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A beautiful guitar! Congratulations and thanks for sharing it with us. I know your guitar well, having played it a number of times. If I'd had room for another guitar, it would be in my home, not yours! 🙂 Play it in good health.

I'm Gibson's Richlite inspection specialist! No synthetic fingerboard leaves the Bozeman facility unless it has the JT stamp of approval. 🙂

Perfectly expressed, as always, Lars.

Ooh. Please keep us posted. What Martin model? I think that Martin is making wonderful guitars these days.

You're welcome. 🙂 Those Banner LG-1s are gems, aren't they? One of the rarest Gibsons ever (only 139 ever shipped) and still affordable. Please keep us posted on the 1952 J-45!

Great stuff, as always, Tom! Thanks for sharing with us.

I’m the luddite here. I love vintage guitars as guitars, but also as investment possibilities. My play in the market has been modest, and very focused. About two years ago, I sold about a dozen guitars, all vintage, mostly Gibsons. The sold guitars included the full L series: L-00, L-0, L-1, L-2, and L-C. My collection had swelled to about 2 dozen guitars. My goal was always to acquire instruments that I would love to play, but which also would likely appreciate. My plan was to collect, play, and share guitars, until the point when I could sell a number of them, and from the profit (less capital gains taxes), cover the purchase price of whatever guitars remained. It worked. I ended up with about a dozen free guitars. (OK, there were opportunity costs for which to account, but the opportunities were limited because at the time, vintage guitars were a good investment). It was fun sending guitars on to their new caretakers. So, again, I’ve got about a dozen guitars left. I have difficulty keeping count because I loan guitars for long periods to others. Since December, Jennifer Nettles (Sugarland) and Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls) have had a couple of my Banner flattops to use in a project on which we three are workings. OK, to paraphrase Tom, off to do some picking.

Lovely. Thank you for sharing this with us. Here's my own Father's Day performance, and what I contend is the world's ugliest but best sounding Nick Lucas. 1929, first year for the big body version.

A few vintage J-200s I have played have had good volume, but most post 1955 versions I've played live up to their reputations as "whispering giants."

Lovely, Lars. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Thanks, Tom, for sharing this and for all you and your wife have given to the acoustic music community. We in this community will forever be in debt to you. I love that the tune played on most of the demos is "Big Sciota," a tune from the stellar album, "Skip, Hop, and Wobble," in which Russ Barenberg plays all of the guitar parts on a laminated maple back and sides Banner J-45. It's one of the best albums of acoustic music ever released. If you don't have it, you all know what to do. Anyway ... I love, Tom, how you contextualize, with beautifully gentle suggestions, in your suggestions of which guitars serve the music in which circumstances. So often we of lesser knowledge and experience (and I put myself front and center among the musically naive) ask for the perfect guitar. You always educate us by asking, "What type of music and in what context." Thank you, again, for sharing your knowledge, experience, and instruments.

Thank you, Tom!

Yes, it's still with Jennifer Nettles. We're working on a project that I cannot disclose. I've still got my minty 1943/44 SJ, so all is OK. 🙂 Thanks for the offer, though. I miss my LG-1!

Yes! The Gals told me about this. I was again in the building in December with the last surviving Gal (she's now 96). She told me, "This is just like I remember it: freezing cold!"

This story has and continues to touch me. 225 Parsons Street really has changed my life. You referenced the truss rod. Just this morning, I received this email message: " I am the 2nd great grandson of Thaddeus Joseph McHugh; truss rod inventor, and man of many hats throughout his career at Gibson Guitar Company. " (Yes, I have followed up with this person). This sort of thing happens to me all the time.

Dave, I'm not sure. As best I know, no major pieces of equipment went to Bozeman. It's certainly possible that I'm wrong. As my now-grown kids say to this day, when in doubt, bet against dad. 🙂 I suspect that Bozeman got some molds and tools. I've spent time in at 225 Parsons with folks who know old equipment and they've identified saws, sanders, etc. from the 1920s thorough the 1980s. Certainly not much has been moved.

Thanks, folks! It was great fun hanging in the factory to record this. I'll keep folks posted on the renovation project.

Great find! BTW, a little while back, I got copies of the original specification sheets for all of the Banner models. All were spec-ed with white bridge and end pins (this and other discoveries will appear in a second edition ... sometime). I'll second Nick's recommendation for Willi's and Rudie's Antique Acoustics replacement buttons and tuner replicas.

OK, first a caveat: the narration is in French. Last November, the producers of the French program on Arte TV, Invitation au Voyage, flew me to my beloved Kalamazoo to record a short (under 8 minutes) documentary about the Kalamazoo Gals and me. It was great fun and, imho, the resulting production is wonderful. Anyway, you'll get to look at the exterior and interior of 225 Parsons Street as it was in November 2019. The renovation project is supposedly ramping up next month. We'll see. You also get to see what Heritage Guitars, the company formed by the folks who stayed in Kalamazoo when Gibson moved to Nashville in 1984, are doing. Gibson left all its equipment and all of its original body molds in Kalamazoo. At some point, you'll see me walk past what looks like a giant wheel with bits of wood clamped to it. That is a 1908 clamping machine used to hold the halves of tops as the glue joint dried. Yep, a piece of equipment that was in the building during Orville Gibson’s days. Every piece of machinery, from 1908 through the mid-1980s is still at 225 Parsons St. Every machine used by the Gals during WWII. (Yes, a full-length documentary as well as a dramatic adaptation for movie theater release are in the works). So, pardon the bald guy. But I think this is pretty cool.

I'm pretty sure that someone addressed this topic in a book. 🙂

Thanks! Yes, and because of the meaning of the GS designation, my best guess, as I stated in Kalamazoo Gals, is that LG mean L series guitar with a G gut string body. BTW, for those interested and in Europe or the UK (or elsewhere and using a VPN), on April 27, France's arte TV posted this nice, but short documentary about the Gals and me. The Gals' sections begins around minute 30.

Here's mine, Tom, back at its birthplace a few months ago. It's one batch away from yours. (Yours is 7705H, right? Mine is 7706H). And, also in the old factory, with singer Jennifer Nettles, to whom I've loaned the guitar (I loaned the other guitar, a went-to-WWII SJ to Emily Saliers).

So, Gibson did an OK job on the 4 original Banners I sent, along with X-ray and CT-scan images of my guitars. As many know, I asked for neither money nor guitars. I only wanted the Kalamazoo Gals credited and a donation to a women’s’ history nonprofit. Neither happened and it took me nearly a year to get my guitars returned. The replicas were good guitars. For reasons I’ll never understand, I only got the opportunity to play them by buying them. They were not accurate replicas. When in Bozeman, when Gibson few me out, I watched a CNC machine carving necks. I observed, oh, you could program the machine to cut tapered headstocks. “Maybe,” was the reply I received. Of the replicas, the LG was the most accurate. Still, Gibson gave it the wrong model designation (LG-2 instead of LG-1), the wrong finish, and applied the headstock logo improperly. Such a wonderful and curious company.

A rosewood J-55?!? How cool! Congratulations, Tom. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Thank you. Challenging times. Take care, be well, and rave on.