Organ-Harvested Late 40's early 50's ES-150 questions

[murray]

No questions yet; background on how I stepped into this mess first, so you can not try this at home.

0) I take chances on quirky instruments. If I know there are parts missing or there are items that were replaced, I take that into consideration. I am not concerned about authenticity, value or reselling. I can spell 'counterfeit'...it has more Scrabble points value than 'fake'.

1) What I bought was described as a 1950 ES-150 with a list of (top-side) components already replaced with newer parts, and photos that showed what was physically missing. My first thought was how bad could they have been, regardless of deterioration being a reality. What I naively realized after getting it home is that everything removable I can visually inspect has been removed and replaced with modern parts. I'll shorten this by not listing everything...the body, neck, fingerboard & probably frets are original. As the real estate TV programs might say, it has good bones. Damn, this poor guitar left a club late at night, alone, and woke up on a park bench, bruised & confused, missing all its internal and external organs...the mean streets of the inner city...

2) There is a pencil-drawn alpha-numeric code on the inside back under the f-hole opposite the controls side that does not match any published format I have seen for s/n or FON...So I'm curious what else it might mean. It's listed in my questions later. I have not squeezed a webcam (removed from its housing to miniaturize it) into an f-hole yet, just a flashlight & dental mirror.

3) What is outright missing is the finger rest/pickguard & mounting bracket & screws.

4) The P-90 is aftermarket.

5) The 0.022 uF tone capacitor is a CDE orange drop with 2122 date code, the pots are smaller diameter and new. Knobs are new and don't seem right style, but just add it to the list of debauchery committed.

6) I had already committed to it after playing it, so I ordered an aftermarket pickguard, mounting bracket and P-90 spacer kit.

 

Questions (real and rhetorical):

A) How does this happen? Seller also has very pricey vintage parts for sale. They must have decided this was too ugly to go home with someone original, so they stripped it of everything valuable and made it useable, and sold it for less than a credentialed complete specimen. I can't really do any more harm than has already been done to this 'victim', by installing the remaining missing items (I'm making my best effort to select proper replacements).

B) the penciled info where I hoped to find FON says 5G4341. This doesn't seem to match other published formats very well. The 'G' could indicate Gibson, and 4341 aligns with some numbers from 1950, but I'm grasping here. Does this look familiar to anyone, with more confidence than a suggestion or guess?

C) looking at physical characteristics, it does have 17" wide lower bout, 25-1/2" scale, and an elevated fingerboard end. However, it has simple dot neck inlays. I don't know everything, but I have never seen a 1950-1956 ES-150 online that did NOT have the large 'crown?' inlays starting at fret 1. All the 1946-1948 ones I've seen online had dot inlays only up to the 15th fret, and I think are unbound. 1949 seems to be a coin toss, like there might be both dot and crown inlay instruments. The gold Gibson logo changed in 1947, so I know it's newer than '46. Anyone have an opinion on the existence of unbound, dot-inlay necks on ES-150 as late as 1950?

D) Duchossior has allegedly written that  1947 guitars commonly meaningful markings  inside. Anyone agree with me that cryptic marking in the absence of recognizable sequence numbers and the unbound, dot neck, point to possibly 1947-48-49? (It has no significance as far as value, but to identify the year where no decipherable info inside has been found (best guess).

 

Thanks!

 

[ksdaddy]

I can only answer (a).  There are people out there who make a living from destroying vintage instruments for their parts. I have personally parted out newer instruments because they were worth more dead than alive sometimes. However I would not part out a vintage instrument. They too, are sometimes worth more dead than alive, and if you think you got a good deal on the husk, that's fine. Trust me, they "made their money" on the parts and don't really care what happens to the husk. Now you have a choice. Either hunt down original parts and pay a huge price for them (refer to my statement about them making their money) or you can build it with repro parts (and it will never be worth anywhere NEAR what an original is worth) or you can use the husk as a foundation for a custom setup. 

[murray]

Yep. Naive kid from the suburbs.

I got the rest of the missing aftermarket parts. Not gonna pay for best guess vintage when I'm not sure they know to be truth or convenience...

It's still nice, but needs a setup now (the new floating bridge is too tall & not shaped to the guitar top.

Working on an EH-150 to keep it company while it recovers.

 

Thanks 

[murray]

I found on another site that there was an archived message here from someone inquiring about an ES-150 with 9G8251 number inside.

That is the only other occurrence I have found online in the same 'format' as mine, 5G4341 (in pencil).

So it DID did seem to exist as a post-War format, and there must some quantity out in the world.

Mister E...