grover tuning peg strips. The features that puzzle me, as well as guys who really know their onions, are that it has an ebony nut and the only number on the neck block is "2544" hand written in red pencil. Could this guitar be a custom order, or possibly a prototype? I would love to be able to track down it's history back to when it was built. My mom bought this guitar in Winnipeg, Canada when she was 16 years old. It spent the vast majority of it's life in the case, in the closet while my mom raised 6 kids! So it is basically a one owner guitar and in pretty good shape. I know it had no alterations other than having the sleeves around the tuning pegs replaced. I love the thick, rich tone of this old gem! Any help figuring out the history of this beautiful instrument would be greatly appreciated.

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I always thought it was a J-35. Now I've been told by very knowledgeable people that I inherited a 1936 Trojan. My guitar is a bit puzzling because like a Trojan, it has no back binding, a 3 3/4" sound hole, French heel and "V" neck, along with the original Grover tuning peg strips. The features that puzzle me, as well as guys who really know their onions, are that it has an ebony nut and the only number on the neck block is "2544" hand written in red pencil. Could this guitar be a custom order, or possibly a prototype? I would love to be able to track down it's history back to when it was built. My mom bought this guitar in Winnipeg, Canada when she was 16 years old. It spent the vast majority of it's life in the case, in the closet while my mom raised 6 kids! So it is basically a one owner guitar and in pretty good shape. I know it had no alterations other than having the sleeves around the tuning pegs replaced. I love the thick, rich tone of this old gem! Any help figuring out the history of this beautiful instrument would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Can you post a few pictures?

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I am unable to post any pictures, it keeps saying it's over quota even when the pics are 50k. Can anyone tell me how to post them?

 

 

open photobucket account. When you upload your photos, there will be a little gear to click on and choose Get Links. Then copy the IMG code and paste it into your post.

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It is my understanding that the first J-35s were pretty much re-named Trojans so would not have features you found on later J-35s like back binding. So I am not sure even posting pics would help identify one from the other. It may all come down to the FON.

 

You might want to go post over at the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum. There are some folks there who are wizards with this kind of stuff.

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I love the Grover tuners with the "top" stamp.

 

Again though, I do not know how the heck you would differentiate between a 1936 Trojan and a 1936 J-35 by eyeballing them and the only thing I can think of would be to check the FON against the ledgers. I know JT spent alot of time with and has photographed the ledger books but I do not know if he went back that far as he was documenting Banners. Hopefully he will chime in.

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I love the Grover tuners with the "top" stamp.

 

Again though, I do not know how the heck you would differentiate between a 1936 Trojan and a 1936 J-35 by eyeballing them and the only thing I can think of would be to check the FON against the ledgers. I know JT spent alot of time with and has photographed the ledger books but I do not know if he went back that far as he was documenting Banners. Hopefully he will chime in.

 

Hi everyone! This is my first post and I thought I join this forum and contribute to this interesting Trojan thread since the guitar this is about is very unique, too.

 

It was me who photographed the ledgers 1936 to 1947 and forwarded to John for our reseach on the banners. The picture Tom posted on the other Trojan thread is one of mine. While I have the ledgers as jpegs some other Gibson historians copied them before. This for example was Lynn Wheelwright who wrote an article in 1997 for the Gibson Amplifier with the title: New Gibson flattop discovered. In this article he documented in lenght the existance of the new model he discovered: the Trojan.

 

It is quite simple to varify the model and it's existance since there was no J-35 shipped in 1936 - the ledgers start in Jan 1937 with the first J-35s. All other entries before are named "Trojan". This is what this guitar exactly is looking like - a Trojan!

 

 

Willi Henkes

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Hi everyone! This is my first post and I thought I join this forum and contribute to this interesting Trojan thread since the guitar this is about is very unique, too.

 

It was me who photographed the ledgers 1936 to 1947 and forwarded to John for our reseach on the banners. ...

 

Willi Henkes

Willi,

 

It's great to see you here!

 

Yes, all, Willi snapped those pics! It took me a year and a half to talk my way into Gibson to get access to those ledgers. I was lucky enough to have Willi, the world's most knowledgeable person on the topic of vintage guitars, to join me to review and photograph them. Thanks, Willi!

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Willi,

 

It's great to see you here!

 

Yes, all, Willi snapped those pics! It took me a year and a half to talk my way into Gibson to get access to those ledgers. I was lucky enough to have Willi, the world's most knowledgeable person on the topic of vintage guitars, to join me to review and photograph them. Thanks, Willi!

Hi John,

 

Yes, this was much fun and we were a good team back then and yes, it was you who made the way into the mines of the secret books. Thanks to you! Maybe if we wouldn't have done the Gibson history would have buried with much more dust ... anyway, doesn't look like coal mines. ;-)

 

post-60137-057150300 1382385978_thumb.jpg post-60137-041136600 1382386031_thumb.jpg

 

 

Back to the initial thread and the differenciation Trojan - J-35: I must precise my statement in my previous post - Trojans were shipped until mid December 1936 which is also the time point the first J-35s show up in the ledgers (Dec 15 and Dec 14).

 

post-60137-084318700 1382386834_thumb.jpg

 

 

willi

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You are very welcome, Dave - the pleasure is on my side!

 

So would a 1936 Trojan be identical to a the first J-35s which is what I had always thought?

"Trojan" is just a name that surfaced in the ledgers. With the batch number 960B showing up in the ledgers along with the name Trojan and guitars with the same batch number known the existence of the model could be deduced. Till then these guitars commonly were known as early J-35 models with L-00/Jumbo features. With the existence of the only Trojan listed in the ledgers with the full number 960B-12, the one owned by Tom, the existence of the Trojan and how it looks like has been proved finally.

 

Now batch 960B and 961B look identical, this is what is call Trojan now: no back binding, French heel, (almost) non-tapered body, small soundhole, otherwise a regular J-35 of 1937. There might be an earlier batch than this but I was not able till then to verify the number for sure. A later batch 1078B meanwhile is documented, too.

 

When considering the difficult market situation in 1936, we can understand why the more expensive Jumbo was slimmed down ijn 1936 showing period L-00 features while some Jumbo construction features made it into the new model. I also can say that the models I have seen all have the so-called open book plate end Grover tuners. These tuners were used on Gibsons shipped in the second half of 1936.

 

The first Trojan shows up in the ledgers in October and others were shipped until mid December along with a number of Jumbos. From mid December the J-35 could be found in the ledgers while the Jumbo and Trojan disappeared. However, the actual numbers have be determined in detail further on.

 

We do not now how the guitars looked like that were listed from late December 1936 as J-35s. We only can tell what a Trojan is. The next batch(es) of "J-35s" show mixed features meaning a sort of transition Trojan to J-35. Figuring out more details without knowing the batch numbers is difficult. In the end we even do not know if "Trojan" only is a nick name since it only shows up in the ledgers and there were short terms or nicknames also used in the ledgers.

 

Taking this into account I would consider all Trojans are J-35s or sort of ;-), or maybe a short living transition creation somewhere between Jumbo and J-35 with an L-00 look. Otherwise there are "transition" J-35s with back bindings but with a French heel, a non-tapered body but with a larger soundhole ...

 

This is what I tried to gather with the J-35 registry, tracing back as much examples as possible to get some more information about the different faces of the model and their FONs.

 

Now this Trojan this thread is about still is unique since it has non-standard features and the question is what it is: a custom model, a prototype, a forerunner or just an untypical example that passed the regular number system and the books.

 

 

willi

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