Basket case 1946 J-45

[zombywoof]

You could ask me? The last guitar I bought was a Martin, though, so I don't know how well we'll all get along, lol.

 

Tapping the back of the guitar looking for loose braces and I was kind of mesmerized for a little while at the drum like tone that it was putting out. It sounded like there were strings on it when there were none! Even my glorious rosewood Martin doesn't sound like this!

 

 

I have been playing old Gibsons for some 50 years and still have not got it all figured out when it comes to those built between 1942 and 1947.

 

When I first ran across my 1942 J-50 I was told it was a 1943 J-45 which had been stripped of its finish and had no reason to doubt it. It took some advice from JT (this was before his book came out) and others to sort it all out. Turned out both the FON and rosette showed it to be a J-50. But during the build one of the two book matched top pieces had been accidentally flip flopped. When my repair guy found evidence of an old burst it was figured that when somebody down the line caught the mistake they decided to shoot a burst on the guitar to try and hide the screw up. My repair guy decided to restore the lost burst.

 

My '42 even with 5 open back cracks had a low end like I had never heard on any Gibson. When the guy who fixed it up handed it back to me he said never let it out of my hands. He called the guitar a "once in a blue moon Gibson" meaning while it was pure Gibson when it came to the mids and upper end, the lower end, in his words, would make a pre-War Martin D-28 run for cover. He also said in all the decades he restored guitars with his father and then on his own, he had only ever run across this with Gibsons built between 1942 and 1949.

 

I do fix old guitars up. And every time I do I swear it will be my last. Existing botched repairs can be a royal pain in the butt. One of my last projects was a mid-1960s Silvertone 633 Sovereign with a broken neck. I went ahead and fixed the neck. When it brought it in to have it checked out the guy said my repair would hold forever but there had been a previously poorly done neck repair which would not. After all that work, I ended up finding another Sovereign neck to replace the existing one. With the Banner though, I never even thought about attempting to repair it myself.

 

Here are before and after pics of the J-50.

 

 

[j45nick]

Here are before and after pics of the J-50.

 

 

 

Nice, ZW. I never get tired of vintage Gibson porn.

 

 

What drove you to the oversize pickguard used after the repairs? Severe wear on the top?

[zombywoof]

Nice, ZW. I never get tired of vintage Gibson porn.

 

 

What drove you to the oversize pickguard used after the repairs? Severe wear on the top?

 

Apparently the person who removed the original bridge and pickguard had been none too gentle about it. They then reattached the replacement parts with an epoxy. The oversized pickguard is there to cover up a bit of damage that the refinish could not hide.

[Martin 1940D28]

What a lovely guitar.

[62burst]

Interesting, 'Woof. Regulars here most likely know your guitar's story, but as I was paging down the thread quickly, if not for Nick's quote, I wouldn't have noticed that the natural topped guitar was a "before" pic.

 

Also- with ear-watering prose such as:

"My '42 even with 5 open back cracks had a low end like I had never heard on any Gibson. When the guy who fixed it up handed it back to me he said never let it out of my hands. He called the guitar a "once in a blue moon Gibson" meaning while it was pure Gibson when it came to the mids and upper end, the lower end, in his words, would make a pre-War Martin D-28 run for cover. . ."

 

. . . sooner or later, you're gonna have to get us a nice audio clip, or comparo for reference (even if it's just prose/praise that guitar fixers save for paying customers).