ksdaddy

My brother bought a used Kay 3500 (circa 1960) at a second hand store around 1962 or 63. In 1964 he got a Holiday electric and soon afterwards moved up to a Fender Mustang, at which point he gave me the Kay. I was 7 or so. This is my brother Paul: Once a year or so, my father would slap on a set of Black Diamond medium strings on it. Child abuse, plain and simple. My brother had the Mustang, my father had a Gibson Southerner Jumbo, and I had a medieval torture device. This guitar never should have existed. The neck was too narrow for a child learning to play. My stumps mashed down on two strings at once. The strings were very high and I think Dad made a new bone nut for it, which I'm sure was a horrible fit. I carried it around anyway. I still have the strap by the way. I never did learn to play this colossal POS. I wish I could go back in time, cut a new nut for it and install some silk n steels. In early '74 my brother gave me a Harmony archtop, which at least WORKED. The Kay hung around until 1977 when I stripped it down, meaning to refinish it. I never did, and it delaminated in the basement. It went in the trash. I sought redemption years later when I did neck resets and basic restoration on TWO Kay 3500s.

Here's the guard on my 1989. It's a replacement, installed in 2007. I put about 7 coats of lacquer on it, which may only be delaying the inevitible. Amazingly, the lacquer hasn't popped loose, peeled, etc. Not recommending this, by the way, just stating what I did 11 years ago. I've done many dumb things. Here's the guard on my 2000. I think it looks like refried dog turd. If I had the opportunity to get a 'good' guard, I probably would. I bet someday people will look on a rubbed out J200 guards as a badge of honor like a worn maple Fender fretboard. People eat Tide pods too.

For me, it comes down to what I want to play at that moment. It's abundantly clear that I have a few guitars that are larger than life and sound like the gates of heaven swinging open with cherubs descending from the sky with trumpets blaring, but sometimes I just want to hear a certain sound or have a particular feel. Sometimes I purposely select one to play that just has a different voice. Sometimes we want Ginger, sometimes Mary Ann, and maybe sometimes we want Mrs. Howell to be our Sugar Momma. For the above mentioned (albeit weak) analogy and for the same reason steak is offered anywhere from raw to burnt, I would never turn my nose up at a double braced Gibson. It could be just what I want to hear at that moment. I would be MORE likely to turn my nose up at it for structural reasons tied to that era...the shallow neck set, rotten binding, 70s neck twist, things like that. A year ago I bought (and returned) a 1973 JG0, which was the cheapest square body Gibson ever made. No body binding, one quick thin spray of clearcoat, basically whatever wood they had on hand and wanted to get rid of. I returned it because the seller failed to point out the unrepaired headstock crack and the coat of varnish someone slathered over the whole guitar with a 4" brush. The frets had been filed flat too. I sometimes wish I had just refretted it and fixed the headstock because it did have a nice rumble that I could feel in my ribs. Oh well.

Ebay does NOT care unless they think they are missing out on money. I had an auction for a lot of 51 old pegboard guitar hangers. A guy messaged me through ebay and made some lowball offer that amounted to about 30 cents each, which I declined. Today I got an email from ebay chastising me for conspiring to sell outside of ebay. I called them and got someone in India of course. He apologized all over the place and said in this case (after him reading my messages) the bidder was completely at fault and there would be no mark against me. I would hope not. "Hey, I'm thinking about killing you" (and both get charged with murder). The email went so far as to state that I could be charged final value fees for the item whether a sale actually took place or not. I'm just about fed up with their foolishness. I made the comment to my wife this morning that years ago, leftover crap around the house could be put on ebay and not only was a sale pretty much guaranteed, most times the item sold for more than expected. In 2018 we are guilty whether we re proven innocent or not, items often don't sell for months, and they gouge us for every penny that they can get. There's no incentive to sell on there anymore.

Back in 2005 or 2006 I removed (and subsequently listed on ebay) a set of butterbean Grovers from my Gretsch Country Club because they sucked and replaced them with normal 102G's and ebay killed the auction, claiming that the owner of the copyrighted name had a standing order to kill off anything that contained one of their copyrighted names because they were king of the playground and that's that. FMIC owned Gretsch sooo.... Sorry for the run on sentence.

Ebay couldn't care less as long as the fees are paid.

Everybody pitch in.

I bought a bunch of pickguards and such after the big Kalamazoo auction in '85 or so. Must have been 40 or 50. I probably should have just buried them in the attic for 30 years but instead I cut them up for projects. So if anyone is looking for a left handed triple pickup SG Custom guard, I can attest that there is one less in the world by my hands. I also bought about 50 pearl Epiphone logos. No idea where they went. There was one seller on ebay in MI who was selling old neck blanks and misc parts. They seem to have finally culled everything. If I had that lot of truss rod covers, I'd put them on ebay one at a time with an opening bid of $9.99 and take my chances. As to the rest of the parts, if you have part numbers, I might be able to help, as I have a part number list from 1985. And as to any 'dibs', I'd like to claim the black/red MK81 cover in the upper right.

Nice volute.

My SJ is a 1964 and the adj bridge was swapped out sometime prior to 1984 for a regular one. I made a bone saddle for it around 1986 and it's not moved. I have Nickel Bronze mediums on it that are at least a year old. That guitar will never again have 80/20 or PB...never. I won't make that statement about any other guitar, but that one...case closed. I would try Monel though. There is a strange phenomenon about that guitar. If I were to do a direct comparison to either of my J200s or Martins, it would seem lifeless and weak. And by comparison, that's probably true. However if you sit down with that guitar on the couch and play it solo, you'd swear it was the only guitar on the planet. It has a complex richness that doesn't come out in the standard, predictable way, where we look for volume, scooped mids, sparkle this and sparkle that. The SJ has no sparkle but it will hold your hand and make you thank God you decided to take up guitar. I have louder, brassier girls in the herd but none makes me want to play like that guitar can.

Today I took in a 1967 B45-12 that will replace my 1969. When it left Kalamazoo, it had a cherry sunburst finish. That was a long time ago. It now has a fairly uniform pumpkin finish. I notice it, too, has a 4 piece top, probably hidden to some degree by the sunburst back in the day.

Sounds like the girl I dated for five months in 2011. (rim shot)

In 1990 I saw Joe Ely on Austin City Limits with David Grissom playing 3 various PRS models. I remember a gold top, a flame top, and another one that escapes me. I was blown away by his playing ability and the tone he was getting but I'm not naive enough to give all the credit to the guitar. Shortly thereafter I visited a music store a couple hundred miles away. We chatted about a new ES-175 in black and gold, retailing for $1399 and also about other Gibsons. He pointed at a PRS on the wall and almost shouted, "now THAT is a $2500 guitar!" My reaction was like....okay, this is the same hype I heard 5 years ago about Jacksons and 10-12 years ago about tuning fork Kramers. The BS meter raised a bit. I didn't have any first hand experience with a PRS until about 2000 when I swapped pickups and leveled the frets on a bolt-on PRS. It was a good guitar but there were no cherubs descending ftom Heaven with trumpets. I didn't put them anything other than on par with a good Gibson or similar. No message here other than my two cents.

I've been deleting the posts that threaten physical violence. Phaser isn't even set to 'stun' yet.

*you're*

I dug out my '89 J200 for a little bit last night. Strings are dead and the saddle is way too high for my liking. I made that saddle myself out of bone several years ago but it must have been during a dry time! It still has the original rosewood pins and they are some kinda ratty now. They look okay when installed but they have serious chips, missing slivers and such where they contact the guitar itself. I would like to give "better" pins a try to satisfy my curiosity and either validate or refute my skepticism. Trouble is, I don't know which pins to order. I'm sure there are size charts out there but would Gibson have a 'default' size, at least in any given era?

I pondered what happened to the letters that we delete or backspace over. Are we some kind of gods that create letters and then at a whim, just delete them? And where to they go? Since they were never posted, are they considered unused letters and go back on the shelf? Or do they go into some kind of limbo? And if something DOES get posted and we delete it, are those letters sent to some kind of rebuilding facility like an arsenal rebuilt rifle? Maybe Times New Roman letters sometimes get their serifs broken...Suppose they get ALL their serifs taken off and are rebuilt as Arial? And what if, just...what if there are a finite number of letters in the universe and we're just using them up helter skelter like there's no end in sight? One day we'll go to type something and all there'll be left are Q's, Z's and X's.

Many of the ES-thin variations (125T,TC,TDC,TD) had scary neck set problems. It looked like the laminated tops distorted and "collapsed" right around where the front pickup mounted. If you have a good neck set, I can't think of anything else that would be problematic. 1959 is a good choice in my opinion, as it would have gone to the larger frets. A couple years ago I had a basket case 125T (badly refinished, came to me in pieces). I stripped it to the bare wood, put it together, and played it. It was nice. I didn't feel like I could do a proper refinish so I passed it forward.

Actually it was the pinstripes that made me look. I'd love to have someone rockabillify the sh** out of my upright bass with similar striping.

Ball and Biscuit - The White Stripes

It doesn't surprise me. Some models came through with solid sides, laminated backs, vice versa.... I don't know how closely that decision was documented. Something tells me it was an ad hoc decision rather than "All model X guitars henceforth shall be..." I guess all the individual can do is examine their own guitar and accept it. I had a '68 Dove a few years ago that someone had mounted an output jack in the side. Pretty clear THAT was laminated. Other times all you can do is compare the inner and outer grains. I don't know how quickly I would be disappointed if I found out one of my Gibsons had lam. Maybe not at all! A lot less likely to crack, that's for sure!

I say 1949. The best (only) Factory Order Number information I have access to states that in 1949 they had FONs in the 2000 range. Yours is 2128. If someone handed me that guitar and said it was a 1949 I would believe them.

When I was in school I did the absolute least I had to do to get by. (Side note, I play a Telecaster with no effects through the 'nearest' amp...coincidence?) When I was a Junior (Grade 11 to our Canadian brethren) I took a class called "Great Books". We read The Old Man and the Sea, The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and it's possible we read A Separate Peace, (maybe I read that on my own). About that time, on my own, right there in front of God and everyone, I also read The Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye and likely others that I don't readily recall...Cannery Row? I don't remember. The teacher pushed the whole symbolism thing. I've questioned it ever since. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I find it hard to believe an author would lay awake at night thinking up cryptic puzzles for us to figure out or be told what it meant by someone more learned. Doesn't make sense. For the same reason, I don't like cryptic music. I still don't fully understand American Pie (but most of it), I hate Stairway to Heaven. I've listened to that song for 42 years and I have no idea what it means and if a song makes me feel stupid I tend to not buy the record.

I love you.

I think music theory is a pile of poo. I think I could play 7 random notes and someone would come up with a name for the scale. Lay three fingers somewhere on the fingerboard and sure enough, I just made a G#msus4+13 chord. If I moved it up a fret, that should be a Amsus4+13 but it's not a leap year so.... I'm being a smart alec of course. I don't understand it so I have to poke fun of it. This guy starts talking gibberish about 0:25 and by 1:30 I'm pretty sure it's not even English. And I'm sure he's on the more casual end of the spectrum of learned music people.