This 1943 Gibson J-45 came to me in the original case with zero prior repairs. The bridge had pulled up and the bridge plate had puckered a bit so I had it expertly repaired by Jason Burns here in Birmingham, AL (burnsrepair.com). It came out gorgeous and the tone is truly spectacular. Collector value is one thing but true tonal superiority is quite another.
Collector Value
I don't normally enjoy talking up the collector value on vintage instruments because it's usually pretty obvious. However, this one deserves a bit of press for its rare features including the Mahogany top, no truss rod neck and original Lifton case. There's more information on banner era instruments in John Thomas' recent book, Kalamazoo Gals.
During the height of World War II the United States government imposed materials restrictions on manufacturing that cause companies like Gibson to improvise a bit. Among those restrictions was Spruce which was used for guitar tops as well as steel, used for truss rods and tuners. Gibson began running low on good quality Spruce in late 1942 so they began using 3 and 4 pieces glued together. That only lasted a short time until the started using Mahogany for the tops. Mahogany tops can be found on banner era models between late 1942 and midway through 1944 when they were acquired by CMI. Gibson began using Spruce for Sitka, AK after the buyout. Truss rods seem to follow a similar time table in that guitars without truss rods started being produced at random in late '42/early '43. Truss rods reappeared as a standard sometime in 1944. Tuners were being produced with thinner cogs which was supposed to save steel (albeit very little).
This guitar has all those juicy wartime features. Instead of a truss rod, Gibson produced the necks a bit thicker and fuller with a triangular Maple rod in the center of the neck under the fretboard. These necks are surprisingly stable and this one is no different. The tuners have held up well too and don't seem to want to give up. If I was to play this daily I would certainly replace them in order to preserve the originality. The original Lifton case is in great shape with the original handle.
Player Value
The most surprising thing about this one was definitely the great tone is has. It's loud but warm with woody overtones. It's has the Americana dry thump but also crisp, articulate highs. It really is all that they say they should be. These banner era guitars just have the Gibson tone.
My go-to playing style is fingerstyle blues using finger picks. Gibsons usually lend themselves to this type of playing so it was no surprise when it sounded- and played- great. The real surprise was when I flatpicked and it was loud and cut so well! I couldn't have hoped for it to sound any better. It does everything I need for an acoustic and then some.
"Squirt" Soda
This kind of thing was very common back in the 30s and 40s. People wanted to adorn their instruments with stickers featuring their initials, puppies and kittens, brands, etc. This one happened to receive a Squirt soda sticker on the back. I love this sort of character as long as it isn't too distracting from the rest of the guitar. This one is placed inconspicuously on the back so I'm happy to let it remain there for the duration of my ownership.
Here's another ES-330 that I was lucky to babysit for a time. This one was made in Kalamazoo, MI in 1966 but had been played very little before I snagged it. This model is, in my opinion, the most under valued vintage Gibson electric out there. The fully hollow body does make it a bit more prone to feed back at high stage volume but also makes it comfortable, resonant and warm.
In 1942 the folks at Gibson's decided it was time to redesign the J-55 into something flashier, something that the folks south of the Mason-Dixon line would like. What they ended up with was a model called the Southerner Jumbo which featured their split parallelogram inlays down the fretboard. A few of the original batches even had Rosewood back and sides which command quite a premium over the Mahogany versions. All further batches featured the J-45 base with the fancy inlays and thicker binding around the body.
This guitar was manufactured just after the war in 1948 or '49. There's no record of which factory order numbers were manufactured when but there are a few aspects on this one that help nail down the date. The headstock features the block logo which was introduced in late '46 or early '47. The sides are solid Mahogany indicated by the vertical spruce sticks that help avoid splitting. Gibson began manufacturing the sides with laminated wood starting in 1951. The sunburst finish on the top has the "Cremona Brown" style burst that is much lighter than what they did starting in the 1950. The kicker has got to be the belly down Rosewood bridge.
These bottom belly bridges first appeared on Southerner Jumbos in 1942. They were soon phased out and by 1943 they were mostly rectangular. But, throughout the 1940s the employees sneaked in a few bottom belly bridges on Southern Jumbos and even a J-45 or two. That's just Gibson for you, the only consistency is inconsistency.
You might notice that the sunburst is a lot lighter than that of a 1950s era Gibson. This burst is called Cremona Brown and Gibson first used it on their mandolins in the late 1920s. They went to a darker burst sometime around 1951. I am quite fond of the lighter burst.
This SJs tone can be described as the quintessential Gibson round shoulder tone. It's got that warm mid-range with a woody low end thump that is so perfect for vocal accompaniment and songwriting. I tend to lean towards fingerstyle blues and this one does that thing in spades.
The shade top Kalamazoo KG-12 is a bit of a rare bird and was worth the time it took to find a good one. You'll more commonly see the natural finished version called the KG-12N or Oriole. Those have the Oriole decal on the headstock. The shade top version was devoid of the Oriole but received an attractive sunburst and darker natural stain on the back. This time period at Gibson is known for great craftsmanship and is considered the peak of the golden age of lutherie.
This model is constructed of an Adirondack Spruce top, solid flame Maple sides and a laminate flame Maple back. The neck is made of Honduran Mahogany, the fretboard and bridge of Indian Rosewood and the nut of hard Ebony. This model is one of the few branded Kalamazoo that has a hidden truss rod that's adjustable at the heel of the neck. The top bracing is standard ladder bracing adding to the bluesy, boxey tone these are known for. The Maple rounds out the package with nice sparkly top end.
This particular guitar
required a neck reset and a bridge reglue to be back in tip top shape. I asked my luthier to add an access hole in the block so the truss rod could be adjusted after the neck was reset. The hole is not visible unless the guitar is held at just the right angle. Suffice it to say that you won't find it unless you know where it is and what to look for. My luthier only needed to freshen the hide glue under the bridge and reclamp to reattach it to the top. I like this method since it doesn't require removing the bridge from the top and leaves almost no signs of the repair.
Rarity
It took about a year for me to find this guitar. They aren't the rarest Gibson or the most desirable but something about the combination of rare features and how few I've spotted in the wild drove me to seek it out. I have no hard of evidence of its rarity other than my own opinion. This guitar was worth the wait. There's something about sitting on the couch with this gem and lightly fingerpicking a tune or two. The top takes very little drive to have sweet tone and good volume. The sunburst, flame Maple and tortoise shell binding are ever so aesthetically pleasing. The lacquer is lightly checked but still smooth and glassy to the touch. The original Geib soft shell case with leather handle and purple interior complete the time capsule feel I get every time I open the case.
may be the perfect recording amplifier if you are looking to compliment the tone of your guitar. You could gig it but you aren't going to be blowing out your local amphitheater or even small club with it. These were made by Rowe industries in Toledo, OH from 1959 to 1961. It features a 5 watt "Champ" style circuit with a 10" Jensen C-10. They came stock with a Tung-Sol 6X4 rectifier tube, a Magnavox 6V6 power tube and an Amperex "Bugle Boy" 12AX7 preamp tube. The T versions included a tremolo circuit with another Bugle Boy 12AX7 to run it and a foot switch to toggle it on and off on the fly.
This particular amp was not played very much before it was put aside for many dormant years. The owner bought it and a 3 pickup Kay Style Leader guitar but never really got into it. Eventually the owner passed and the new owners had no use for it. It wound up at my house in all original condition. The cord had all but disintegrated so I replaced it with a proper grounded cord. I don't like getting electrocuted. Call me new fashioned.
Amperex Bugle Boy 12Ax7
There may not be anything magical about these Holland made gems but I can understand why you may think so considering the price for a good NOS matched pair. They are well made tubes and I enjoy having them in my amp. Don't ask me to pick them out from the tone over another well made 12Ax7 though. That little dude is playin' the hell out of that bugle!
The first Trojan shipped in October of 1936 and was marked in the Gibson Shipping ledgers as "Trojan." This guitar has now been confirmed in the old Gibson ledgers as a Trojan shipped on November 26, 1936. A gentlemen posted about this guitar on the Gibson forum and was kind enough to send me a bunch of pictures.
The Gibson Trojan preceded the J-35 by a couple of months (October to December, 1936). This Gibson Trojan matches all the features for a 1937 J-35 with the exception of a couple of key things. The main difference is the lack of back binding. J-35s were introduced with a single layer of binding on the back which this guitar lacks.
It also has 3 scalloped tone bars. The standard J-35 would most likely have had 3 unscalloped tone bars. I'm very curious about the tone of this guitar. I'm going to guess that this thing is awesome. Just wait until you scroll down and see the deep scallops. Amazing.
The Ebony nut is cool but not entirely out of line. It could have been Ebony or bone but either one would work. It's just another aspect of this guitar that makes it so darn cool.
This guitar was made for export as evidenced by the "Made In USA" stamp on the back of the head stock. This was fairly common at the time. My 1937 Gibson L-00 had the same stamp and Grover branded open back tuners. It also had the same pumpkin colored sunburst on the top but did have back binding.
I hope you enjoyed taking a look at this beauty. Many thanks to the owner for letting me post about it.
Gregory Alan Isakov muses over his guitar as he rolls a cigarette. It is the last day of September 2013 and Gregory was kind enough to chat a while about his beat but sweet 1967 Gibson J-50. The weather was nice and it was time for a post sound check smoke. We talk about how his guitar lay dormant in a barn in Colorado for about 40 years, just resting up for its second career.
John: Do you mind if I check it out? It looks like it has seen some miles. Gregory: Please. Yeah it's a '67. John: did you say he brought it to Vietnam? Gregory: Yeah and he brought it back. I used to work on his farm and we had always been really close. One night he said, "Well Gregory, I left you something in the barn." I thought it was weed since he smokes a lot of weed. He took me out to the barn and there was this big buffalo skull and a guitar case. I took the guitar to a friend in New York who got it set up for me.
Gregory's J-50 has had a neck reset, refret and had the adjustable bridge "fixed". The tuning keys are reproduction Kluson keystones. It has the slimmer, late 60s neck and the setup is spot on. It has nice mid to low range with that classic Gibson Americana rumble.
J: ... and you play this guitar pretty much exclusively? G: Well I have another guitar with me, it's a Stella. Actually, I almost bought another guitar last week. J: What was it? G: An ES-125. It was the nicest one I've ever played. Most of the mid range was gone, it was just super warm with a really buttery high end. But the mids were gone. It played so well and it sang really well. J: What year was it? G: '52. It was $1800 which was pretty much all I had. I didn't buy it but I've been thinking about it all day. It's in Austin at Austin Vintage Guitars. It's like my favorite shop.
G: I don't love electrics, but I like electrics with just a little bite to 'em. The ES-125 has my favorite tone that I've found. J: So are you a Gibson guy or do you like all of them? G: No not really, my favorite guitar right now is the Stella. It was $35 and I got it in Buffalo, NY. It was in a big pile of old Stellas. The guy was like "how about $50 with a set up?" I said, "You're just going to WD-40 the tuners, I mean there's no truss rod on the thing." "Oh okay, $35." I really didn't even mind paying $50, he was a nice old guy with a great shop. I had told him I was just looking for a plywood guitar because I don't care to keep it in a case. My Gibson usually stays in the case but the Stella just goes in the van and everyone plays it. That's what I tell people who ask me about playing the guitar, I say just get a piece of junk and don't keep it in the case. You'll play it more often.
G: I won this [hand made] guitar in a songwriting festival a while back and they said it was worth like $15,000. I never play it.
J: Who made it?
G: It was the owner of Santa Cruz. He had made his own company and they only make about 100 guitars a year. I got it in 2009 and have never changed the strings. The thing is still too bright. Still.
J: I guess it's still a little green.
G: [while strumming a few chords] Gibsons have just like a nice dark tone, where the high end isn't in your face.
J: Yeah, they have a good mid range where the Martins have the big booming bass, harsh top end and scooped mids.
G: But the Martins have a good tight string tension which I like.
J: What gauge strings do you normally play?
G: I normally play lights since I play every day but when I record I use mediums.
J: There was a Silvertone that you were playing for a while right?
G: Yeah, a Hollywood. I love that guitar. It used to have an old pickup from the 60s in it, a little single coil.
J: Like a DeArmond?
G: Yeah it was a DeArmond, and it sounded great. I recorded a lot of our last record with it. But most of the record I just made was on this guitar [the Gibson] and the Stella.
The Weatherman
J: I heard that you recorded your last record all analog.
G: Well we did dump it onto Protools at the end but, yeah, we tracked it just in an old studio with a tape machine. It was just something I wanted to try. I don't know if it's the way I record, or if I've even found the way to make records. I feel like, five years old in that realm. It was fun to try since I've never been able to afford it before because that gear is just so expensive. So, we found this studio up in the mountains and did it in a few months. I usually don't go to studios because I don't like them and I don't like the time constraint - because I take forever. I like to find the perfect sound for something even if it's hardly audible. It gets expensive fast.
J: Are there drawbacks to analog recording that you kind of enjoy?
G: Yeah, oh yeah. It was amazing how once you play the song and you go into the control room and listen to it, you know that's the take. In Protools you think this [take] might sound fine in about a month, let's just keep working on it. But [with analog recording] there's none of that. Do we like it, or do we feel it, or does it make us feel something? Some of the stuff we'd spend hours and hours really perfecting and the next day we'd listen to it and not really feel anything. Then I'd play kind of a crappy take and it was the one.
J: What can you think of from The Weatherman that was like that? G: There were a couple songs that ended up that way, like "Second Chances". We made like 13 tracked versions of that song, 13! I could put out a double record of just that song. Different takes, tempos, feels but the one we kept was just really simple and live. Same with "Suitcase Full of Sparks" and "Living Proof" was live. There was this one song I wrote when I was 19 called "Honey It's All Right" and that was sort of like a throwback. I don't why I just thought we'd try it.
J: So "Amsterdam" and "St. Valentine" weren't like that? G: They were too, they were very simple. On our previous record called This Empty Northern Hemisphere we had songs that were 90 tracks but you would never know it. We had like 3 mics on every cello... J: and was "The Stable Song" like that? G: No, that was like probably 16 channels but this record was almost nothing. It hasn't lived long enough for me yet, and I haven't listened to it since we made it so I don't know if it's good. Sometimes [the records] have to live for a while before you can figure it out. I didn't have that kind of opportunity with it because I wrote it so close to when we needed to put something out. I had been working on another record for years before that, that I didn't like.
J: One thing I noticed about your songs, well, another website (indie-music.com) said about "Amsterdam" was that it was a "richly vintage delight." I thought that was a good way to put it. Dreamy, poetic. Do you write spoken word poetry as well? G: I write a lot of prose and stories and stuff. I like short stories, poems, I like this guy Billy Collins a lot. Elizabeth (my wife & photographer): Did you say Billy Collins? G: I love Billy Collins. It's really funny when I talk to my nerdy writer friends and they say he's like the Coldplay of writing. But I think that's why it's so good. E: I teach Billy Collins to my 9th graders. G: He's so good, you know that poem "Aimless Love"? It's the most beautiful love poem I've ever heard. He's talking about a field mouse that he found that was dead, it's on 9 Horses I think. I love that book.
G: [Billy Collins] has a similar approach to writing that I do where I don't want anything in there that isn't important for the piece of music. In Billy Collins's writing, every line in his poem is necessary and there's nothing extra; it's so bare.
J: What's the song on The Weatherman that's like a minute and a half? G: You mean "The Astronaut"? J: That's it, so awesome. Very stripped down and just ends when you wanted it to end. There's no fluff, there's no room for fluff. G: We did have this really long, really ornate introduction to that song with a big string line and it was really dark and cool with a Rhodes and lots of feedback. Then, the last week before the record came out we just cut that part out and started over with just the lyrics.
J: I really love that song. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me about your guitars and the new album. G: No problem.
Gregory lets me check out the aforementioned Stella parlor guitar before I leave the venue of his show for that night. It's got that great lo-fi, dark tone that only a $35 plywood guitar can produce.
Elizabeth and I return after dinner to the venue to hear these guitars in their element. The show shares many similarities with our chat - engaging, personal, relatable. Gregory and the band even unplug from the PA for a couple of songs letting us have a real taste of how this music sounded when they first wrote it - gathered in the kitchen of Gregory's home in Boulder, CO.
Visit Gregory's website for a full tour listing and purchase The Weatherman everywhere good music is sold.
RSS Feed
Twitter
.jpg)
