Phelonious Ponk

I don't mean to be negative, but I'm pretty skeptical. Unless each guitar in the "test" (which this really isn't) was recorded playing the same passages, same room, same fresh strings, same mics and positions, and then the recordings were compared in a fast-switching double blind test, there's nothing scientific here. It could be, it's actually more likely to be, confirmation bias, i.e.; hearing what we expect to hear. Confirmation bias in incredibly common. Humans have a huge capacity for it, and we have very short auditory memory. P

I had a '66 J-200. I never put anything in those holes, and when I sold it after 30 years as my only acoustic, the tuners were still working fine. P

You can save enough buying second hand to have the bridge plate, and the bridge replaced. Easily. Buy right and you can get the neck re-set, too. Seriously, good economy or bad, the best deals are very lightly used. "Like new," they like to call it. I bought and sold a half a dozen, easily, that fit that description on the way to my OJ. The whole journey took a few years, and with shipping and insurance, only cost me a few hundred bucks, because I was always able to get my money back out of them. What did I get for my time and money? I got the experience, irreplaceable in a store, of living with and experiencing a bunch of guitars -- a couple of Taylors, a couple of Larrivees, a Ted Thompson, a Greven (that one was only for a couple of weeks, a loaner from John), a Lowden...and in the end I found the one. And I mean THE. ONE. Is it the best guitar I've ever owned? Objectively speaking, in terms of volume, sustain, touch-responsiveness, tonal complexity, etc, no. That was the Lowden. But in my hands, for what I do, the OJ is perfect. Not sure I could have gotten there just walking into a shop playing a bunch of guitars and picking a favorite. I know I couldn't have known that while it was amazing, the Lowden was not a good fit for me without living with it. Besides, picking one out of the store wouldn't have been a fraction of the joy ride. P

All internal gazing aside for the moment, your J-45 Custom is gorgeous. P

It resulted in Randmo re-stringing his guitar, getting the string ends properly seated in the pin grooves. Now most of the pressure of the ball end is where it belongs - on the pin, not on the bridge plate. That will probably do more for the long-term health of his bridge plate than anything else. P

Good answer. P

We saw very different things in Randmo's pictures. I saw unfinished holes in an invisible area, and one string end not properly seated in the pin's groove. Maybe I better go look at those pictures again. P PS: looked again. Still see the same things. -- some splintering where the drill bit came through, which is normal and in every picture in this thread, including the Yamaha, some glue showing around a plugged mounting hole, and a string not properly installed. I see no structural damage, nor anything that threatens to cause any problems. I do see a new player who has learned how to properly seat the ball ends of his strings in th slots of his bridge pins. That's good.

I must have very low standards or something. I've been playing forever and I've never stuck a camera inside a guitar. When we get to structural problems, I'll worry. Until then, I'll choose not to even check the glue cleanup on the inside. YMMV. P

Gibson didn't say it was fine, they said he didn't have the strings in correctly, which is exactly the same conclusion I'd come to, looking at that picture. P

Pardon my not reading 5 pages on bridge plate locator holes, but has anyone here had an actual problem? P

It could be that the bone saddle wasn't seated properly, or it could be that it is a porous piece of bone. Or it could just be that you like the sound of Tusq on that guitar. I don't assume that bone is better, but I've swapped back and forth on a couple of guitars and the difference isn't usually as dramatic as what you describe. My guess would be that bone saddle wasn't seated properly into the bridge. P

Might sound better for it. I had one of those, a few years earlier. They were pretty heavily braced. Not the liveliest guitars Gibson ever built. A good repairman could have improved upon it. P

I guess I need to play some Texans, as I love a bargain. On a recent trip to the store to play the Gibsons, I played a couple of Epiphones for kicks and giggles and concluded that if I want a cheap Gibson, I'd better buy a Recording King. The examples I played were not in the same class with Gibsons at all. P

E one I've played was the real deal. A little brighter than the J 45 standard I played in the same store, but very nice. P

This sounds about right to me. I haven't played many Breedloves, but I owned a cedar/walnut Lowden jumbo that was, by every objective measure, one of the best guitars I've ever played. What does that mean? Well, it means if you even looked at the thing cross eyed, massive amounts of fundamentals, overtones, attack, decay, sustain and release blew out of the thing as easy as a summer breeze. As a machine for making sound of its own power it was a wonder. But it didn't suit the way I play guitar at all. The only other guitar I ever played that came close to the astounding, easy, responsiveness of that Lowden was a Breedlove. It wasn't for me either. I'm not Richard Thompson, though I wish I had half his skill. If I can't have at it with a stiff pick and a couple of fingers and get it to go chunk, chunk, ring...thunk, ka-ching. pickitapickita zing...well it's not going to work for me every time. I don't want to carry half a dozen guitars around with me. I want one to take me from G runs to double dropped D without much fuss. I found that in a Gibson. But that doesn't mean I didn't listen to that Lowden (Breedlove) ring out church bells and fairy dust and wonder at the beauty of it all. P