j45nick

I know little about Gibson's tenor guitars, but this is really sweet. The serial number says 1931-1934. The bound fretboard details and fancy headstock inlays says it is a high-end guitar. It looks to be in very nice condition, so don't mess with it. Someone here will know exactly what it is.

This is a time to apply the theory of Occam's razor. Aside the crude oval around the serial number, everything else about the guitar says this is a is a 1966-1969 ES 335. The crude etched oval is not typical of any Gibson, so it is almost certainly something someone did sometime in the 50+ years since the guitar left the factory. Why would you go to the trouble to remove a 1970s serial number, stamp in a 1960s one, and then confuse the issue completely be etching a non-factory oval around it? The simplest answer is probably the correct one.

Back looks like it may have been stripped as well, as does the neck, so possibly a complete refinish. The back, sides, and neck in this period were normally stained very dark walnut, which is the stain used on the classic J-45s. J-50's, on the other hand, sometimes had the dark walnut stain, but more often had a pale filler stain, leaving the mahogany a little bleached-out looking. The bridge shape and proportions are correct for the belly-up bridge. Dimensionally, it should be just at or over 1" (25.4 mm) wide across the ends, and just about 6" (152 mm) along the straight back of the bridge. A careful examination may or may not tell you whether it is original, if it is a really well-done repro. Are you sure it is a J-45 rather than a J-50? Sometimes in this period, there is a faint in stamped "J-45" or "J-50" on the centerline back strip directly below the soundhole. It can be very faint, almost disappearing, so look closely. If it is a J-45, there is often dark stain overspray from spraying the sunburst top, visible on the transverse top brace just under the end of the fretboard, if you look inside the soundhole towards the neck. The stain usually has left a sort of "half moon" shadow on the brace. All in all, a very attractive guitar. And welcome aboard.

If it is a J-45, the top has been stripped and re-finished natural. 700's FON says 1947. Bridge may have been replaced, but the angle of the photo is wrong to evaluate whether it is the correct belly-up bridge or not. A straight-on view will be more definitive, but will not absolutely indicate whether it is original if it is properly done. The switch from rectangular to belly-up bridge may have been in late '47-early '48, but that FON is fairly early in 1947, so I would have expected a rectangular bridge. Since the top has been refinished, it could have had a new bridge at the same time. Another indicator would be whether it has fabric or wood side stays (vertical strips of either wood or fabric on the inside of the rims). The actual point in time when some of these characteristics changed is not carved in stone. That FON is reasonably definitive. Tuner buttons at least are probably replacements, as I've never seen them that white on a guitar of this vintage. Tuners could be either open back or closed back Klusons. If closed back, would probably be single-line Klusons with lube hole. A photo of the tuners would probably tell if they are original or not. I looks like a really nice guitar in any case. I have two J-45's from 1948-1950. The post-war J-45s through about 1952 can be really great guitars. The re-finish hurts the value significantly--is it just the top, or has the rest been done as well? It is usually easy to tell.

Tom, that was really wonderful! Your picking was really great there. Are you using fingerpicks as well as a thumbpick there? If so, are they plastic or metal? I have recently been revisiting a lot of those songs we used to sing in the early/mid 60s when some of us we were in college. They are still keepers.

Tom, do you think that hulking great bridgeplate in the J-55 is original? It seems completely out of scale compared to the ones in either the AJ or the rosewood SJ. That almost looks like a doubler on the tailblock of the J-55. Not sure why that would be there. There is also sort of a "popsicle stick" side stay to one side of the tailblock of the J-55(not dissimilar to the popsicle stick side stays on your FON 910 SJ), while I see the expected fabric side stays elsewhere. The J-55 may have had some repairs and reinforcement at some time in its 80-year life.

Mike Dawes may have the most flexible fretting hand I have ever seen. That was a pretty awesome performance by both of them.

Was he apprehended while protecting a cache of panzer paint?

That pickguard is neat, but I would get it off the guitar before its does damage. Photo-document it, make a tracing, measure the thickness, etc. You know as well as anyone the damage an out-gassing celluloid pickguard can do to everything it touches or is close to, from corroding metal to destroying finishes and damaging cases.

While I don't know the details of most of the Gibson classical models, this one looks authentic, down to the zero fret. My best guess is a C-1 from 1965 or 1968. The details of the rosette around the soundhole are typical of Gibson classicals, especially the C-1. The lack of a label does not disqualify it, since the glue on the labels sometimes fails, and they go astray. These are not high-value guitars, by the way. In really good condition, I've seen them advertised for sale in the $500 range, sometimes less, rarely more. Welcome to the Gibson acoustic forum.

We cant tell you much just from the serial number, A photo of the whole guitar would provide a lot more information. Unfortunately, that serial number was duplicated in at least two different eras, and without a photo, we can't tell you which it might fall in to. That serial number was used in 1964, but also in the mid-1970s. What does all the lettering and wording on the label say, from top to bottom and everything in between?

That's and interesting guitar, for sure. That one has a conventional Gibson belly-up adjustable bridge. The one Gibson put on my first 1950 J-45 when they re-topped it in July of 1968 was a belly-down (Martin style) version with a rosewood adj saddle. I think both bridge configurations were used at the same time, for some reason. It also came back with a screwed on thick tortoise batwing guard with a Gibson logo, but not the boob logo. And a cherryburst top, of course.

Hate to say it, but that has zero appeal to me. The only guitar I've ever played worth that kind of money--actually a whole lot more-- was one of the late 30s D-45s. That thing was pure magic. And it was a guitar that you could and would play without impacting on its value. Somehow I see that China Dragon guitar as a prop in a James Bond movie with a wealthy Chinese bad guy who uses it as an instrument of torture by playing an endless loop of "Freebird" and "Smoke on the Water" through a Marshall stack with your head tied to it.

Yes, probably a second. those were almost always cosmetic "flaws" which after 50 years are pretty meaningless.

BK, is that written on with ink, or etched in, or what?

The J200 strings were essentially the same as the Masterbuilt Premiums, with the addition of silk windings near the ball ends. I've used them on SJs and J-45s, and still have a few sets around. They are fine for any guitar that responds well to PB strings.

Nice ZW!! That is a wild tailpiece. The neck looks huge.

From at least sometime in 1965 to sometime around 1970 (or maybe later) most Gibson necks--acoustic and electric--had a nut width of around 1 9/16", or 39.7mm. I'm not sure exactly what the thinking was, but I suspect other brands of electrics in that same period had narrow necks as well, so it may have been meant to replicate the feel of an electric guitar, In that same period, Gibson went to low wide frets that were straight out of the electric neck playbook. These narrow-nut necks can feel cramped for first-position playing for many people, but the differences are less compared to wider-nut guitars the further up the neck you play. I still have one guitar with the narrow nut, and despite the fact that I love it dearly, I generally play one of my similar guitars with a slightly wider nut. There has been a lot of discussion in this forum over the years on this topic. Mandolin players think we're a bit crazy on this topic, given the neck width of the typical mandolin.

That is a three-piece mahogany neck with the larger headstock, so it is a later guitar. It also has double-ring Gibson Deluxe tuners, not Kluson Deluxe single rings, so it is later. That serial number, coupled with the "made in USA" stamp, is from between 1970 and 1975. The OP's guitar is almost certainly from between 1966 and 1969. The serial number stampings on the back of the headstock vary significantly over time. Sometimes, they appear to have been stamped after the guitar was finished, sometimes before finish is applied. There also appears to have been more than one number-stamping machine in use because of differences in number style and depth of embossing, just as there were differences in number style with the rotary ink stamps used earlier when numbers were stamped on neck blocks of acoustics, rather than embossed into the headstock. Remember that production at Gibson ramped up dramatically in the mid/late 1960's, so practices changed rapidly as well. I just checked photos of the serial number on the back of the headstock of the '68 ES 335-12 I sold a couple of years ago. It appears to have been stamped before finishing, as the numbers are darker than the surrounding headstock, similar to the inked-in embossed numbers seen in earlier guitars. Sometimes the numbers look darker because the filler stain used on the neck and body stays in the embossed numbers when it is wiped off, increasing the contrast compared to the surrounding wood. The guitar in the picture above appears to have used unstained (neutral) filler, which may be why the numbers are so light. If it were not for the odd oval ring around the serial number on the OP's guitar, I doubt that anyone would question its authenticity or age. Since that could have been done anytime during the 50+ years of the guitar's life, it does not bother me much. I've seen a lot of oddball stuff over my 55 years of owning Gibsons. This link contains some interesting photos of the various headstock stampings over the years, as well as a lot of other good information: vintage Gibson info

Nylon saddles weren't used for that long. I had a 100%-original '68 with regular metal saddles. The oval around the serial number is really crude, if you look at it closely. Not symmetrical at all. The serial number is pretty evenly stamped, and is a bit deeper than you often see.. But it looks stamped to me--as it should be--and is reasonably consistent with ones I've had from the same period. How well the serial number came out depended on how careful the machine operator was. The lacquer checking runs right through the serial number and the oval, so both of those are old. The oval around the serial number is a complete mystery. I've seen people engrave their social security number on the back of a headstock, and all other sorts of things as well, but never an oval to highlight a serial number. I guess the label is long-gone, which is a shame. I'm not sure when they started using the double-line Kluson Deluxe tuners on these. Charlie Gelber at es-335.org is a great resource, and helped me a lot when I first got into 335s about 10 years ago. I would really, really like to know the nut width on this one, if the OP would check it for us. Is it 39.7mm , or 43mm? Or something else? The case is modern, of course.

Nicky Hopkins on piano. Poor bugger had a difficult time of it.

I don't think I even had access to FM radio until I went off to college in 1965. When it came to pop music on AM radio prior to that, it was primarily singles, with the B-side rarely getting airtime. My college radio station --WBRU FM (Brown University)--was playing album cuts in the mid-60s, and complete albums sometimes, so you didn't have to own an album to have reasonable access to everything on it, as I recall.

Good questions, ZW. I just pulled out of my parts box the remains (about 80%) of a 1968 laminated bridgeplate for an ADJ bridge (which I also have in my parts box) which was on a J-45. That plate is a 3-ply laminate--wood species indeterminate, but the outermost (exposed face inside the guitar) looks like maple. Thickness is just under 5/32" (4mm, .16") net of glue. Typical thickness of solid maple plates, for comparison, is 1/8" (3.18mm). Area of laminated plate is roughly twice that of the small plate in my all-original 1950 J-45. I believe Gibson made their own plywood, and I suspect this might the same material that would have been used for the bodies of plywood electric guitars, where the tone and volume is not a function of body resonance. The plate has to be substantially larger than for a non-adj bridge in order to accommodate the adj mechanism, which requires two fairly large holes (19/64", 7.5mm) through the top and bridgeplate, well offset from the pin holes. The adj saddle loads the top in an entirely different way, since all of the bending moment of the strings on the saddle is transmitted to the top solely through the adj mechanism, and that moment has a long lever (the adjusting screws) trying to deform the top and bridgeplate. With the non-adj bridge/saddle, the bending moment is applied through the entire footprint of the bridge to the top and bridgeplate, rather than locally via the adj screws. This particular adj bridgeplate measures 2 1/4" along the string axis, as opposed to about half that for a non-adj plate. Details, details. As you say, I would like to see the bridgeplate on a modern J-45 with an ADJ bridge/saddle.

There should be an orange oval "union made" label on the inside with the serial number as well. It almost looks like glue residue on the inside back (through the bass-side f-hole) where the label should be. Witch-hat knobs look right for the period. Pickup covers should be chrome. Placement of the crown on the headstock is right for mid/late 60's. Patent number pickups look right. Logo looks right. The only oddball thing is the impressed oval around the serial number, but it looks crudely done, so it was probably someone's bad idea sometime in the last 50 years. Looks to be in generally really fine condition. This should have the 1 9/16" (39.7mm) narrow nut width. Some may be wider--43 mm-- which would be a plus By the serial number, more likely 1969, but as you say, they duplicate in this period. I really love the translucent cherry color. I have a '59 Historic ES-335 in cherry.

Unless the finish starts to chip off, it won't have any negative impact on value, especially since you would expect finish crazing on a guitar that is now 55 years old. Norm, it's normal. Rest easy.