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Congrats on the lefty 99 J-100 Xtra, I own a 94 with Mahogany B&S, and it is my Favourite acoustic. Steve.

I have found the same as you when I was trying out various saddles on my 62 Epiphone Texan. However I found that I preferred the Bone saddle over the Rosewood one, and have left that guitar as such. I do however also have a McCartney reissue Texan (Terada, Japan) to which I did the same, and found the tone with the bone saddle more raspy than zingy, but by comparison the Rosewood one was dull sounding. The answer for me was to experiment with strings, and have found Martin 80/20 Bronze 12.5-55(Med-light) seem to have cured the raspy element(making it more sprangy for want of a better word), and balanced the tone out overall. The 62 Texan though seems to sound best with Gibson Masterbilt 12`s. So perhaps it may be to your advantage to try out some different strings, with whichever type of saddle you prefer. Steve.

The one you are looking at in the ebay link Flatbaroque, has "Bubinga" back and sides, not Maple! As for the bridge, I don`t see a crack, it looks fine to me. I own a 1994 J-100 Xtra with Mahogany back and sides, which is a fabulous guitar, warm and punchy with that great Gibson woody tone. A year ago I tried out a "Bubinga" version, and that was everything my guitar was, plus a bit more. It had a bit more depth, warmth, and a little more zing to the trebles that mine didn`t have, if I had had the funds at the time, that would have been coming home. I am not a great lover of Maple backed guitars in general, but all the J-100 Xtras I have tried have been excellent, including the Maple, but particularly the Mahogany and Bubinga versions. They are built with the same bracing as the J-200, they are the same size as well, the only difference is the lack of bling, and lets face it wood has a much better tone than MOP or pearloid! The J-100 Model is a very underrated guitar in my opinion! Steve.

I own a 94 J-100 Xtra which has Mahogany B&S, and which is my go to guitar, with a lovely big zingy tone. However a couple of months ago I had the chance to try out a 2006 SJ-100 with the Bubinga B&S sides, and that guitar was absolutely awesome, it had everything my guitar has and more! After thinking about the guitar for some days I went back to the shop (Frailers, Runcorn) with the intention of buying it, but alas it had gone. Oh well such is life. One thing to note is how much these guitars vary, my friend has a 93 with the same specs as mine, and it sounds completely different! If your SJ-100 is anything like that one I tried, you are very lucky indeed. Steve.

Thanks for that John, just the kind of info I need. My friend now has some photo`s, so I will see if we can get them up on here. Steve.

My friend has been offered a 1930`s Epiphone Masterbilt Apollo archtop guitar in a trade, which the owner claims is an export model, and as I know a little bit about Epiphones he asked me if I knew anything. Well it`s a guitar I haven`t heard of before, and having gone through all my resource material I am still none the wiser, so I thought I`d open it out to knowledgeable forum members. May get some photo`s over the next day or so, which may help. Steve. P.S. There was a U.S. made Epiphone Apollo model in the the early 90`s, but this was an electric guitar styled on the flying V but with a bolt-on neck.

Very nice I must say. But I think my 62 Levin LM-26 is up there with it! Steve.