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Classic J-45 tone, not powerful ?


gotomsdos

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I guess that's a strange term, but my old '57 had strong characteristic J45 tone. The describer may have just been low on words. I would save 'powerful' for electric guitar stuff, although I've seen John Hammond in a small venue a couple of times and he made powerful noise come out of a flattop. We've had these terminology discussions here before. When I was trying to figure out whether the one I bought from 'Greg's Guitars' had a 'classic' tone, and greedily fondling the $2600 I was about to mail out, he gave me the name of a vintage guitar mag editor/critic who he said had played it and wrote it up w/pic in the magazine. He wrote '...this J45 has THE tone'. That was all I needed, and he was right. It certainly wasn't loud, just perfectly balanced for flatpicking and crazy easy on the hands to play. I swapped it out for an old D18.

 

I try to think, but nothin happens.

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I guess that's a strange term, but my old '57 had strong characteristic J45 tone. The describer may have just been low on words. I would save 'powerful' for electric guitar stuff, although I've seen John Hammond in a small venue a couple of times and he made powerful noise come out of a flattop. We've had these terminology discussions here before. When I was trying to figure out whether the one I bought from 'Greg's Guitars' had a 'classic' tone, and greedily fondling the $2600 I was about to mail out, he gave me the name of a vintage guitar mag editor/critic who he said had played it and wrote it up w/pic in the magazine. He wrote '...this J45 has THE tone'. That was all I needed, and he was right. It certainly wasn't loud, just perfectly balanced for flatpicking and crazy easy on the hands to play. I swapped it out for an old D18.

 

I try to think, but nothin happens.

Yes, I feel the same as you, so I wonder.

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I would say that no J-45s -- even banners -- are powerful guitars. In recent years there has been a lot of hyperbole about early J-45s that tended to obscure this obvious "elephant in the room" fact. Before the recent "discovery" of these guitars by non-power genres, the properties of these guitars was well known to players and to the market.

 

Now don't get me wrong - power is certainly not everything and we (my wife and I) love these guitars. We play bluegrass maybe 60%-70% of the time, and for that they don't work. But for the other stuff we love them. Here is picture of our 40s stuffs.

 

40Gibs.jpg

 

We do actually have and use power Gibsons in bluegrass -- we are a bit unique in that regard.

 

Jumbo5s.jpg

 

These are all mid 30s -- none of these lacks power and a couple of them have the tonal properties to be among the best bluegrass guitars ever.

 

Best,

 

-Tom

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I would say that no J-45s -- even banners -- are powerful guitars. In recent years there has been a lot of hyperbole about early J-45s that tended to obscure this obvious "elephant in the room" fact. Before the recent "discovery" of these guitars by non-power genres, the properties of these guitars was well known to players and to the market.

 

Now don't get me wrong - power is certainly not everything and we (my wife and I) love these guitars. We play bluegrass maybe 60%-70% of the time, and for that they don't work. But for the other stuff we love them. Here is picture of our 40s stuffs.

 

40Gibs.jpg

 

We do actually have and use power Gibsons in bluegrass -- we are a bit unique in that regard.

 

Jumbo5s.jpg

 

These are all mid 30s -- none of these lacks power and a couple of them have the tonal properties to be among the best bluegrass guitars ever.

 

Best,

 

-Tom

Tom, I'm unable to see pics you posted.

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