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Pre -1970 Melody Maker


Taylorplayer

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Hello -

 

I've been after a (very) short scale electric for some time now. I've read that some of the pre-1970 Gibson Melody Makers were available with an extremely short scale = 18.56 inches. I'm wondering if the body size on the short scale model was the same as the longer scale versions? And, when that model went from "one horn" to "two horns" - did the overall body size still remain basically the same? I've been viewing some of the pictures on line - but it's hard to tell for sure.

 

Any information would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance -

Will

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I was not aware of this model.

A full size body on that would seem ridiculous. [mellow]

 

I have one of these that I got for holidaying. It has a 19.25" scale. It was pretty useless. I eventually put a riser on the nut and used it for slide, but it was still pretty useless. Its at the back of a cupboard somewhere now.

 

That short scale is no good for standard tuning, not even with heavy strings, it really should be tuned +1.5 or +2 (G or G#)

 

 

oh... and as with most small instruments, tuning stability is always going to be a challenge

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As far as the body shape is concerned here is what Ian C. Bishop had to say on the subject in his book on Gibson published in 1976;

 

"First batch Melody Makers (1959) were single cutaway, like a Les Paul Junior, but with a much thinner body......After approximately 18 months these were discontinued in favour of a double cutaway design. They had a body which was rounder in the area of the bottom bouts and with two smallish sharp cutaways and also without the sculpturing, so there was no possibility of confusing them with the SGs then in production. A subtly different version appeared in 1963-'64 which had a slightly larger body, slightly flatter round the rims and rather had the appearance of being home made. All Melody Makers made after 1966 shared the same body as the SG series...".

 

I don't have accurate info regarding the body sizes but from what I've seen on other solid-body models which were offered in 3/4 scale versions such as the Les Paul Special they did indeed use the same size of bodies as the full scale guitars but with different routings to accommodate the different needs of the hardware.

 

On the subject of scale length;

All the short-scale ("3/4 Scale") Gibson guitars I have read about have had a 2" reduction in scale-length to 22 3/4" (from 24 3/4"). FWIW my guess is that someone has taken the "3/4 Scale" designation quite literally and arithmetically chopped 1/4 off the 'regular' scale length because 24.75", if reduced by 25%, comes out at (Surprise Surprise)......18.56"...

 

Pip.

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