Well ... I have just had an email from FEDEX telling me of the payable duties and a follow up call that enabled me to make payment. So given that I suspect it has got through customs etc with no consideration of CITES ... I shall let the cat out of the bag...
One of my frequent stops when surfing the interwebz are the various vintage guitar stores as well as GBASE and REVERB. Some are good, some are shit, but one must look at everything to sometimes pick up a bargain or pickup a rare find. A year or so back James picked up an almost mint 66 Epiphone Sorrento real cheap because the photos were basically crap and the guitar had not been cleaned. But there are a number of sites that do have superb photos and enough photos to show the entire instrument or amplifier. Sometimes I just like to browse these sites and kick the tyres for half an hour or so.
A week or so back I saw an acoustic guitar on REVERB and asked a couple of questions concerning the nut width and the condition of the instrument. Turns out the nut width is exactly what I like and the answers to the questions gelled with the clear and hi-res photos found at the sellers site.
http://truevintageguitar.com/inventory/ ... son-j-200/
This is the type of acoustic that George Harrison played many White album, Let It Be and Abbey Road tracks with, including HERE COMES THE SUN. His was a 67 or 68 model.
Now the thing about the 60s model of this guitar is that in 1961 Gibson made some changes to the design which included:
- Addition of a Tune-o-matic adjustable metal bridge
- Larger one piece neck block that wrapped around under the fingerboard extention
- A really large maple bridge plate, with 4 metal bolts (two for the tunematic adjustment, two as bridge bolts.)
- The addition of a large, suspended wooden brace under the top, between the bridge and the soundhole. In the middle of the brace is a large metal screw, held against the top. Apparently this brace was added to keep the front of the bridge from sinking. two versions of this brace were used.
Although I do not like the notion of a tune-o-matic bridge in an acoustic guitar (and I suspect the tune-o-matic itself and its mounting may have contributed to the front of the bridge sinking), it is this last addition of the wooden brace that I do not like. Anecdotally, it appears that this large wooden brace can sometimes kill the sparkle and tone of the guitar. So it is almost a crap shoot when buying a 60s version of this guitar on line as to whether the guitar sounds good or bad. Apparently one of the mods to these guitars in the 60s and later was to have the brace removed.
Given the recordings George Harrison made with his 67 or 68 version of this guitar (and subsequently Bob Dylan who George gave it to, and can be seen on the cover of the album NASHVILLE SKYLINE) are superb, the tone of his guitar was not affected by the brace.
So I had always left my searches for this guitar in the 1950s period ... the 40s are to old and too expensive for me and I have no way of trying out any 60s variants as effectively they are as common here in Oz as rocking horse shit.
As a bonus, this 1958 model uses tuners that had been Epiphone style tuners. Gibson had moved basically all of the Epiphone stock and product from New York to Kalamazoo when they bought Epiphone the previous year. In 1958 only 131 of these types were manufactured.
[The information about the change of specs and the pics below have been "borrowed" from this awesome website
http://www.guitarhq.com/ ]
Here are some photos of the changes that occurred in 1961. Larger neck block and large wooden brace.
So after some discussions with the seller, we came to an agreement on cost and shipping and the 59 year old lady was shipped out on Thursday Oz time and landed today, Saturday. The seller has allowed me to use some of his photos here and when the guitar arrives on Monday I shall take some more "made it safely to Oz" pics.
I give you a 1958 Gibson J-200 flattop acoustic guitar:
relaxing alternative to doing actual work ...
