Lars68

Congratulations on a wonderful guitar! Post some sound clips when you can, and please hang around the forum. It's a friendly place. Lars

Congratulations on receiving what looks to be a wartime Gibson Banner J-45 with a mahohany top. Apart from the missing bridge, the pictures show no obvious damage. When looking the guitar over, do you see any cracks or breaks anywhere? Any loose braces inside rattling if you lightly tap the to and back? Do the tuners turn? The tailpiece is not original. My guess is your grandpa put it on when the bridge started coming unglued. Do you have the original bridge? Have you checked to see if there is an FON (Factory Order Number)? Some Banners have them, some don't. It's the closest Gibs

I have a Hummingbird from 2016 with that color burst. Did Gibson really make Honey colored burst as late as 2020? The guitar looks legit, but I'm not so sure about the year… Lars

Those two videos were great! Lars

I like the idea of personalizing guitars. I put a pinup girl, sporting a cowboy hat holding an acoustic on the back of my tele. Hower, I think this particular decal looks a little too small on the guitar. It does not follow the edge of the lower bout. Lars

The ”Banner” guitars did not have serial numbers in the traditional sense. They had FONs, Factory Order Numbers. You can learn more here: http://www.bannergibsons.com/registry.html It looks like a wonderful and potentially quite valuable guitar. Congratulations! Lars

Good to hear from you, Buc! Hope all is well. Lars

I don't do covers very much. Seems like I'm always trying to work on improving something of my own, but when I do play covers, here are a few I like: I'll be Here in the Morning - Townes van Zandt Tomorrow is a Long Time - Bob Dylan The Hand that Rocks the Cradle - The Smiths I Still Miss Someone - Johnny Cash Friday I'm in Love - The Cure Lars

I have yet to play a baked guitar of any kind. If they all look like the Hummingbird above, I think the price increase could be worth it based on appearance alone. It looks amazing!! However, from all the pictures I've seen online, the Hummingbird above is not a good representative of the “baked look”. I find all too many of them to be too dark and with too pronounced grain lines for my liking. Many, but not all, of them do not look normal. So, if I'm thinking of buying a new guitar and can't play it in advance, I would care more about the effects on looks that torrefication might have,

The bridge is thicker on the bass side to support the higher string tension of the lowest strings. Lars

I just checked and my Gibsons have nitro on the side of the nuts. It’s especially visible on the guitars with tinted nitro, giving the sides a slightly darker color than the top of the nut. So the guitars must be sprayed with the nut in place, but with the fingerboard and top of the nut masked off. Makes sense. In your case, I guess either it’s a tiny chip or a less than perfect masking job. I would score along the glue edges and scrape it all off, then polish lightly. Another alternative is to brush on some superglue to cover the full side of the nut. It will blend with the nitro and pre

I see that as nitro (perhaps tinted), partially covering the side of the nut. I would try cutting with a razorblade along the edges of the nut, and then scraping the nitro off the nut. A light polish after that and I think you will be fine! Lars

Hi and welcome to the forum! I'm afraid I can't help you much with a comparison of the the two guitars as to their merits as purely musical instruments. However, putting that aside, an older instrument brings with it intangibles that might or might not be important to you. As an example, I have an old J-45 built secretly by Gibson in 1942 by a female workers who had to step in when the men went to fight in WWll. Gibson didn't want to acknowledge the fact that their products were produced by women, in a time when they should have been producing only for the war effort. So they built guitar

Oklahoma's got talent!

David, I just listened a couple of times and I now remember having heard this before. You must have posted a version of this song earlier. You might have changed the lyrics or the melody some, but I remember the storyline. Either way, I really like how it flows and how you tell the story. Very engaging, and I like how you decided not to go the “easy” route with a “Bonnie & Clyde” song. Didn't we talk about the recent Netflix movie with Kevin Costner about Bonnie and Clyde last time you posted this song? I think we did, but if not, and you haven't seen it, it's great! Lars