PrairieDog

Thanks for that info!

Posted in Philly and Atlanta? as they said in that one movie, “Run away! Run away!”

Hmmmm…. I’d proceed with extreme caution. I don’t use Craigslist, but how are you supposed to get in touch with them? There is no contact info? Usually there is some id or something, isn’t there? And Crypto is still a red flag for me. Anyway, besides that, the pickguard looks mighty sketchy, like it might be breaking down/disintegrating already. And the Dove inlay is missing? I’d call Gibson and just see if they have a record of that serial number. I see that is says “Second” which means it presumably left the shop with some issue, but why is the SN not on the label? the label also looks poorly glued which could mean it got wet at some point? Or was just slapped on. These are also all tells of a fake. The Second stamp is a good way to explain away anything that doesn’t look “right.” “Oh, it came like that….” Also, I hate to malign the school system down there, but you know wrong spellings and bad punctuation are typical of scam posts/emails. And Those super zoomed in pics look like some sort of industrial space rather than a private home. I would ask for more pics, like a close up of the pick guard and other areas that aren’t already posted to see if they can supply them. And then there is the 1970s factor… maybe it’s a gem because it’s supposed to be custom shop, but it was a rough decade for Gibson. Good luck. I hope I’m just being overly cynical…but nothing else, even if it is legit, that pick guard will have to go. You can tell it is already into the finish.

Paraloid/B-72? Cool stuff. We use it in our lab.

That was great! Always enjoy hearing you play, and that is a great song. Better half is the reso player but only has square-necks and wants a round neck now. We really like the sound of a tricone and there happens to be two Mules in town right now. What are the chances? So we got to actually compare for once. The one at Willies ran circles around the one at the GC, and was cheaper. Still, the thing about the Mule is they use a standard sized, round plate, which means good parts of the three cones are trapped under the body and muted. The triangle plate design makes much more sense with tricones. It does give Mule that kinda a chunky suppressed sound that some folks like. We decided we are more into the warmer/open side. So, for about the about the same money, I think we will keep looking for a deal on a wood body National M1. Since we are nothing but part-time players no matter what we pick up it’s all about just having fun with sounds for right now. And, after collecting stuff to hang on the walls for so many years, it’s much more rewarding to have art we can play with 😄 Oops, just got an update that the GC Mule has left the building… glad it found a home.

Nod, it’s just the “one you can get in a few days” can end up coming from another GC, i.e., this one. And then there were the poor used ones who just ended up in a very bad place. I doubt they have a stack of opened Martins to pop out of the back. I get there is “demo” damage (I don’t mind a nice discount for a small “ding”) but then there is just willful, wasteful, neglect. Buy another three or four 100.00 humidifiers and keep ‘em filled until you can get a qualified HVAC guy there to fix it. “Oh, we call, but they say it is fine” is not an answer when it obviously is not “fine.” If nothing else, it is hitting their bottom line. It looked so schlocky it made every instrument there suspect, even a steel resonator. They partly lost the $4,000 dollar sale because looking around at all the damaged goods, we couldn’t trust there wasn’t going to be something wrong with the Mule. And the other guy, who was shopping, everything he tried sounded like crap because they were all so stiff and dry. So right there, in 15 minutes, two good potential sales walked out. It was like trying to shop in a guitar graveyard. Just sad.

Yes. The only quibble I have is not a ziplock, that will trap the gasses, furthering the damage and the bag will eventually burst. tissue paper in a ventilated box, in a well-ventilated area will allow the gasses to dissipate naturally and not cause more damage. Just keep it well away from close contact with any other items. It’s probably too far gone to even be stabilized, but I’d have the luthier decide before chucking it. Museums might try to soak/encase celluloid in another stable acrylic matrix, to stop the reaction. but that is usually done when there is only a little decay.

I’ve been wondering about the indifference to the damage, and I think you are on to something… rather than paying their own luthiers to fix them, I wonder if they are relying on the buyers shipping them back to Gibson under the warranty as QC issues. However, I would think 20 guitars all needing the same repair from the same vendor location might raise the antenna at the mothership.

Don’t put the pick guard back on! It is just too dangerous to the guitar. I thought you said GC tech took it off? Just try to source a replacement. If you are talking about the support bracket broke, that is because the gases from the pick guard weakened it. you may be able to find a replacement for that too. But the guard at this point is that toxic it will eat through metal and ruin your finish. Glad you have it back, and get it to the luthier for a full check up/work up. It’ll be worth it!

That’s how my air fryer works 😄

Don’t think they were really necessary? I figured just describing “split down the center” was visual enough for folks to understand what kind of cracks they were. You would have to scroll through pages of images to gather how many had suffered. I thought I made clear I knew they had all dried out. I was really commenting on how many in the one room had been damaged, and that they didn’t even seem concerned enough to try to rehydrate/reglue them, and that they were still selling them for full price! I mean, I’d be kinda po’d if I paid over $6,000 for a new Martin and it arrived with 1/8-1/4 inch separation on the face. I mean, you could see the cracks from 10-12 feet away. Yes, I know they can be fixed, that’s not the point. It’s that in the face of the damage, this GC isn’t even making a token effort, and still selling them as “first quality”. I don’t know, I guess I don’t think the first thing you should need to do with a new guitar is have it glued back together 🙄

yeah, this definitely wasn’t just a finish issue, unless they are making a new feature equivalent of glass bottom boats: a thin plexi panel that lets see into the guitar 😆

I don’t know if that would be a factor here. these were all top splits, It looked like most were some kind of spruce, although there maybe were some exotic tops, koa and or cedar? I’m already blocking the horror out of my brain, but one of the Martins may have been hog.

Nod, slightly different effects. the cartoon that Rabs posted explained it fairly well, re the brain on music.

We were goofing off yesterday afternoon and headed into town to ride a couple Mule resonators. One was at a GC that we don’t normally shop at. It was one of the “big” stores. Besides the main acoustic room, where about 200 off shore models were displayed, the upper end models were housed in separate room, the size of the whole acoustic showroom at our little GC. The ‘elite’ room had gigantic ceilings with guitars hung up the wall 3 ranks. the guy needed a 12 foot ladder to retrieve the Mule from the top, and he still had to reach. Checking out the offerings, a nice new J45 vintage burst caught my eye from the light shining through a split right down the center from the sound hole to the bottom of the bout. I sighed, bummer, that’s rough. Then moving on, I spied another guitar higher up with the same issue… Then like a victim in a horror movie, I slowly started scanning around looking at the walls, and found each wall had several more with the same gaping bout crack. It was carnage every where I looked. Gibson’s, Taylors, Martins… Pointing it out to another shopper, he started to find even more. Some were too high, but looked mighty suspicious. I’d say 20 percent of the guitars were split. Pondering it, we realized there was no humidity in the room. During the heating season. Sure, there was a large living room size humidifier humming in the corner, but you’d probably have to fill it every hour to keep up with that cavern. Anyway, I tried to commiserate with the sales guy helping us that something very bad must have happened with their humidity to cause so much damage, and he just kinda shrugged and said “yeah, we keep calling, but they keep saying it’s fine.” Didn’t even want to acknowledge the $30-50,000 worth of damaged instruments hanging on the wall, all still tagged full price. At least take them down and re-glue them, or label them Scratch and Dents and offer a free mend… I feel for anyone who orders one shipped from there.

It also could be that the strings still need to settle in. You said it has just been a few days? Try stretching each one well. Several times. It took me multiple sessions of restretching and re-tuning when I just restrung my DIF. Also, if you aren’t, tune down, then tune up into the note. that can help with slots that are prone to binding. Binding is often worse and more problematic when tuning down from sharp.

Good post and I agree. Even though I used to run with a pretty “enhanced” crowd in my youth, I’m a near teetotaler now, just a drink on the porch while I’m bbq-ing sorta thing. And our close friends are of the same mind. Glass of wine with dinner, etc. Can’t stand feeling loopy anymore and takes too long to recover. Mostly just too involved in other stuff to be messed up and not sharp as possible. So even though Minnesota finally legalized recreational pot a few months back it didn’t really hit our circle’s radar, maybe a little curious what it would be like now, mostly out of nostalgia but not overly motivated to make an effort to drive to one of the few dispensaries that are open, or grow our own. We were at a local old-time jam last Sunday afternoon and ran into some folks we knew. We got to chatting afterwards but the convo was having a hard time staying on track. It had a vague feeling of familiarity and I admit to a bit of frustration at their inability to track what I was trying to pick their brains about since they would be a good source for the answers. Feeling put off, I left wondering if I wasn’t asking the right questions… Ruminating the next day, trying to figure out where the convo went south, it hit me: duh, they were both high as kites. So social hour readjustment time and I realize now we gotta account for bumping into random stoners in the middle of the day.

I just got curious about what might be out there that could be gussied up by my luthier, (after looking into M2M, chuckle) and apparently there actually may be some unicorns to root out. Not blingy, but hey, it doesn’t look like a coffee table? https://reverb.com/item/42951445-1961-gibson-lg-2-cherry-sunburst

I hear you, I never understood why they don’t make blinged up versions of the smaller bodies? You are right, maybe instead of a toucan (which are kinda clunky and squawky, they could call it “The Wren.” There is some weird equation that only large bodies = expensive and so get flash, and small bodies = low cost, so just get plain, or brown bursts. They don’t seem to grok that people play different size bodies for different tones/reasons, and expense is not always the main consideration. Now, in the prewar banjos, the builds were basically the same, so it was the accouterments/inlay that what moved you up price-wise in the model line.

I’d search the big websites. The prices vary. Reverb, Dave’s, and Carter Vintage are good for comps. Reverb lets you sort by the sold listings. hard to tell from the photos, but it looks like a walnut? Those seem to be a little less than the flashier ones. Nice guitar. Others here may likely have more helpful input.

Nod, that is an especially tragic bit of history of women in the workforce. Especially since there is so much evidence the companies knew what was happening long before there was any outrage over it. Humans as disposable tools, “Plenty of girls looking for work.” Related side story? When I was a tyke learning to tell time, my grandfather, who collected clocks, sent me a cool Art Deco-style alarm clock with big “glow in the dark” numerals. I was enthralled with it. I’d be awake at night often and the glow lit up the room and I found it comforting. When my friends came over, we’d go in the closet to show it off. It earned me some serious cool-toy factor. Anyway, my mom was not paying attention at first, but after some days finally clued in, remembering the radium scares. It dawned on her, Grandpa had probably sent an original radium clock, and pitched it right out. I took away from the very involved adult explanation why I couldn’t have my favorite thing: 1. That words ending in “-ium” indicates terrible danger. 2. I would now spend dark midnights contemplating how I have been “contaminated,” and worrying about all the horrible mutations looming ahead. My treasure was replaced with a lame Disney model, with tiny, safe blue dots for telling time at night.

Thanks, that’s kind of you. I wish I could say we had a Hallmark moment before he died, but it wasn’t a movie and he made his choices. I found out after he died that much of our difficulties well into my late adulthood were compounded by his vindictive last wife who, among other things, was miffed I wouldn’t start calling her “mom” as a middle aged person. My explanation that “Mom” was not a term of endearment in my lexicon (if you thought dad was difficult….) still did not sway new wife that the deferral was not out of disrespect. Anyway, everybody gots baggage. Let’s play guitars! 😄

Nah, yours is hard too. The sting of losing something one cares about is the same, no matter the circumstances. I have a lot of horror stories, I don’t share them often, but when I do, I try to make clear grief/pain is not a competition, it is all just a shared path. Nice to have those pianos, I hope your son comes to cherishes them both. Like guitars, no two are really the same.

Congrats!!!

Not pining for a guitar but a piano… When I was a kid, my grandmother bequeathed her 19th century Steinway parlor-grand piano to me. I was a bit of a promising prodigy, and she was my main encouragement. At first it was at my house, but I couldn’t practice when my mom was around, since she found the needed repetition annoying, and she finally had it moved to my dad’s house until I had a place I could move it into. When the time came, and I had bought a house specifically because it had space to keep it in, he kept finding excuses to keep it at his house. Usually some music program graduate student was living with them who needed to use it. I was annoyed, but in the interest of keeping the rocky peace, I just figured it would get to me at some point. Even if it was through the will. To my horror and outrage, when he was closing up the house, he announced he was giving my piano to a graduate student he particularly liked, screaming at me in a bizarre, uncharacteristic outburst of rage, “You don’t DESERVE the piano!” I was floored, stunned. It turned out all these years he had been bogarting it, I had been the brunt of a cruel and almost Shakespearean betrayal by another party, without my father ever approaching me, or asking me if any of it were true. He just believed outright lies, and nothing I could say now dissuaded him from his conviction I turned out to be utterly worthless. The graduate student didn’t even want it. She wasn’t even a piano major, and had no place for it and would have to pay to store it. She understood what a blow this was to me. She begged me in a panic to talk him out of it. He would have none of it. He always had some bug up his butt about me, nothing I did met his approval, and it turned out this was the ultimate and cruelest dig he could deliver. He even made sure through a ruse that I happened to be there when the movers came to take it away to put it in her storage. A decade or so later, I was looking into buying it back from the grad student, but it turned out she had gutted the beautiful old thing and put the “modern” heavy-action style keys in it. Once I heard that, I was resigned, it was never going to be “my” piano again.