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bobouz

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Everything posted by bobouz

  1. Very late to this party, but might as well clarify again: Custom shop serial numbers are different. The first digit indicates the year. With the number being CS 051335, it was made in 2010. As mentioned above, the ES-339 was first released in 2007.
  2. That’s a retro-quality fix if I ever saw one! Brings to mind when I’d throw gas from my motorcycle’s float bowl onto a campfire for starter fluid - You do what ya gotta do!
  3. Hmm - I’m not able to get too worked up about this one. All’s fair in love & marketing wars!
  4. Sure are a lot of holy-grail acoustics out there with visible excess glue inside the box. Happily, that has nothing to do with tone, playability, or structural integrity.
  5. First time I ever wrapped my hand around the neck of an F-25, I couldn't believe the size of the thing. Essentially a fat classical neck slapped onto a B-25. Since I don't even care for 1.75" necks, we parted quickly!
  6. The last time I let anyone else work on one of my guitars was 1980. But if the day comes that I want something done that’s beyond my comfort zone, I would be researching luthiers to determine their level of expertise, including a portfolio of repairs made & the instruments they’re most familiar with. To that end, adding in trusted information from someone like JT would be a welcome & absolute bonus.
  7. OMG, what a stunning & beautiful instrument! I missed your first thread regarding this rarity, but went back & now I'm all caught up. The LG body is one of my all-time favorites, having first landed one at a flea market in the mid '70s (a 1964 Epi FT-45n Cortez). Thanks so much for sharing this amazing LG-3 with us. Just knowing it exists in it's pristine condition somehow makes the world a better place!
  8. I only got a little bit into the video, and did not catch what he was doing with the bridgeplate or back braces. I was just thrilled to see an early J-185 receiving attention, as this is my all-time favorite model. Very hard to understand not going with a maple bridgeplate & matching the original footprint. Perhaps someday this will be rectified.
  9. What a wonderful guitar to bring back to life!
  10. Growing up with the Stones & Beatles first three albums, to my ears the Stones were a musically sophisticated & superior blues-based band. By comparison, the Beatles, on their earliest albums, were a bubble-gum-teeny-bopper band (I Want To Hold Your Hand just about made me puke!). How much of that might perhaps have involved studio magic, I don't know, but the Beatles simply sounded childish by comparison. The Stones wrote a number of their own tunes on those albums, and they were typically darn good (if not credited to Jaggar/Richards, than Nanker Phelge). Now of course that all changed. The Stones started losing me after their third album, while the Beatles grew & thrived. What the Beatles could do that others could not, is sing those wonderful harmonies. Rubber Soul was a gigantic turning point, and the rest as they say, is history.
  11. Having two Gibsons from 1966 (well, one’s a ‘66 Epi FT-45n), I made a copy of the ‘66 catalog from an original, owned by a local store owner. Very cool to have one show up at a garage sale!
  12. bobouz

    NGD

    Love it! Maple & short scale = good stuff. Congrats & Enjoy!
  13. I’ve purchased quite a few new Gibsons (acoustic & electric). The one time I needed to use the warranty (five years after purchase), it was determined that the guitar would need to be replaced, and I was given a choice of any equivalent model in current production. You may be facing a similar scenario, but I would ask if Nashville CS can connect you to someone in Bozeman who might be able to hand pick a guitar for you, send you photos, and discuss build/spec specifics. Your return & refund option with GC is effectively gone. Continue working with Gibson, and hopefully you’ll end up with a keeper. As for Covid, it remains a valid factor in all of this, as everyone has been hammered by staff shortages & turnover problems, which can lead to the ball being dropped over & over again. Best bet, imho, is to find one good contact person in Bozeman if Gibson’s structure will allow you to deal directly with them - I know people have in the past, but these are very unusual times & many things are not as they were. Best of luck to you in getting it sorted out.
  14. If you’re interested in the B-25, remember that the Epiphone Cortez (FT-45) from the ‘60s is the exact same guitar, but with a different headstock & pickguard. Also, the B-25’s plastic bridge in conjunction with the adjustable saddle can deliver a wonderful sound with slightly metallic overtones, as string vibrations are transferred to the body via the saddle’s metal hardware. But on the LG-1, string vibrations must travel directly through the plastic bridge - not good!
  15. No, it’s not a real B-25, because it’s an LG-1, and that’s a whole different ballgame. The biggest difference will be this guitar’s ladder-bracing vs X-bracing on the B-25. Assuming the bridge is original (and it looks like it is), being non-adjustable makes it an LG-1, as does the single layer of binding on the top. Can’t clearly see it from the photo, but I’m betting there’s no vertical center-seam back brace, which is another hallmark of the LG-1. Note also that this guitar has a crack at the fingerboard-soundhole junction on the pickguard side.
  16. As confirmed by the fingerboard on my 2011 ES-335 w/P90s, Gibson still had a stock of ebony at that time. But 2012 is when they began scrambling for rosewood & ebony substitutes, as they were indeed very low on rosewood & ebony all but disappeared. Along with laminated rosewood fingerboards, there were some acoustics made with laminated rosewood bridges. And then of course they also used baked maple as mentioned above, which I have on a 2012 LP Special & really like - it's a first rate alternative. This era didn't last too long, as even during the latter part of 2012, solid rosewood fingerboards & bridges were returning to many models (again, confirmed by my 2012 J-185). But your 2013 LPJ would make it appear that Gibson extended the practice for a longer period of time on some of their lower priced models.
  17. Let's see, I was fourteen in 1965. Bought the first three Rolling Stones albums & just about wore them out, discovering some of the great American blues masters thanks to this British band & others. But thereafter, the Stones were mostly off my radar. That said, I could happily be listening to "2120 S Michigan Ave" at any given moment, with Watts decisively kicking the whole thing off.
  18. I’m guessing it was made in Nashville. The label says “Gibson USA”, which for many years has stood for production from the Nashville facility, while Memphis production always stated “Gibson Memphis” on the label, and I’d suspect that remained consistent throughout Memphis’ output. There is also the possibility that it began life in Memphis, but was completed in Nashville during the transition period. And regarding value, a black satin finish should typically be at the lower end of a model’s finish hierarchy. Gloss finishes will generally go for more, and gloss figured grain will bump the price up again. To my mind, $2600 seems very high. Edit: In checking Reverb just now, I quickly found a new gloss red 339 going for $2299. Of course, maybe my vison of reasonable pricing on this model is immediately skewed by the fact that I paid $1529 for my new gloss cherry red CS labeled 339 back in 2009!
  19. As ZWF touches on, conventional wisdom has long been that the supposed ideal is tight grain in the center, getting wider as it moves towards the outer edges of the guitar. In practical terms, I’ve had just the opposite occur & everything in between on some fine sounding guitars. It all comes down to the individual piece. But visually, I like wider grain a lot!
  20. That looks like a good one Dave. I owned a ‘70s Dove long ago, and it came stock with this bridge (in ebony, iirc). It’s essentially the same footprint as the ‘70s J-200 and Heritage Custom bridge. Clearly, the footprint is not that of the more common & traditional Dove bridge as seen in current production. Edit note: I should say the outline shape is the same, but edge surfaces have been rounded & softened considerably.
  21. The 15” CJ-165 will certainly never be able to match a 17” jumbo body for bass rumble, but I find my maple-bodied example to be a very satisfying & super-comfy instrument for fingerpicking. Although I have both Gibson & Guild versions of 17” & 16” maple-jumbo bodies, I always look forward to playing the little 165. Can’t ask for more than that!
  22. Hey Cougar, I can share a little about the CJ-165 (later to become the J-165). I have a 2007 maple cutaway CJ-165ec, with electronics mounted in the soundhole (later versions were mounted on the outside upper bout). Probably most important, is that only the rosewood versions (cutaway & non-cutaway) have an ebony fretboard & bridge. The maple versions utilize rosewood. Be aware that the ebony bridges sometimes had problems with the nitro finish lifting slightly around the upper edge, but they remain structurally sound. The non-cutaway CJ-165 was first released in 2006, with the cutaway version being introduced in 2007. I believe the name change to J-165 occurred in 2010, and afaik, it remained in the lineup through the following year. I don’t post pics on this forum, but will post a few of my sunburst-cutaway over on LTG in the “other guitars” section, with the title: For Cougar, CJ-165. It might trigger a few questions, which I’d be happy to answer!
  23. Still enjoy those duets with Gram Parsons. That’s about as far as I ever went with Emmylou on records, although I did see her perform at the Opry in the mid-2000s. Always good to know she’s out there.
  24. JC, you beat me to it. In this day & age, generalizations re Martin’s perfection are as much of an internet legend as generalizations re Gibson’s flaws. Would you be okay with the binding or bridge of your guitar popping loose, or needing a neck reset within the first few years of ownership? If not, then it would probably be wise to purchase something other than a recent Martin. Do they still make some fine guitars? Of course, as does Gibson. As for finish cracks on the wings or elsewhere, remember that environmental changes during shipping, or even just within your home, can be the culprit with nitro finishes (which are not all created equal in formulation). The lines in the headstock which you at first did not notice, may have originated as the guitar adjusted to the confines of your home. That’s not to point blame - it just sometimes happens. Oh & btw, my 1922 Gibson mandolin has visible wing lines while remaining structurally perfect - and it’ll be turning 100 next year! Finally, I can think of only one guitar I’ve ever purchased new (including Martin’s) that did not need to have the nut reworked by me for a proper setup, and that was my 2015 Gibson J-50..... it’s the rare exception rather than the norm. So am I saying you should keep the guitar? Absolutely not. If you paid full new price & you’re not happy, by all means return it. Hopefully you’ll get lucky enough to find one that retains the tone you’re enjoying while also aesthetically checking all the boxes.
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