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NGD (well, a week ago!) 1968 F25


Jinder

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Hi all,

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my quest for a great small body to complete my guitar arsenal led me to my good friend Glenn Sinnock, from whom i’ve bought many guitars. Buying from Glenn is always the best guitar hunting experience, he knows how i play and what I like and always has new and interesting things in stock to tickle my ears and fingers.

 

My Grandfather passed away a couple of months ago, and a small legacy came my way in his will-as he loved guitars (though not a player) and would always want to hear any vintage instruments I had over the new ones, it made sense to invest my inheritance in a great vintage small bodied guitar to remember him by.

 

I initially had in mind an LG0/1/2/3 or B25, but the one that really caught my eye on his site was a 1968 F25, of course basically a 12 fret B25 with a wide, flat-radius classical style neck and lighter bracing.

 

I really couldn’t resist, it was the right guitar at the right price and my instinct just told me that it was the one. I put a deposit down and collected it last weekend. Once again a great visit with Glenn, lots of coffee drunk and lots of stories and laughs. And great guitars, of course!

 

The F25 was everything I had hoped it would be. Light as a feather, buttery action, incredibly loud and resonant, and extremely comfortable to play. It’s a crossover model, so retains the earlier light bracing but has a belly down bridge, which is slightly unusual of course. At some point it has been converted (properly, with all metalwork removed and spruce plugs fitted) from the original Adj bridge to a fixed bone bridge, with the Adj slot filled almost invisibly and the new saddle rout carried out at an angle and slightly further back to correct any intonation issues.

 

The neck is very straight and the angle is perfect. Plenty of saddle and the sort of break angle you’d expect on a good example of a new instrument.

 

The best thing about it, however, is that it’s clearly been played relentlessly for the last 50yrs. Whoever owned it before must have loved it and played the snot out of it-it has a ton of playwear and sounds as magnificent as you’d expect a guitar that’s been played for half a century to sound!

 

I’m very happy. Glenn also cut me a killer deal on a Rare Earth that he’d taken in on a trade, so that’s now a permanent fixture in the little F25 and sounds very well suited to it too.

 

Here’s a link:

 

http://www.glennsguitars.com/guitars/gibson/photos-26/page32.html

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Thanks guys! I do feel that my Grandad would have approved, he was a big music lover. He would always come to my local shows until his eyesight deteriorated too much to drive, and even when he was in his 90s and almost totally blind, he would often come along to gigs with me or cajole other family or friends to take him. He was a fantastic man and was endlessly supportive of my musical efforts right until the end.

 

In terms of pickguards, thankfully it is devoid of the...erm...controversial golpeadors thankfully!

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Thanks guys! I do feel that my Grandad would have approved, he was a big music lover. He would always come to my local shows until his eyesight deteriorated too much to drive, and even when he was in his 90s and almost totally blind, he would often come along to gigs with me or cajole other family or friends to take him. He was a fantastic man and was endlessly supportive of my musical efforts right until the end.

 

In terms of pickguards, thankfully it is devoid of the...erm...controversial golpeadors!!

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Whoa! Congrats.

 

I have not played a Folksinger in a whole lot of years. Neat little guitars and with the wide flat board they were great fingerpickers (hence the name). I kind of miss the double pickguards though. I believe 1968 was the first year this model was available naked.

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Hey, nice. They are indeed quirky, but wonderful little guitars.

 

I would like to hear you describe its tone a bit more.

 

We have a 65 F-25 that we have owned for quite a few years. They are pretty rare guitars I think -- 1963-1971 only.

 

I have never played another F-25 seriously besides ours. Some years ago, I got into an extensive on-line discussion about the tone of these instruments. Because of the problem with nomenclature when doing this, it is hard to make fine distinctions. But as near as I could tell, there was a detectable evolution of tonality with time. Ours have the funky "pick guards" -- cool or stupid, depending on your point of view.

 

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Gruhn says the design change -- visible in our respective pictures -- occurred in 1969, but it looks like it may have been 1968.

 

Ours has an incredibly big, raw, in-you-face tone -- more like the 1930s than the 1960s. Our opinion on ours has evolved mightily over time. At first we did not love all its rawness, thinking that the only think that matched well in our style was mountain folk -- not something we do a lot. Later, we came to recognize all that power as a great resource for adding nuance -- it sort of went from C to A in our estimation.

 

Based on my earlier on-line discussions, it seemed as if the later ones were sweeter and less raw than ours. That is why I would like to hear you talk about the tonality of yous a bit more.

 

In any case, congratulation -- you have IMO a fine iconic and rare guitar (and cool).

 

All the best,

-Tom

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Thanks so much for the kind words, all!

 

It’s a spectacular little guitar which really punches above its weight in both tone and volume. As Tom said, it’s raw and almost brash if you want it to be, but also tender and gentle when played with a softer right hand. It’s a unique instrument, definitely a guitar apart from its LG/B series brethren. I think the sheer mass of Mahogany in the neck and the twelve fret configuration really add to the tone and make it something that is very much of itself.

 

Interestingly, Glenn also has a ‘60s C-0 which has been converted and re-braced professionally to take steel strings, a bit of an odd duck but WOW does that thing have some tone and sustain. Astonishingly resonant and very similar to the F25 in feel and tone. It has to be the F25 for me, but that C-0 is a real treat of a guitar and something totally unique for the right player.

 

As I recall, the first song on the F25 was Townes’ No Place To Fall...there’s something in this guitar that just begs for TVZ songs to be played on it!

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Nice guitar!

I'm sure he would think it was money well spent.

A few years before my Mom passed away, she gave all us boys (six) a chunk of change on the condition that we spend it right away on ourselves and let her know would we did. She said that way, she got to enjoy it too.

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Congratulations Jinder!

 

So being a ‘folksinger’ is what? Less sustain for Peter, Paul and the Other One type strums? My LG3 has a long sustain, for example and my Waterloo ladder braced, not so much.

 

 

BluesKing777.

 

Weirdly, I wouldn’t associate the tone of the F25 with folk music at all! I think the “Folksinger” nomenclature was just a marketing ploy. It’s dry like a ‘30s L-00, but has a sharpness and bloom to the notes that has almost a Maple-like quality to it. It has plenty of stinging chunk and clang for blues, but can also go into the fingerstyle Guy/Townes neighbourhood with no pause for thought.

 

Sustain is in far greater supply than I expected, definitely in the LG2/3 ballpark.

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Weirdly, I wouldn’t associate the tone of the F25 with folk music at all! I think the “Folksinger” nomenclature was just a marketing ploy. It’s dry like a ‘30s L-00, but has a sharpness and bloom to the notes that has almost a Maple-like quality to it. It has plenty of stinging chunk and clang for blues, but can also go into the fingerstyle Guy/Townes neighbourhood with no pause for thought.

 

Sustain is in far greater supply than I expected, definitely in the LG2/3 ballpark.

 

 

The folksinger moniker has nothing to do with sound. It was all about marketing with Gibson wanting to capitalize on the folk music revival. The flat and wide board made it a great fingerpicker and conjured up images of the old nylon string guitars. If I recall correctly, these were even designed to be strung with either nylon or steel strings. About 12 or so years ago I had a 1964 F-25 in the house a local store had let me take home to try out. To me, the necks made these the best feeling Gibsons built in the 1960s out there. I guess though they were not very popular because it was pretty cheap for a Gibson. For whatever reason though I passed on it.

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The folksinger moniker has nothing to do with sound. It was all about marketing with Gibson wanting to capitalize on the folk music revival. The flat and wide board made it a great fingerpicker and conjured up images of the old nylon string guitars. If I recall correctly, these were even designed to be strung with either nylon or steel strings. About 12 or so years ago I had a 1964 F-25 in the house a local store had let me take home to try out. To me, the necks made these the best feeling Gibsons built in the 1960s out there. I guess though they were not very popular because it was pretty cheap for a Gibson. For whatever reason though I passed on it.

 

Very interesting stuff, Zomb! I’d heard the steel/nylon thing before, but I’d imagine it would sound a bit underpowered with nylon strings. Maybe I’ll try it one day, but for now it’s staying with steel. Absolutely agree about the neck, much easier to play than my ‘67 J45!

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I always thought that the bracing was some sort of compromise to accommodate both types of strings. Basically I would think that would mean they were lighter than they would otherwise be for steel. Ours is uniquely powerful in the following sense. I have said many times before that it was more like our 30s Gibsons than our 60s Gibsons. This could be said of both 40s and 50s Gibsons too -- a clear evolution.

 

There seems to be a couple of reasons why this happened -- not just Gibson, but across the guitar world. First, the 30s flattops were first generation -- untried designs. They sound great, but their light bracing can cause long-term stability issues. But also in that same period, sound reinforcement came of age -- so guitars no longer had to be uniformly acoustically loud. So they became heavier and heavier until by the 1970s the loss of volume pretty near killed the whole industry.

The fear would be the lighter bracing of our F-25 would cause stability issues, but we have not seen any problems.

 

Best,

-Tom

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I always thought that the bracing was some sort of compromise to accommodate both types of strings. Basically I would think that would mean they were lighter than they would otherwise be for steel. Ours is uniquely powerful in the following sense. I have said many times before that it was more like our 30s Gibsons than our 60s Gibsons. This could be said of both 40s and 50s Gibsons too -- a clear evolution.

 

There seems to be a couple of reasons why this happened -- not just Gibson, but across the guitar world. First, the 30s flattops were first generation -- untried designs. They sound great, but their light bracing can cause long-term stability issues. But also in that same period, sound reinforcement came of age -- so guitars no longer had to be uniformly acoustically loud. So they became heavier and heavier until by the 1970s the loss of volume pretty near killed the whole industry.

The fear would be the lighter bracing of our F-25 would cause stability issues, but we have not seen any problems.

 

Best,

-Tom

 

That was a thought of mine, re the light bracing...however mine has minimal bellying, perfect neck angle and plenty of saddle showing above the bridge. Absolutely structurally perfect, I’d say...remarkable at 50yrs of age with such a light build.

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