Guth

That’s cool, I’m good with washboards — very rootsy! Unfortunately the second tune that I posted also calls out for a washboard by the time I finished with it. In it’s tempo as conceived, tides caressing the sands of the beach would have been much more fitting. Maybe that second tune in it’s intended tempo would be another good project for me to focus on this year — provided that I can actually manage to recall how to play it once again that is.

Thanks Red. I should be clear that I am doing good now — better than I've been in many years. I only really wanted to explain my absence from playing and the impact life can have on our creative outlets. All the best, Guth

Here's another one. This is a tune written by the man who taught me how to fingerpick 3 1/2 decades ago. His name is Michael Brill and finding this recording caused me to do some searching to find that he is still making music and performing in the mountains of Colorado. I owe a lot of my guitar-related happiness to this man. I was playing this song by memory, the original much better than what I pulled off here. I also played this at a tempo much faster than intended (a result of my nervousness while playing and a constant battle for me). Anyway, this has turned out to be a nice way to pass some time and get my mind off of the heaviness of the world at this point in time. Mike Brill Tune

Nice EA! I just watched Sal's recent contribution before this. Jeez, you guys are just going for it with the challenging tunes. Fortunately your delivery was able to meet the demands of the song. I truly admire those with the ability to sing and who are capable of delivering songs in their own way — that certainly includes you EA. Thanks for sharing!

That's quite a gutsy move choosing to cover a Greg Brown tune given his incredibly unique vocal delivery but you did a really nice job of pulling it off. I also have to add that you are rock steady like a human metronome, nice! The iPad recording sounded great. I think that your audiences will be very pleased with your choice of gigging guitar. But what's this I see — a batwing pickguard? What started simply as the innocent thought of a simple tuner swap has now turned into a full-blown obsession perhaps? Thanks for sharing!

Money sent. Looking forward to it!

Good enough that we can tell your guitar vanity got the better of you, lol. Enjoy! By the way Sal, I can at least understand the temptation. Years ago I found a Taylor 510 that kind of knocked my socks off at a price that was too good to pass up (this coming from someone that never considered myself to be a Taylor fan). I took this one down off of the wall because of the price tag and my whole "judge each and every guitar on it's own" approach. It was pretty much a practice what I preach moment. Anyway, the Taylor is still configured just as it left the factory, including (you likely guessed it) — the Grover tuners. I'll admit that the Grovers are a bit of a letdown (even the abalone rosette has even grown on me — a little), but otherwise I really like the way the guitar looks, plays, and sounds. If I'm being honest, I've thought more than once about switching the Grovers out for something else, but just as with the abalone rosette, I've come to accept them to be just as much of the guitars personality and history as the unbelievably high-grade Engelmann spruce and Honduras mahogany that Taylor had access to back in 1997 for their regular production guitars. All that said, I do prefer the look of your J-45 Studio "post-surgery". If the Taylor had more of a "Gibson-vibe" to it instead of the Taylor thing going on I likely would have gone the same route. Since the Taylor is the only one of my guitars that I will leave hanging up on the wall in our living room, it has become my "gigging guitar" of sorts. My comfort demands are such that it: must be comfortable to play to an audience of none while sitting on the couch.

There are a number of wood species that fall into the category of restricted and endangered woods. The RED list breaks down such wood species by classifying them as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. Many, if not most (in terms of volume) of the traditionally prized hardwoods for acoustic guitar building are on this list. Guitar manufacturers have been seeking out more sustainable wood choices for many years now. I am assuming Murph's comments had to do with walnut being considered to be a more sustainable choice, although there are multiple walnut species on the list as well. I've played a few walnut guitars over the years and liked them. I personally consider walnut to be one of the most attractive hardwoods to be found, if not the most attractive. With that in mind I sure wouldn't mind having a guitar made of walnut, but I already have more than enough guitars as it is so that won't be happening for me. If I am still around in another 10, 15 or 20 years from now it will be very interesting to see what all species of woods will be totally off-limits to guitar builders by then and what builders will be using instead.

I went through some health related issues starting a few years ago, the impacts of which took a toll on both myself as well as those that I care for and who care for me. One of the less drastic, but still notable impacts of my experience was that I lost almost all interest in many of the things that I have been passionate about for most of my life, including playing guitar. Well I've been picking the guitar up more and more often recently as it has become somewhat therapeutic again for the first time in a long time. I even started working on creating a new tune for the first time in ages. The long layoff sure did not do my playing any favors, but I'm still having a good time with it. I tracked down my little Sony digital recorder that I used to record everything I did previously. Upon examining the recorder I realized that I had left the batteries in it before I put it away the last time, something that I've been very good at avoiding in the past. It was bad and I was really disappointed in myself, but what can you really do other than try to clean it up? It took me quite a while but I did finally to get everything cleaned up and working once again. That's when my second challenge hit me. I could not remember very much about how I actually used this device or how I got my tracks into my laptop and out to the Internet to share. Since I'm nowhere close to having anything ready to record yet at this point, I decided to see what I had left in the recorder's built-in memory (a lot it would appear). I'm going to delete most of what I saved. However, instead of waiting until I had something worth recording I figured that I would see if I could get one of these old recordings transferred to my macbook, converted to a compressed file format and posted up to my website. I ran into a few problems. Some due to the knowledge I'd long forgotten and some due to software discrepancies. But in the end I did manage to succeed. With that in mind, I'm just going to call this my Archive Project. Whether this is the only thing I find worth sharing or if there will be more I can't say. This particular recording was the very first one that I pulled up (folder 01, recording 01). To be honest I can't even remember how to play most of this tune any longer, just like so many other old tunes of my own creation it seems. I might be able to again some day, but I definitely fall into that class of person that if I don't use it, I lose it. As is often the case when recording myself, I couldn't make it all the way though without flubbing it. But what the heck, at this point I'll consider it to be documentary in nature and move on. I don't know if I'll find anything else that might be worth sharing. Hopefully I am able to finish up the new tune soon enough — again, the reason for digging the recorder out in the first place. But since I've been cooped up in the house for so long now I don't mind projects like this as it is helping me to pass the time, so I'll keep digging through the recorder's memory to see what all I can get rid of and what else might be worth sharing to help you all pass a bit more time yourselves. With that in mind, here is archive piece 1 (like most anything I do, this is short, but if you manage to make it all the way through it will help you pass another 2 minutes and 29 seconds of your day): J45TVarchives01

Rosinante, I like your taste in guitars and in vintage receivers. It has been a few years now since I ended up with a used Custom Shop birdseye maple AJ. I had never owned a Custom Shop Gibson before the AJ. I wondered about this same thing not long after taking ownership of the guitar, especially as I struggled to find any information at all on the guitar. I was able to determine that my AJ was part of a run of like guitars because I found a couple of others mentioned elsewhere on the 'net with photos included. When I really thought about it I could understand why Gibson would not advertise these guitars. Given the small number of guitars produced in such runs it really doesn't make any sense for them to spend money on advertising when there are so few to be had. Especially when they know that most if not all of the guitars are bound to sell anyway — provided the shop/dealer is interested in selling them I suppose. Given that yours were NOS guitars, I'm guessing that you were able to learn of the number of guitars produced in each run from the selling dealer.

One thing that I will say about my maple AJ is that it projects incredibly well. This quality is more or less lost on me as I really only play guitar for an audience of one: myself. I wasn’t aware of this aspect of the guitar’s character until my wife pointed it out to me. From my perspective this guitar does not sound to me as if it has any more volume than my other guitars. Apparently it is a different story when listening from the other side of the room. If projection is a quality that you desire in a guitar I wouldn’t promise anyone that maple back & sides will guarantee this. but I would say that it likely won’t hurt your chances. This is one reason that it has long been recommend that you either take a friend along with you when you go guitar shopping so that you can listen to how the guitar sounds for yourself from the perspective of anyone else who might happen to be listening. Minus a friend, find someone else in the store to play for you.

JCV, the more I contemplate your post the deeper the roots of thought grow within me. For what it's worth, if I were to describe that particular Everly Brothers model played in the Norman's video I would say that it has quite a bit of sustain. However, that guitar strongly emphasizes the fundamental of each note with a strong initial punch followed by almost no overtones whatsoever. This is likely due in part to the maple back & sides. The tone of this guitar provides a stark contrast to the many rosewood guitars that tend to really emphasize subsequent overtones. Many years ago I had a beautiful used Goodall guitar at home on a trial period from a remote dealer. A friend of mine accidentally managed to put a ding in it one evening and so I felt obligated to buy the guitar. I found out much later that had I simply let the dealer know what happened they would have happily taken the guitar back and charged me a small amount for the damage. My experience with that Goodall proved to be a good one however as it really helped me figure what I do and don't like in terms of guitar tone. In terms of appearance that guitar was a real beauty and for that reason alone I was tempted to hang on to it. (I also really dug the "flying G" on the headstock since my last name is Guthrie.) Regardless of how impressive the Goodall looked or how nicely it played, I just did not care for the way it sounded in my hands. It was like it was too pretty or too beautiful sounding for me if that makes sense. Essentially I figured out that I personally don't care that much to play guitars gushing with overtones. Mind you I love listening to other people play them but they just aren't for me. So here I am a couple of decades later with a few mahogany guitars, one maple guitar and even one rosewood guitar (one that still sounds pretty fundamental in nature to my ear). While they all sound different to some degree, I truly like how each of them sounds in the context of my playing and my music — even if they do manage to all sound a lot alike when I listen to the recordings I've made of myself. In reality your holy grail when it comes to tone is likely closer to mine than many people might think. Yet you would never know it by the way we describe guitar tone. I suppose that's what makes such conversations interesting.

This to me trumps everything and is a big part of not only connecting with a guitar but also with achieving happiness with that guitar and making music with it. I am sure that I have said something to this effect here before but it is worth repeating in my mind. It's pretty much a given that anyone hanging around on a forum like this one appreciates acoustic guitars, enjoys playing acoustic guitars and making music with them, and most certainly loves geeking about about acoustic guitars (Gibson's in particular) with others. With that in mind it took me a while to accept the fact that if you were to listen to three recordings of me playing the same song on three different guitars, based on audio only they would likely all sound very similar. On the other hand if I were record myself and two other guys all playing the same song on the same guitar there would likely be far more difference in how the guitar on each track sounds. The guitar geek in me gets a bit bummed out by this but for better or worse we ourselves are by far the biggest influence on tone and presentation.

The recent thread about Don Everly's Everly reminded me that one of my Uncle's coin-collecting buddies was also a luthier. I understood that there was some sort of a tie-in with the Everly Brothers but I didn't realize how serious it was or how highly regarded his guitars are. His name is Robert Steinegger and I was able to dig up some pretty interesting info about him out on the web. Apparently both Paul and George each owned Everly models made by Mr. Steinegger. Paul is playing his in this photo. It seems that there was some confusion regarding the Gibson that George was playing at the time... I'm not much of a "facebooker" so if the plug-in above isn't working Mr. Steinegger's facebook page can be found here. Finally, this web page contains links to a number of articles about Mr. Steinegger, his guitars and the Everly Brothers. As this is the Gibson forum, if you work your way through all the links contained on that page you'll find quite a bit of Gibson goodness. Good Stuff!

By the way, I don't have a problem with thin finishes, but the whole relic'd thing turns me off. I simply prefer a patina that comes honestly, that has been earned (this doesn't just apply to guitars by the way). Also, I don't think that there is a silver bullet when it comes to building a great guitar. In my experience they can have thinner or thicker finishes of various types, light construction or heavier construction, certainly any number of different tonewoods. This is why I have come to judge each and every guitar on it's own because often it seems that a great guitar is a great guitar despite many of these things and not because of any of them in particular.

I take it that this was a different location than where the video you shared was filmed at?

Years ago my Uncle befriended a fellow coin collector out here in Oregon. As it turns out his friend was also a luthier and apparently a very good one. He built the guitars the Everly Brothers would go on to use from the mid-80's onward.

I'm not understanding the excitement over this one — especially given the VOS finish. The sound in the first video was less than wonderful. In addition I always find impressions people share about acoustic guitars from big shows a bit perplexing. Based on my experience, if there was ever an environment NOT appropriate to judge the sound of an acoustic guitar it would be inside of a large, open building that is crowded with tons of other people making noise.

Yes, that is a tough position to be in. In that situation I would want to obtain confirmation directly from Gibson as to the specifics of the guitar before handing over my money.

I would vote "Yes". Whenever given the choice between two guitars of the same model, one with a top featuring tight grain and the other with a top featuring wide grain, I would always choose the one that sounds the best to me.

Me too.

Before the Internet and forums like this one people probably paid little attention to this sort of thing. You can chalk a lot of these concerns up to the consistent inconsistency that is the labeling system at Gibson. I had similar concerns when I purchased my J-45 True Vintage back in 2008. I did not really know anything about the True Vintage series at the time. As they weren't a Gibson Acoustic dealer, the fine folks at Cotten Music who I purchased the guitar from weren't really all that familiar with the True Vintage series either. At that time this model hadn't been around for very long. So I found myself wondering whether or not this guitar was indeed a so-called True Vintage model. For that matter, I wondered whether or not it was a real Gibson (there is no serial number stamped on the back of the headstock, instead it appears inside the guitar on the neck block). I searched for information here on this forum and elsewhere. I don't recall coming up with consistent information back then. In the end, I decided that to me none of this really mattered as it was one of the best sounding guitars I had played. It still is. Judging by the label itself, there is certainly no reason to assume this guitar is anything other than a "J-45". If I understand Gibson's serial numbering system correctly, this was the 13th guitar produced on the 103rd day of the year — April 13th, back in 2008. That might strike some as unlucky but in this case it couldn't be any further from the truth.

Jinder, I too would like to hear how you've been getting along with your Maple AJ. Hope all is well.

I for one had already considered the converted price before my reaction, which still stands — Ouch!

The thing that stands out as truly unreal is the price. Ouch!