ksdaddy

I’m leaning towards an older refinish on the top now. I can’t imagine there NOT being a tan line where the belly up bridge was removed. Unless it originally had a plastic bridge like an LG0 (and similar)? I think I’ve seen J45s with plastic bridges. If it did originally have one, then there wouldn’t have been any reason to mask off the area under the bridge, or remove it, whichever method they would have used in that time period.

Yep, it could be cherry sunburst that just washed completely out. Cherry SB is common on 67s, as is the skinny neck (obvious in the photo). Minor note just to reinforce 1967 as a good guess, the tuners say Kluson Deluxe. In 1969 the tuners would be identical but would say Gibson Deluxe.

1948 Ford F-6 (lawn art) 1949 Oldsmobile 76 1952 Chevrolet 6500 1963 Rambler 330 station wagon 1982 Ford F-150 1990 Ford F-150 4x4

Fortunately I own a 1948, 1949, 1952, 1963, 1982 and a 1990 so any time I need the tactile feedback on my left foot, I just step out onto my back lawn and pick one.

Regardless of this guitar’s lineage, any item that has a label that says “high class”… …probably isn’t.

I use a flat pick and my ring finger, just like any other guitar. I do the same with banjo. “All wrong” but it’s what’s natural to me. Before I bought that model 1000, which had a biscuit cone, I searched YouTube in hopes to find comparisons between biscuit and spider. Many metal bodied OMI Dobros were offered in either. Youtube is frustrating when perusing resos. Seems like the majority of people automatically use it for slide blues. A good reso is so full of personality… it’s a shame to limit it to one style.

I’ve owned several. A couple blonde Dobro 60 (?) from the 80s, a couple model 66 with the sandblasted finish, an early 60s ‘El Monte’ Dobro made mostly from leftover 1930s parts, a scary fancy 1986 Dobro Model 1000 engraved to the hilt, and a 1973 Dobro Model 114 with a strange small dreadnaught body shape. The 114 suited me best because of its baseball bat neck and overall tone. But a couple years ago I bought a 1993 Original Hound Dog, the cheapest thing OMI ever made. No binding, no sound well, maple fretboard with no finish (or almost none). I bought it from a guy living in a camper for $250. It was made when OMI was making a few instruments a week in a converted auto body shop in Huntington Beach. I’m not 100% sure whether it was made just before or just after Henry bought the company… I can’t determine the exact cutoff date. It is by far the best Dobro I’ve ever owned and it is a joy to sit and fingerpick. Dobros without sound wells are held in about the same regard as if Gibson cranked out some acoustics with bolt on necks and laminated tops. Yet here we are, the cheap junk smoked the expensive ones. I hope it never gets stolen or dies a fiery death because I fear I’ll never find one that I like as much.

I bought my 1964 Southerner Jumbo in 1984. It had Grover 102's installed. Also "21737 Chris Clark" scratched into it (never did find out who he/she is/was). A couple years later I installed a set of Schaller gold tuners that "looked" (if you squinted) like old tulip Klusons, except they had screw on bushings and fit the Grover holes perfectly. About ten years ago I scored an old set of tulip Klusons and installed them with conversion bushings, which are basically ferrules that are fat enough to fit the enlarged holes but also fit the old Kluson shafts. Doesn't show. Most SJs of that period came with button Klusons but I've seen one or two with tulips so I'm probably okay.... "close enough".

Martin did not start using adjustable truss rods until the mid 1980s so if the neck relief isn’t acceptable, it’s not a simple twist of a wrench. And also look for a correct neck set (angle). Martins often need neck resets at some point.

I did a little more digging and really didn't find anything as definitive as I had first thought. I definitely read somewhere that the black cloth was stopped in 1952 but I can't find the source. As to the peghead, I have read that they went from tapered to straight on different models at different times, with no logic, as per normal Gibson. It might have something to do with using up old stock, who knows? I can say that yours is made absolutely no later than sometime in 1955 due to the fact it has 19 frets instead of 20. Safe to call it "early 50s". Take another peek inside the body and make sure there's no number on the headblock. There won't be a serial number but there might be a Factory Order Number. Any number is a good number.

It’s an L-50, made sometime between 1948 and 1954 (roughly but pretty close). No surprise about the lack of serial number. There are ways to narrow it further but not to the exact year. Look inside the body, at the rims. Do you see strips of black cloth? Look at the profile of the headstock. Does the headstock taper in thickness or is it completely uniform? The presence of the black cloth would place it 1952 or earlier. Same for the tapered headstock.

One of my automotive instructors was not a Chevy fan. Whenever someone said "Chevrolet" he'd say, "Yep, shivers on the road and lays in the garage."

I threatened to buy a new pickup when I retired. My government truck was a 2016 Ram and I liked it a lot, so that floated to the top. Eight months later, still no truck. I just can’t justify spending $50,000 or more for something on wheels. I have a 1990 Ford F-150 4x4 I bought in 2013 for $1300 exclusively to plow the yard. Plates ran out in 2005. Original gray paint with typical Ford horrendously peeling clearcoat. 300 6 cyl with 5 speed on the floor, lock out hubs, regular cab, 8 foot box, and you don’t need a ladder to get into it. I’ve made the decision to go through it (rockers, floor, brakes, exhaust, whatever else it needs). We’ve jokingly thrown around the $10,000 number but since most of the work will be done by me or my son in law, I don’t see how I can spend that much. Not going to paint it. So $10,000 gets me what I want, vs $50,000 for something I need to take to the dealership to have the transmission fluid level checked. Speaking of Dodges, in 1967 a friend and I found a carcass of a car in a ravine in the woods behind my parents house. It’s still there. Not much left. Frame, fenders, bits and pieces, rear differential complete with one wooden spoked wheel. I took some pics about 15 years ago and through Google determined it to be a 1914 or 1915 Dodge. I’ve toyed with pulling it out for lawn art but I procrastinate.

And God bless him for that!

Anytime I see a skanky young thing at Walmart, I mutter under my breath, “Well Jerry, I’m a stripper….”

It sounded thin and tight, like it was going to explode if you hit the strings too hard. I’ve had the same sensation from small bodied Korean guitars.

I bought an ozone generator last year. My son in law had bought a GMC pickup that stunk of cigarettes so badly they named it Stinky. They scrubbed and cleaned and made some improvement but it still stunk. We put the generator inside and let it run a long time. I don’t recall but seems like it was 60-90 minutes, which I believe is way over the recommended time for that small an area. We shut it off and then opened up all the doors with a couple box fans running on high for a couple hours to get rid of the ozone smell. Stinky doesn’t stink anymore. I have not tried to de-smoke a guitar yet.

F plus six digits is usually associated with 1974-75.

That was a 1941 D-28 that Bigsby made a new neck for. Merle claimed it to be a 1938 but Martin serial numbers are pretty straightforward. I haven’t gotten to the part of the book where he discusses any of that yet. I’m sure whatever I read will be through Merle’s eyes or the author’s interpretation. As to Leo… yeah that whole time period in the late 40s is a bit fuzzy, isn’t it? All the key players have their own version, just like Les Paul’s version compared to Gibson personnel’s version of early solid body development. Funny how that works. And now we’ll never know. I watched Thom Bresh play that D-28 on Austin City Limits in the late 80s and it sounded killer. I think if anyone sought out a new or used D-28 expecting to hear that, they’d be sadly disappointed.

I’m drawn to celebrity biographies and autobiographies. Currently reading Sixteen Tons, the Merle Travis bio.

The strips of black fabric were to keep a potential crack from spreading, or so I was once told. I was also told (can’t quote the source) that they stopped doing that in 1952. Your knobs look like the 1946-49 style. The old open backed Klusons are old as well, can’t say what year but they match the rest of the guitar. I can see some numbers on the pots but I can’t tell much. In 1947 the manufacturers of many electronic components (pots, speakers,transformers) began using numeric codes that represented the manufacturer and date. From 1947 to 1959 this would have been six digits. Three for the manufacturer (typically) followed by one digit for the year (7 for 1947, 8 for 1948) followed by two digits for the week. In 1960 they went to two digits for the year. If your numbers don’t follow that convention, the parts were made before 1947 or the parts were left over and used on a later guitar. So far, this guitar looks no newer than 1949.

"accurate" and "Gibson" do not belong in the same sentence. According to the standard sources, it's a 1965. And it looks like a 1965. That is to say, there is nothing 'non' 1965 looking on it.

They used glass microscope slides when I was in Bozeman. Maybe they use other tools too, but they said they go through a lot of these slides....

Apparently too busy making snot green electrics.

When I was working full time and had honey-do stuff to do or projects, I had windows of time to do them in. A funny thing happens over the years though. When I was in my 20s, I would think nothing of dropping a transmission out of a car after supper and working on it until midnight. That was the norm. As I got older, that window got smaller. I didn't feel like doing much after supper an I planned to be in bed before 10. Which made me look forward to retirement all the more. I figured I'd have the time to do what I want during the day. All true! But as Merciful-Evans pointed out, once you get into the chair, it's hard to get out. I found myself doing that. The couch felt great, as did the numerous cat naps in between snacks. It has gotten to the point where I look back on each day and try to justify my oxygen use by having done SOMETHING. Yes, I have hobbies. But my days are too 'open ended' to make them work. If I have a job to go to, even one or two days a week (which sounds pretty good to me), then I might have a tendency to use my free time to get things done on the hobbies.... if that makes sense. Long winded way of saying a part time job will give me some level of structure that I clearly am not willing to give myself at this time. I can compare it to being on summer vacation from school. The first week or two, the days were crammed with activity, but after a while I took the free time for granted and became lazy. I think that's where I am now. I need to find a balance. As to my job, the good thing is, I can pretty much pick and choose what I do. I'm known as a historian and have a good command of the archives at work. Tracts of land get split, joined, split again, and change hands over and over. Sometimes I have to step in when someone insists a piece of land doesn't have a certain determination or there's no record of it and it needs to be done! I am the one to sorta do a title search and provide copies of the Magna Carta (or whatever) to the people involved. A can of touch up paint for the Sistine Chapel perhaps. It was in a box under the stairs and I'm the only one who knows where to look, apparently. In addition, they always need someone to go out and do GPS and photo documentation of structural practices such as waterways, diversions, irrigation systems and pipelines. Easy stuff, gets me outside, makes me walk. What I will NOT be doing is all the computer work that went with my old job, all the red tape.... all.... the... red... tape... I will have none of it. I'm basically going back and eating the dessert of every meal I've ever eaten without having to eat the liver. And to further drive it home, I've sat here typing for 20 minutes when I should be out washing the Impala. I think it's black.