Grog

I've had a Mark 72 for just shy of 30 years. I'm more of an electric guy, but one strum on this thing and I had to have it. The tone & bass is phenomenal & the neck plays like butter. I ended up acquiring an original store display some years later & bought a repaired Mark 35 just to have another guitar to hang on it, (it was cheap). The Mark 35 in my opinion doesn't compare to the 72 in tone. A much thinner tinier tone. Still an ok acoustic.

This is what I found when I was thinking about buying my Firebird... http://www.steinberger.com/media/StnbrgrGrlsTnrInstruc.pdf

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=S_gEXeyZBoKIsQWt0KZw&q=instructions+for+changing+strings+with+steinberger+tuners&oq=instructions+for+changing+strings+with+steinberger+tuners&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i299l3.2538.39083..40397...2.0..0.383.8221.6j49j1j3......0....1..gws-wiz.....6..35i39j0i131j0j0i10j0i22i30j33i22i29i30j33i10.Fs3Kirz6D04#kpvalbx=1

They do have a center block, but it is less substantial than an ES-335. Also, it is Mahogany VS Maple in the ES-335

Mahogany can vary in weight by quite a bit. I have read that it can be due to mineral content in the wood along with other variables.

The "DECADE" feature is very hard to hear under most conditions. Using the proper chord with a transformer as close as possible to the amp seems to work best. Dave Gould has explained it better on earlier posts in this thread.

I have them on my 2015 ES Les Paul. I think they sound great!

Hey Dave, I just came back from the Songbirds Guitar Museum in Chattanooga TN. I noticed guitar that you had posted a while back was there. Tony Mottola's Low Impedance Crest was acquired by them and on display in their vault.

All of the pickups seem to sound a bit different. The '67 has the smoothest ballsy sound of the lot. The rest are a bit raspy...…. The '59 was one of the last of the huge single coils that was originally on the first violin bass (EB), then they switched to the humbucker early in '59.

I went into a small local music store 45 years ago to check out a Rickenbacker bass. The sales guy pulled out his personal bass from behind the counter. He was selling it to get money to get his stolen motorcycle back. To this day, I've never tried out a Rick. It was a 1967 EB-2C (Center of the photo, the left is a 1968 EB-2DC. The right is a 1959 EB-2 with banjo tuners & single coil pickup.) I have played Gibson Basses ever since.

Here is the full set. I had to do the basses separately due to lack of space.

Speaking of SG, anyone who only got a gig bag with theirs and want's a HSC, an SG case fits about as well as anything will...………

Not much action here lately. I just traded my first 1973 L-5S for one in better shape. The biggest improvement is the condition of the gold plated parts. Most of these have seen the gold badly wore off in 45 plus years of use.

I had one for a number of years. I was ok with everything about it except for it seemed more prone to noise. Even though it had a noise canceling coil in the back, it was one of the noisiest guitars I ever had. I ended up trading it towards a Les Paul. I have a SG Special with P-90s & my Blueshawk was much noisier.

Enjoy your Beast! They are a unique guitar...………...

Last week my wife & I hit both Les Paul exhibits, one that just recently re-opened in Lester's hometown of Waukesha Wisconsin, the other about a half hour away at the Discovery Zone in Milwaukee. I had visited the one in Milwaukee over ten years ago, this location was one of the two locations that was set up for a public reviewal before Les Paul's funeral. The exhibit in the Waukesha County Museum has been under construction for about three years, when I found out that it re-opened, we decided to check it out. Unfortunately, no photos were aloud. They had two Low Impedance Gibsons in the museum & the story of his life. He is buried with his mother just a few blocks away. Afterwards, we headed off to Milwaukee to re-visit The Les Paul display at the Discovery Zone. As far as guitars go, they had a much better display & they allowed photos. I'd like to know more about that Les Paul Recording with the trapezoidal pickups!

Nice! Congrats! Maybe I just missed it, but that's the first guitar with "Witch Hat" knobs I've seen lately...…………….

I picked my bass up from CME at a 15% discount around September. Right after I bought mine, which I thought was deeply discounted, they went down another $750. I'm still quite happy with it. Many of the guitars sold by venders at full price are still unsold.

I bought a 2016 ES Les Paul Bass from CME last September or so with MHS pickups designed just for that bass. I've been impressed with that bass & it's pickups from the start. I've had many Gibsons through the years & it quickly became one of my favorites. About a month ago, I picked up a used 2015 ES Les Paul guitar, another great instrument! The MHS pickups sound great! I love the way the neck pickup growls at different amp settings. I hope they re establish the Memphis facility & produce these guitars again. It seems that the last ones were produced in 2016.

Great collection!

The big can is a choke, it's in all of the EB-3's & the EB-2s. One of the positions on the varitone switch would kick it in, making the sound rather thin. On the EB-2 the effect is called a baritone switch.

Without pictures it's a bit tough to be certain. My guess would be a 1961-62 EB-3. The six digit serial numbers started in 1963, yours is a five digit. 1961 is the first year the EB-3 was sold. only the earliest had the black Bakelite pickup cover. You can check the pot code to fine tune it a little closer. 1376122 = 137-CTS, 61-1961 & 22-22nd week of the year. It's possible that the pots could be Centralab. The first three digits would be 134. It should have 7 digits, but if it only has 6, 4th digit would represent the year (1=61) and the last 2 would be the week it was manufactured. Gibson guitar pots are usually pretty close to the manufacturing date. Fender was known to buy up large quantities, so the pots could be a couple years older than the guitar. You likely have one of the very earliest EB-3's! Congrats!

If you try too many of them, you'll end up with a herd............ It's an addiction that you can usually make a little (or a lot) of money on when you sell them down the road.

I know I've posted this photo in the past. This series of amps should have been the last amps made by Gibson in Kalamazoo. I started collecting the smallest of this series amp a number of years ago. These were considered by most to be clean amps, more suitable for jazz & clean playing. The Skylarks do break up nicely when cranked all the way up. Other than one solid state amp that Gibson had in the Crestliner Series, the GSS amps were some of the earliest solid state amps at 50 & 100 watts.

According to a book I bought, "Gibson Amplifiers 1933-2008, 75 Years of Gold Tone" by Wallace Marx Jr., Gibson ceased production of amps in Kalamazoo in 1968. Seth Lover was deeply involved in amp design & left the company to work at Fender in 1967. Gibson, (CMI) had holdings in Standel & had amps produced in their factory for a number of years after that.