jedzep

Hah! Firesign Theatre called it 'stopping power'. I work on it while playing all the time, and find it satisfying to have a variety of tones at hand. 'Slowing power' is also a great tool, sometimes hard to teach. I learn by copycatting anyway, so easy for me. When I had my house moved, the guy who did the foundation drove the biggest excavator I'd ever seen. He dug and shaped the hole, swinging that claw around with the lightness of a symphony conductor. I think he moved my needle on appreciating nuance and finesse.

The players who can move from acoustic to electric and adjust their fretting finesse level proportionately are the ones who really impress me.

For the strong-handed, the latter.

Boy, if that ain't the truth, z!

From the looks of the strum marks, you might need a double guard, the ultimate aberration. Your pick should never scrape the top. Sorry, boys...my pet peeve again. Nothing looks more beautiful than a guard-free guitar. Naptha off the glue, toss the cheezee plastic in the trash and forget it. Then ease up on the Pete Townshend windmill action.

I'm one of the outliers that leaves his guitars out on wall hangers, believing the flexing of wood over certain humidity ranges is good for tone maturation, though never near the room where the wood stove resides.

Clean out your stovepipe and fire up. You might be able to prolong the vibe.

It's probably that your guitars are just slowly coming down from the dry high of being in a wood heated space, changing in small increments, still tight and bright. My wood heat in upstate NY gives me a relatively high dry acoustic play time through the worst of winter, but I'm keeping my fire up and running through this little cold spell. Last week was warm like early summer, but the crisp tone stayed on as the house temp dropped. In a week or so, the stove will be shut down, but my lively spruce tops will stay that way until humidity rises. As soon as my AC's fire up, I'm back to nice dry tone.

Hi Nick! You do all that? How great IS retirement? Hope you're well. Dave

I would contact Steve Kovacik for authenticity, as he carries a good stash of original vintage tuners. When he replaces the buttons he uses the creamy aged ones from Antique Acoustics. I just sold a set of gorgeous wartime era Klusons I had bought from him a few years back that were good for Js but short in the posts for my 30's Ls. Often, over the decades, various owners move tuners around and monkey with the peghead holes, so that replacements work poorly due to difficulty sizing the bushings. A little wiggle in that area will cause pull on the posts wrenching the gear angle enough to make them funky. Also saw a good bunch on Reverb. http://www.guitar-repair.com/tuners.htm

Ummm, they started out on my list of ten worst bands anyway. What crappy songs!!

Do you see the center strip, guys? I can't from that pic. Hey Joey, make sure your bro gets the pricing right. The two models are miles/dollars apart.

X-braced? That makes it an LG2. They're running 4-5K these days. It's sweet looking, alright.

Oh well.

Nasty! Send it to me and I'll ship it back in 6 months looking right.

I did have to pull the bridge and do some overall sanding, then sprayed multiple coats of Mohawk flat/matte lacquer. What a sin it would be to lay a nasty batwing on that CJ-165, Will. That much glue and plastic could alter the top response and tone too.

They're all so beautiful without guards, no ifs about it for me. And yes, I am serious and it works. This '62 Martin had an awful double guard. It took a whole spring thru fall to get it to blend, because you have to work around the hottest spells, not subjecting it to intense summer sun, but it came out real nice.

Go ahead and pull it Murph. Then ship it to me and I'll return it in 6 mos with the top color all blended. I offer this service to anyone else who'd like to mail me their guitars.

You're right, Ego, and any deviation from the brown tone of the fingerboard and bridge will draw you eye to the contrast. Having owned 50's era models of this guitar, these, and really no guitar, should be subjected to strumming that's reckless enough to scar it. At that point you would be driving it past it's tonal efficiency zone. Maybe, keep your abused dread for 'bashing', and customize your strum attack a little. I have this custom Greven firestripe guard matched to the wood on my '36 L00 restoration, but still hesitate attaching it. Maybe a guard is useful to cover damage after the fact. The little teardrops Martin puts on their OMs seems understated enough to not detract too much from the simple grace, in which case I'd go to Taylor at Holter guards to get a nice beveled custom. By the way, where did you buy an LG w/o an attached guard, and isn't that an LG-3 by virtue of it's natural finish?

Looks perfectly balanced and graceful. I wouldn't install, and just pulled the cheezy Martin guard off my 0-18. Plays better already. I wish I could pull all my guards.

Very fixable for the right guitar shop luthier, preferably a Gibson authorized vintage repairman, as the neck will likely have to come off and be reset. Take all the tension off the strings, remove that poorly placed strap button and don't put it back. It spelled trouble from day 1. Good luck.

That's good to know. I'm an old geezer and live away from decent sized guitar showrooms, so I don't know anything about what Gibson is building these days, but others here on the forum that I know to be knowledgeable and experienced often say the same. The ear wants what the ear wants. Go with that for your money's worth.

I could never figure out why the B-25 wasn't a better instrument. It had the LG size and X-bracing, but maybe the top was too thick or the bracing too heavy, even perhaps the oversized pick guard held it down, but I owned two 60's era models that went back on the truck in short order. I have a 30's L00 and a '50 J50 so I'm spoiled rotten.

Good luck. It's better to be impressed and amazed for a couple hundred more dollars.

With prices the way they are these days, I wouldn't invest 2K in these soul-less Gibson models, known for their uninspiring tone and volume. Hate to blaspheme on this site, and all, but in that range a new-ish used Martin 0-18 or even a D-Junior would blow either of these out of the water. Those F-25 pick guards couldn't be uglier, on top of the dull tone reputation. Maybe you can find a good modern used L00 for a couple hundred more. My minty 60's B-25 cost me 900 bucks 12 years ago. I dumped it shortly after not realizing until playing how dull the tone was, and jumped up to an LG-2, still less than 2K then. Sellers are out there hyping name and vintage, but there are great sounding guitars out there in the 2.5K range that make those models sound like student models.