j45nick

Sheesh! That's just a 42, not a 45. No abalone on the back. Not enough bling for me. However, there are original 1930s 000-45s out there, if you can find them. And they aren't cluttered up with EC's signature on the fretboard. Might as well keep my 000-28 EC, and spend the money on something else.

Heh, heh, heh !

That looks like the guitar. It's really hard to say whether it is old or new. I tried blowing the photo up to see if I could read the bottom of the label, but the photo resolution isn't good enough for that.

Sal, Jackson Browne songs are perfect for your voice and playing style. I'm working on "Call it a Loan" right now. I'm not used to playing in alternate tunings, so I literally have to learn it note by note.

Could be either one. People like her seem to be able to find extraordinary vintage pieces, but this one could be modern. Both the girl and guitar are great-looking 'birds.

You should be able to send the number to Gibson, and they will come back and give you those particulars. Contact customer service, explain the issue, and they will tell you. Online daters are always subject to errors.

Who cares? If she propositioned me like that, I might just have to say "yes." Whatever she asked.

A little Hummingbird and some Crow for Thanksgiving dinner. With dish of Petty on the side. You Don't Know

I don't know the absolute date, but it depends in part on whether you are talking about standard ES models or others such as the Historics. Even well after the bulk of ES production moved to Memphis, the Nashville Custom, Art, and Historic Shop (as I believe it was then known) built certain ES models. My '59 Historic ES 335 was built in the Nashville shop in 2009. These guitars have totally different serial number formats compared to standard ES models. The serial number format is A-99xx x, with A meaning it is a 335, first 9 meaning a 1959 model, second 9 meaning 2009, and the last three digits being the rank in the number of Historics built that year. The label itself is different as well. It is the standard orange oval label, but it says "Nashville, Tennessee USA" on it. A guitar made in the Memphis shop should say "Memphis, Tennessee USA " on the label. The standard Gibson serial number format tells you when the guitar was built, but not where. What the label says should be definitive, however.

That is a superb-sounding guitar, with a price to match. Kauri is a really interesting wood which is an endangered species with strict harvesting rules. A lot of the timber being used now is salvaged from demolished old buildings, sort of like high-grade longleaf yellow pine in the US. It was highly sought after for everything from shipbuilding to furniture to general construction. Like a lot of timber resources throughout the world, when its harvesting was uncontrolled the kauri forests were logged almost to the point of extinction. I worked in New Zealand for nine months in 2000, and six months in 2003. We drove out to the groves on the Coromandel to visit the ancient kauri trees, much as you would go to the Sequoia groves in northern California. I have a friend in NZ with a large 100-year-old sailboat built entirely of kauri. Virtually every piece of wood in it is still in near-perfect condition more than a century after it was cut, and the boat has been in constant use for that entire time. Truly a magnificent wood.

ksdaddy's guess--leftover screw-on guards modified for dots--seems plausible. Those guards were thick, so it might well be possible to countersink enough for a glued-in dot, particularly if the screws were left out. The screws themselves were tiny. Remember, they didn't even go all the way through the top. I originally had one of these screwed-on guards on the 1968 top (Gibson re-top) on my "original" 1950 J-45. The screws were about the same gauge as truss rod cover screws, but with flat heads. Maybe #2 or #3 gauge, no more than 1/4" long I think they were black, but can't remember with certainty. When I took the guard off to strip the cherryburst top, I remember thinking "these screws can't be all that's holding this thing on." But they were. The guards were thick enough to be semi-rigid.

To be clear, are we talking about the square dread years for the J-45 and J-50? Were any slope-J models (other than the AJ) ever built with a long scale? (I'm not sure about the first slope-Js back in the 1930s other than the AJ.)

The screwed-on pickguards were typical of 1968 or so for Gibson flat tops in general. The belly-down bridge came in about that same time, and some apparently had nickel tuner buttons rather than plastic keystone tuner buttons. The sources I have say that the rectangular board inlays came in about 1971, so that further complicates things. If the guitar wasn't new when you got it, you would have to say it was only a few years old, probably five at the most, and more likely 2-3. I don't suppose you have a serial number or other details, which might be more definitive? A Hummingbird was a Hummingbird in those days, with the only variants being the natural top versus the cherryburst top, as far as I know.

Hah! My wife wouldn't even let ME ride in her Ferrari, if she had it. She's a bit of a sports car nut, Having had an MG TC, Healy Sprite and 3000, and 3.8 Jag. She's eyeballing the new Corvette. She occasionally lowered herself to ride in the 911. I even got her on the back of my motorbikes a few times, but that was really slumming it. Ferrari? Chance in a million.

BK, I don't think I would let that dog into my BMW, if I had one. I certainly didn't let my dachshund into my Porsche, even though she was German. Couldn't trust her. Dogs can be vengeful creatures.

The mahogany Gibson slope-J is my favorite guitar in the world, as you might guess from my screen name. I have three of them: a Bozeman-built 1943 SJ re-issue from 2006, and two 1950 J-45s built within a couple of months of each other 70 years ago. I've owned one of the J-45s since 1966. I bought the other from the original owner last year. He bought it new when he was 14, saving his odd-job money for the purchase. I may be in a bit of a rut with my guitar choices, but it's a good rut to be in. If I could only have one guitar, it would be....(wait for it).....a Gibson J-45. You can't go wrong.

Film makes you concentrate. Every frame counts. That's a good thing. My favorite combination was the M4 with a 35mm f2 Summicron. The closer you get to your subject, the better. Perfect for your passion, if you can do it without making people uncomfortable. Do your cropping in the darkroom. Now, I mostly just use my iphone 11 pro, which has a decent camera for what it is. Mostly I'm just documenting things, and it's pretty good for that. It's nice to have three lenses in one, and it takes surprisingly good photos for a phone.

They're just reloading ammunition and putting away 400 rolls of toilet paper for the coming apocalypse. Maybe they'll forget which goes where.

High humidity is a tone-killer. Right now in Florida, temperature is just low enough the the central AC runs only periodically--probably 10-20% of the time. Temperature in my office/music room is 75F/24C. Humidity is 43%. Outside humidity is about 85% right now. Inside conditions are near-perfect as far as the wood guitars are concerned. The carbon fiber guitar couldn't care less.

Reminds me of a guy in my office who was fiddling with a thing he called email via the internet (via compuserve) in the late 1980s. My thought was "what a waste of time".

When I was a photographer, I had Leicas starting back in high school, with my first one being a IIIa, last one being an M4, which I sold a number of years ago. You could get a motor drive for that one as well. I still have a couple of film cameras sitting around, but haven't used them in a number of years. I loved rangefinder cameras. Digital spoils you. You don't mind taking 10 pictures when one will do. I use to have the think about the cost of film and processing, which is a foreign language to most people these days. Not complaining: digital is pretty cool, and you don't end up with file drawers of negatives and transparencies. Something is lost as well, however.

Nothing about that guitar says "Gibson" except the name on the headstock. Everything else I see in the one overall photo says it is not a Gibson.

That really is the Holy Grail of guitars. Whether you would want to own it or not is another issue.

The biggest danger for me changing strings has always been string ends poking holes in my fingers. You'd think after 50+ years I would have learned how to do it.

BK, The P-51 is not a jet. It is driven by a 27-litre V-12 liquid cooled reciprocating petrol engine, producing on average around 1500 hp. Add some bone pins and a set of medium PBs, and she's probably a real flyer. And you're right, it is an expensive hobby compared to guitars. Any guitars. It will also kill you. You can play your guitars after a half bottle of booze. You don't want to fly in that condition, however. You can also sail drunk, but I don't recommend it. Guitars are safer in every way, even if they can be an expensive habit. Now, back to our regular programming. I think I'll listen to a J-45 rather than the news.