j45nick

Most people here use a photo hosting service such as Imgur to work around the photo size limit. Someone here will probably chime in with guidance on how to do this.

We can't help you figure out what it is without pictures.

Me too!

I agree with Anne. It will be interesting to see what it looks like with the backing paper off.

Thanks for that, Anne. It just about broke my heart. Tom Waits may have written it, but Tony made it his. By the time he recorded this, his dysphonia had reached the point that it must have been incredibly difficult to sing. If folks haven't done so, they should go back and listen to his earlier recordings with J. D. Crowe. Tony had a stunning bluegrass voice back then.

Or, maybe when it was built, the didn't have any lefty bridges handy, so the modified a righty pulled out of the bin. (seriously, I don't know.) One interesting thing is that this SJ has a traditional Gibson belly-up bridge, like a modern standard SJ or J-45. My 1943 SJ re-issue, and the new 1942 Banner SJ, have belly down (Martin style) bridges, as does Tom Barnwell's FON 910 rosewood Banner SJ, which the new 1942 Banner SJ is modeled after. That bridge was pretty common on the SJ in the Banner era.

Good eye, Buc. I never would have picked up on that. I checked my righty SJ just to be sure. So, if the board inlays are reversed, is the top bracing also mirror-imaged in "true" lefty versions, such as your 'bird?

The string ramps in the bridges of both my Bozeman guitars appear to be the same size for all strings. It's not as critical as the slots in the nut, which determine string height. The saddle does that at the bridge.

It blends in pretty well. The thing is, the lefty pickguard is not the righty flipped over, so someone went to some effort to do a conversion, if that's the back story.

Just take a picture of the label and post it.

It is also a lefty, which is even harder to find,

I agree with you, but the description does talk about those issues. It says the guitar is in "overall good condition," but lists the wear and damage. I suspect European buyers don't have as much selection as we do over here, and may have to be less picky in their expectations.

It has a mix of features--the banner combined with the more modern block logo. The white label and rotomatic tuners suggest a standard SJ model rather than something more specialized. Unlike others, I suspect the banner is original to the guitar, and is just another Gibson quirk. I have seen that banner/block logo combination before. The Fellowship of Acoustics is a well-established and reputable company, so it is clearly authentic. That price would be a bit high in the US because of the condition, but since it is being sold in Europe, the price is probably right.

I would go with the lighter one on the natural top. But that's just me.

That raises the question of what the designer of that particular Gibson logo was looking at or thinking of when he/she designed it. I'll just leave that one sitting out there as food for thought...

They have done a few modern reissue guitars with those pickguards. They are not hard to reproduce.

To follow up, that logo was only used on pickguards for a one- or two-year period around 1968. Not sure what the original thinking was that led to this design.

Tony Rice was a staggering talent. When he and Norman Blake played together, you had the best of the best of flatpickers in one place, as in this video: Blake and Rice together Clarence White's much-modified herringbone D-28 in Tony Rice's hands was a match made in heaven.

ZW really sent me down a rabbit hole on this one. I found a Chinese company on alibaba that manufactures celluloid products, including sheets. This from their website caught my eye: "Our company has the unique state-of-the-art wet block technology and equipment imported from Italy, specializing in the production of fancy cellulose acetate plates and celluloid sheets, with an annual production capacity of more than 1,000 tons. Jiujiang Celluloid Industrial Co., Ltd is one of the biggest Celluloid and Cellulose acetate sheets manufacturer in China," Cellulose acetate material is still used for a number of things, including high-end writing instruments and eyeglass frames. The needs of the guitar manufacturing industry are probably well down on the list.

I believe it has to be treated as hazardous cargo, which complicates shipping. I did buy a replacement celluloid finger rest for my 1947 L-7 maybe eight years ago. It just came through the mail from a US company. Check out this link (no firestripe, however): celluloid This is described as genuine Incudo cellulose nitrate. I think this is a UK company, but they advertise prices in USD and say they ship worldwide. It may be that sheet material is available because of its relatively low mass, but block material is more problematic. N Not sure if historically Gibson/Martin sliced their own blocks of material, or bought sheets. Cutting very thin sheets from thicker blocks of material must be a tricky process for several reasons, including the heat generated by the cutting process.

I don't know what the material is that Gibson uses for these, but if the pattern is silkscreened or photoprinted, at least the pattern is not as pixilated as the material Martin is using. You can still get celluloid, but I have not been able to find it anywhere in a firestripe pattern. The luthier who made a new pickguard for my re-topped 1950 J-45 had some really nice NOS stuff that closely matched the original pickguard on my other 1950 J-45, that's not a firestripe pattern. Stewmac sells tortoloid material in a firestripe pattern that looks like it might be a reasonable alternative. It is a cast resin product, so there is no printed pattern. I have not seen it in person--only on the website. Dan has a nice little video about using it on stewmac.com. There is nothing like the real thing, however.

It depends, but don't ask on what. Sometimes there is a clue in the way the model is described on the label.

It is very difficult to do this job properly without removing the pickguard and bridge. At the very least, the pickguard should come off. I did a similar job many years ago, when I stripped the cherryburst off the top of my original 1950 J-45 after Gibson re-topped it and had sprayed a cherryburst on the new top, rather than the traditional sunburst. In that case, I did a careful chemical strip of most of the top, properly masking everything. I removed the pickguard but left the bridge on. I block-sanded the top down, probably starting with about 150 or 180 grit, moving to 220, finishing with 320 . But that top was still pristine when I did this job--no deep scratches to deal with. The hard part was working around the bridge, but it can be done. Small custom sanding blocks can be made using things like tongue depressors and paint stirring sticks. You can use spray contact cement to put whatever grit paper you want on your stick, then cut the end to shape to work around curves. Tongue depressors or craft sticks are thin enough that you can bend them easily to keep the sandpaper parallel to the surface as you work. If you are comfortable with fine furniture techniques, you can use ultra-sharp cabinet scrapers to work flush to the edges of the bridge. If you aren't comfortable with a cabinet scraper, you can do just as well with single-edge razor blades used as scrapers. If it is a '51, it should have a rectangular bridge, which is fairly easy to work around, although you have to be really careful not to carve grooves sanding parallel the the ends of the bridge wings. You can tell how it is going to look when finished by wiping the top with a rag dampened with mineral spirits. This will show how any remaining scratches will look under the lacquer finish. Spruce is pretty much the softest wood I have ever worked with. Fortunately, I had a lot of practice working with it when I was young, since the wooden sailing yachts I rebuilt had Sitka spruce spars. I've also restored massive amounts of teak and mahogany joinerwork using pretty much these same techniques. It can be done, but requires a lot of patience. You may not get 100% of the scratches out. If some are there that still have old finish in them, you can probably remove most of that with paint remover applied with a cotton swab, then removed with clean swabs. Wipe down with mineral spirits after. Do not try to hand sand out local scratches. You will put divots into the wood. Back then, there were no spray cans of nitro lacquer. I brushed on semi-gloss or satin Deft clear wood finish, which is a nitrocellulose brushing lacquer. Today, I would buy spray cans of nitro lacquer from Stewmac to do the same job. I would use either satin or semi-gloss clear , depending on the effect you are after. Those less-glossy finishes are more forgiving to apply, and show fewer flaws than a high-gloss finish. This is also a 70-year-old guitar, so it doesn't need to look like it was born yesterday. It would be much easier to turn this into an L-3 than to try to replicate a good sunburst. Those require a lot of practice. Clear lacquer is fairly easy to work with. How thin can you go on the top? Pretty thin. it is not unusual to see a top thickness of .10", sometimes even slightly less. Having said that, you want to sand off as little as required to remove as many of the scratches as possible.

What does the label say?

All those vintage firestripes look great to me. The modern ones, not so much. (I have two of the modern ones.)