j45nick

JC, Thanks for posting these. Gibson Acoustic has taken on a lot with this expansion of the product lines, and I hope it's a success. I note that Don was careful to say that these Historic guitars were as close as possible to the original, but not necessarily replicas. What did you think of this finish, looking at in in person? Don said only four coats of lacquer, rather than the usual 9, which is pretty astounding. However, it looks pretty crappy in the videos, sort of hazy with a lot of orange peel, essentially as it comes out of the spray gun. One advantage of nitro is how it can be buffed out to a gloss, but I understand that you could quickly buff through this finish. I'm just not sure. Maybe six coats instead of four, which might allow a decent light buff while maintaining a thin finish. I would really have to look carefully at one before taking that leap of faith. This thin finish would be most obvious on the top, just because of the way spruce growth rings work, particularly Adi. These are all appealing, but the AJ and the rosewood Southern Jumbo are most appealing to me. I wonder how either of those would stand up to a 1937 D-28 Authentic, which is what I've been looking at as a "next" guitar. I've never owned a square dread of any type.

It may be the lighting angle, but that looks like a belly-down (Martin style) bridge, which would likely be a replacement. It should be a rectangular bridge. The finish looks intact, but rough. If I were insuring it, I'd place a value of around $5k on it, but you might struggle to get that if selling. The market is up and down on early post-war J's, particularly if they are player-grade. Based on what I've seen, '46 with script logo and wider neck brings a slight premium compared to block-logo J's from about 1947-1952, which are generally all the same spec. I don't know what Gruhn charges for an appraisal these days, but he slightly higher value he may determine might be good for insurance purposes, even if you have to discount it if you want to sell at some point.

Read the section on nitrocellulose lacquer in this link: lacquer

They used lacquer for car finishes in 1960.

Number ….9?

Strings make a huge difference, and are a personal choice. If you don't like the way a guitar sounds, try different types of strings to see if you can get the tone you are after.

Agree with you on this one, but old lacquer has some interesting properties. The video below shows how Mamie Minch of Brooklyn Lutherie repairs surface scratches on brittle vintage lacquer surfaces while maintaining the original finish. (You'll want to skip the ad at the start if it shows up.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FISY9I6pQdQ

Has anyone from Gibson ever talked to you about your collection? After all, you do have some of the finest vintage Gibsons and Martins anywhere. The models they have picked for this series are certainly most of the classic Gibson flat tops, which is pretty astonishing in itself for a company that at times has seemed to have only a casual acquaintance with its history.

Hah! Norm doesn't like the VOS finish on the Historics, either. We'll see how long that they last. Seems Mark Agnesi is involved in product development at Gibson, which I hadn't realized. Norm is the ultimate critic on vintage guitars.

Yeah, you really don't want to get it under the edge of a pickguard if you ever want it to stick to the top again.

Other than the Legend series, modern Gibsons have untapered headstocks. The tapered headstocks went out in about 1952, I believe. The online photos aren't good enough to tell, but I suspect the new Historics have non-tapered headstocks. The taper is approximately 1/8" over the length of the headstock. On the three Gibsons I have with tapered headstocks--two 1950 J-45's and an L-OO Legend--there are slight differences in thickness and taper, but we're talking second decimal place differences. This only impacts on string break angle at the nut if you put enough wraps on the stringpost to get the last turn down to the bottom of the post, since there is more post exposed with a tapered headstock, particularly on the D and G strings. The actual height of the stringpost hole relative to the nut is the same on a tapered and non-tapered headstock, as the taper appears to be on the face of the headstock, rather than the back. (I haven't measured this accurately, but will at some point.) If you want a more extreme break angle at the nut, you have to put a lot of wraps on the posts, and wind them down carefully. While I appreciate the tapered headstock as an historical detail, it isn't clear that it has any practical impact on things. Remember that these Historics aren't exactly Legend equivalents in detail and price, since they only use hide glue on neck joint and top bracing, among a few other things that may be non-historic, like a bound fretboard on the SJ. None of these "shortcomings" is a show-stopper for me, especially if you look at the prices of a vintage AJ, one of the banner rosewood SJ's, or even a banner J-45 in excellent condition (if you can find one of any of these in fine condition).

Going back through the specs on the Gibson website, they refer to the finish on the Historics as "thin finish nitrocellulose VOS." Not sure where I read "satin", maybe on a dealer's website. I'm not a fan of the VOS finish, but I could live with it on the right guitar. My L-OO legend was discounted (it was used) by a boutique dealer because he thought the finish was scratched by careless polishing. Turned out it was a VOS finish. I've actually turned that VOS into a nicely gleaming medium-gloss through the judicious use of Virtuoso cleaner and polish. In fact, Virtuoso actually tells you not to use their products on a satin finish because it will turn it into a gloss finish.

Good stuff there! The AJ clearly surprised him, as he had a couple of pretty animated reactions.

The website doesn't show much in the way of "standard" models. Maybe things are still under development. One thing that I noticed in the Historics I looked at was bone for nut, saddle, and even pins. That's nice, even though I like shopping for my own pins.

Silicone is very difficult to remove from any surface, particularly if that surface is even slightly porous. Most effective solvents for silicone--thing like xylene, toluene, and lacquer thinner--are too powerful to use on nitrocellulose lacquer. Naphtha is a somewhat effective solvent for silicone, but you don't really want to flood that onto a nitro finish, even though it is generally safe for cleaning nitro. Silicone is effective in polishes because it leaves a smooth film on the surface. That's why it is in a lot of lubricant sprays. That same film prevents new finish from bonding to old finish. Telltale signs of this are fisheyes in the surface when you overspray, or in extreme cases, the new finish simply flaking off. Silicone is also an effective medium for dispersing fine abrasives, which is why you see it in a lot of scratch removers. It will also prevent glue bonding if one of the surfaces being glued is contaminated with silicone. Silicone has a lot of important uses. But basically, some of the properties that make it effective in polishes are problematic for other aspects of surface maintenance. If you go on Stewmac and look at the polishes and surface prep material they sell, they tout the fact that they are silicone-free. I won't use anything liquid on my guitars that contains silicones. A word of warning: PTFE (Teflon), although it is totally different chemically, has some properties similar to silicone, specifically lubricant qualities. It also has similar "side effects" when it comes to finishing and gluing. I use a Tri-Flow pinpoint lubricator for closed-back Kluson tuners. Tri-Flow contains PTFE, so I remove tuners from the guitar before lubricating them, as well as cleaning the outsides thoroughly with naphtha before re-installing them. I am not a chemist by training, but I am a furniture maker and boatbuilder --primarily as a hobbyist now--and have had to learn more than I want to know about a lot of common chemicals. Unfortunately, I learned a lot of it the hard way, including what some of these things do not only to whatever you are working on, but what they do to you.

Sorry I didn't finish comments on mahogany. It varies from almost iron-hard to fairly soft, but not as soft as woods like spruce and cedar. It does dent fairly easily on impact in general, although the surface does air-harden a bit over time. Likewise, the color varies from pale white/pink to very dark reddish brown. Old-growth true mahoganies are getting rare. These are the ones furniture makers prized back in the 18th-19th century in North America for its great widths, plus depth of color and character when finished. It has some great advantages, depending on how you saw it. Typically, quarter-sawn mahogany has tight, straight grain. If you look at Gibsons from the late 1940's through mid-1950's, you see this wonderful straight-grain mahogany in necks, backs, and sides. You obviously want the grain as straight as possible for necks, with as little run-out as possible. If the tree is big enough, you can get a lot of suitable guitar-building wood out of it. Plain-saw it, and you can get grain with a lot of character, but it is difficult to plane cleanly, so there can be a fair amount of waste. There is an amazing, near-mythical mahogany tree simply referred to as The Tree. When alive--it was harvested in 1965, and little of it is left-- it was a huge tree, estimated at about 11,000 board feet. The wood is heavily quilted, with stunning effects. It has been cut into numerous sections which have sold at astounding prices to custom instrument makers and fine furniture makers over the years. Prices are sort of like the giant bluefin tuna market in Japan. Stewmac has a few dreadnought back/sides sets from The Tree. For comparison, Stewmac's standard Honduran mahogany back/side sets sell for about $120-$130. Their back/sides sets from The Tree sell for $2300 to $6000. It's truly a wonderful wood if you're a furniture make, boatbuilder, or luthier.

I went on the Meguiar's website, and there is no listing of ingredients of any kind for Scratchx. They are classified as a "trade secret". How do you know if this has any silicone in it?

Gibson seems to be taking the same approach in the electric division, with standard versions plus historic re-issues. As with the acoustics, the historics are considerably more expensive, but not quite as expensive as the previous Historic models that came out of the Custom, Art, and Historic shop. This would appear to be consistent with the approach taken in the acoustic division, where the new Historics are cheaper than the Legend series (and do not have a few of their specs, such as all hide glue construction), but a lot more expensive than "standards." Realistically, it shouldn't cost much more to produce the Historic versions. There may be a few more hours in them, and torrefied woods such as red spruce add slightly to the cost compared to a standard version. Maybe wood selection is a little more thoughtful, but the wood Gibson uses seems to be good up and down the line. My initial reaction is that it's good marketing, but I would like to see/hear/play the Historics before buying.

Dave, what process and materials did you use for buffing out scratches?

It is an impressive line-up, particularly the Historics. There has long been a parallel in the electric divisions, where you could (can?) buy everything from "stock" modern standard versions to historic re-issues of guitars such as the ES-335. Because of their substantially higher prices, the original/historics will probably be small runs compared to "standard" versions, but they give people like me an incentive to buy new rather than vintage in some cases. I love vintage guitars, but sometimes they are out of reach price-wise. Examples would be the rosewood-bodied SJ banner like the one Tom Barnwell has, or a vintage herringbone D-28. Historic re-issues get you as close as possible to the original at a fraction of the cost. The torrefaction process may get you even closer when it comes to tonewood character. That works for me.

Let us know how the SJ is. I don't have a rosewood Gibson.

Wow!

I really like the 1942 rosewood banner SJ with cooked Adi top. The only obvious thing they did wrong was put binding on the fretboard. Everything else looks good, down to the 1.77" nut. It's virtually identical to my Fuller's 1943 re-issue, including nut width, but it has the cooked Adi top and rosewood back and sides, unlike my 'hog version. Hmm, anyone interested in a '43 re-issue 'hog SJ in 9.8/10 condition? Fully boned, luthier's choice neck with 1.77" nut, one tiny dimple in top next to bridge, otherwise near-mint.

Which ones? How long will it take to get them?

That sounds great, even if it isn't a style of playing I would normally think of with an LG. The finish is a bit odd. Website says it is "satin". I assume it is more like the old VOS finish, maybe without the built-in scratches.