Tex Ritter 12 fret J 200

[JuanCarlosVejar]

Folks,

Check it out:

JC

[62burst]

Maple + superjumbo + the low/mid dynamics increasing effect of the 12 fret design . . .  what's not to love?

 

Juan Carlos- you threw me off the trail with that thread title- here I was looking for a Tex Ritter special edition.

 

[59gibson]

Thanks for posting that!!! BTW, pretty sure Tex's guitar is rosewood back and sides. It's a (circa )1938 model that was reworked/ refinished with replaced pickguard by Gibson in the mid 1950s-early 1960s.

[62burst]

2 hours ago, 59gibson said:

Thanks for posting that!!! BTW, pretty sure Tex's guitar is rosewood back and sides. It's a (circa )1938 model that was reworked/ refinished with replaced pickguard by Gibson in the mid 1950s-early 1960s.

yeah... thought it looked pretty dark in that soundhole.

[62burst]

Here is the video explaining just a little bit more about Tex's guitar- not one word about the 12-fret neck, but that does look like Braz on the back n' sides, doesn't it? (or Madagascar)

 

This the maple one that caught my attention years ago, demo'ed here by Stan Jay:

 

This expired for sale listing, saying 1 of 6 ? And- . . . Short Scale ? ? ? Very interesting:

https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=323912

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by 62burst

[BoSoxBiker]

Nifty stuff, guys! I especially liked the Maple's sound on the last video. 

[59gibson]

1 hour ago, 62burst said:

Here is the video explaining just a little bit more about Tex's guitar- not one word about the 12-fret neck, but that does look like Braz on the back n' sides, doesn't it? (or Madagascar)

 

 

Cool video. However, not Brazilian. Gibson used East Indian rosewood on the 30s SJ-200s and Advanced Jumbos models

 

 

[62burst]

4 hours ago, 59gibson said:

 

Cool video. However, not Brazilian. Gibson used East Indian rosewood on the 30s SJ-200s and Advanced Jumbos models

 

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. . . that certainly does seem to be the consensus.

[j45nick]

6 hours ago, 62burst said:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. . . that certainly does seem to be the consensus.

 

Interestingly, the grain on the B&S of Tex's guitar is very similar to that on Tom Barnwell's  rosewood (FON 910) Banner Southern Jumbo. Presumably, you could take a small sliver of wood out of the inside somewhere and analyze it if it is a big deal for some reason.

I don't know how large a sample is needed for this type of analysis, or whether it's worth the trouble.

What I don't understand is that we know Gibson used Brazilian for fretboards and bridges until some point in the late 1960s, so it begs the question of why they wouldn't use it as a body wood until they stopped using it for other things.

Of course, Gibson didn't seem to make a lot of rosewood-bodied guitars compared to Martin.

[59gibson]

3 hours ago, j45nick said:

 

Presumably, you could take a small sliver of wood out of the inside somewhere and analyze it if it is a big deal for some reason.

I don't know how large a sample is needed for this type of analysis, or whether it's worth the trouble

 

I believe this has been done before and it was determined to be East Indian Rosewood.

[EuroAussie]

I do like what Im hearing there

[62burst]

3 hours ago, j45nick said:

...What I don't understand is that we know Gibson used Brazilian for fretboards and bridges until some point in the late 1960s, so it begs the question of why they wouldn't use it as a body wood until they stopped using it for other things.

Especially since it is widely known that small, guitar bridge-sized pieces of Brazilian come from larger such pieces. Maybe they were just scraps left over from when they did the FLOOR.

 😬.

[j45nick]

35 minutes ago, 62burst said:

Especially since it is widely known that small, guitar bridge-sized pieces of Brazilian come from larger such pieces. Maybe they were just scraps left over from when they did the FLOOR.

 😬.

When Ross Teigen made a new bridge to replace the 1968 adjustable bridge on my first 1950 J-45 (that adj bridge is part of a complicated story), he cut it from a chunk of Brazilian that he had been keeping for years, because it was a near-perfect color match to the dark Brazilian fretboard on that guitar.

There's no such thing as a scrap of exotic wood that is too small to save. I have small and large pieces of teak and Honduras mahogany I've lugged with me every time I moved house in the last 25+ years. A few of those pieces have been hanging around for 40 years or more, just waiting for the right project. Every few years I build something out of some of it, always trying to cut things out of the smallest pieces possible, just to save the big pieces for God-knows-what.

Every luthier, furniture maker, and boatbuilder I know pretty much does the same thing.

Gibson must have had a pretty good stash of Brazilian for all those fretboards. It was probably starting to get pretty rare by the 1960. And as you say, all of the fretboards were cut out of larger pieces of wood.

[Dave F]

20 hours ago, 62burst said:

Here is the video explaining just a little bit more about Tex's guitar- not one word about the 12-fret neck, but that does look like Braz on the back n' sides, doesn't it? (or Madagascar)

 

This the maple one that caught my attention years ago, demo'ed here by Stan Jay:

 

This expired for sale listing, saying 1 of 6 ? And- . . . Short Scale ? ? ? Very interesting:

https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=323912

 

Curse you 62B! Just when I thought I've had everything I've wanted to try you show this. 

[62burst]

1 hour ago, Dave F said:

Curse you 62B! Just when I thought I've had everything I've wanted to try you show this. 

Sorry 'bout that. But yeah, I forgot, or didn't know it was a short scale. That would make things interesting.