øøøøøøø wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 9:49 am
Larry Mal wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 9:10 am
Having a flat edge in general will help you, since you can also use it on the top. It can help you easily see if the top is sinking, and it can help with seeing if the top is bulging, also. Now, you want there to be some play there, the top is radiused after all. And the bridge will have a little more. But you will be able to see if it is extreme and if so, you might want to walk away.
Take a dental mirror and inspect the bracing. That can be fixed- all of this can- but you really will want to know if you are going to have to sink hundred of dollars into it or what.
I kind of question whether the average player is really qualified to make any of these assessments, especially "in the field."
It requires a fair bit of expertise/knowledge to know what you're looking for--both from a general luthier-skills perspective and also from a "historical knowledge" perspective.
For instance, in order for a straight-edge to be useful you'd have to understand that a J45 top has a slight crown. It's
supposed to. Putting a straight-edge across the top and rejecting it because it's "bulging" after reading an internet article isn't any pathway toward more-informed purchasing decisions.
I think I'm pretty handy in general and pretty slick with guitars, but I
definitely do not feel qualified to assess bracing on a J45 with a dental mirror.
If it's rattling when I play, that's still my best indicator that a brace is loose. If it sounds anemic or something isn't quite right, that's another indication something is amiss.
I can find the faults, in other words--but I still think it's wisest to leave the
diagnosis to the experts.
Fair enough- however, I did mention that the top was radiused, and we we are only looking for anything extreme. And since he is taking three guitars to trade, I doubt he's going to be able to get this to an expert at the same time.
Also, if you lay the flat edge across the top of the guitar and there is no play at all, or worse the top is underneath the flat edge, then you can easily see that the top is collapsed. There should be some rocking back and forth if the top is radiused as it should be. But not much. In other words, you do
not want to see a concavity there.
Whether you can see anything with a dental mirror or not, that's up to the individual, I guess. No reason not to look, if you don't see anything alarming, then you don't.
I could mention one thing that would be possible to see with a mirror, and it's this
"Bridge Doctor". And you do not want to see one.
If one is there, it means that the top collapsed downward, and it was treated- not fixed- by putting in this support structure. If you have to do this to a guitar you like, cool, but you don't want to be trading three great guitars for one that had structural problems that could only be glossed over.
And it may not be possible to fix it, you may be stuck with the Bridge Doctor.
Also, there is a product called the
"Plate Mate",
which again is not ideal to see. What happens is the metal ball ends of the strings wear at the wooden bottom of the bridge so that the holes no longer hold the strings in place properly, and again this is treated but not fixed by applying a metal plate underneath the bridge.
This might not be that big of a deal, although I would imagine the metal plate hardly helps the sound. Regardless, to bring it back to where it was supposed to be would require a new bridge to be installed.
However anyone can tell what the neck is doing with a flat edge, though. This is my main advice, because you don't want to buy a guitar and have to turn around and do a neck reset any time soon. So you lay the flat edge along the top of the frets and see where the flat edge falls on the bridge, it should more or less match up with the top of the bridge. If it's much lower than that and there's not much saddle to work with, you are looking at a neck reset down the road.
That is expensive on Gibsons, since the neck and body is finished together. God knows what the vintage nature of it is.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.