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Wow - that huge chip on your shoulder must make playing the guitar difficult.
Originally Posted by jzucker
I read it. I knew that. I meant you no disrespect and apologize for making you feel slighted. But I don’t believe that’s what’s going on with this guitar. Your knowledge is impressive and I gladly recognize you as learned, experienced, and an authority well above my level. I hope you can feel the love and appreciation. But none of that changes my opinion (to which I’m entitled, as ill informed and innocent as it may be). Giving praise where praise is due (and clearly expected), your statement (quoted above) is absolutely and completely correct. And the really good news is that the quoted statement will still be correct, even if I am too.
This guitar looks wonky, smells fishy, and theoretically doesn’t exist in nature. I can think of no good reason for anyone to do that to a beautiful, perfect, blonde 175, and I don’t believe that’s what we’re seeing. Shifting the full force of string tension from the rim to a stop tailpiece bolted to a top designed, built, and braced for a trapeze is far more likely to hurt both tone (even in a laminate) and structural integrity than to improve either one.
Maybe if it were a real Gibson product that was structurally designed and built for this change, including bracing, sound block or posts, top contours etc, it’d be interesting. But the ads clearly say that it was “modified”. If it were a Gibson prototype or custom one-off, it’d be documented somewhere. In my opinion, which could obviously be wrong, this is far more likely to be somewhere between a pure scam with no deliverable instrument at all and either a fake based on one of the many “175 kits” that look exactly like this or a damaged 175 that got this quick and dirty fix. You obviously don’t wonder why there are no pictures of the end pin area of the rim, but I do. At the very least, there should be evidence of 3 filled holes or other residua from the original tailpiece. A truly invisible repair is pretty much impossible on a blonde like that, except perhaps for a handful of the world's finest and luckiest luthiers.
The best case scenario is that some fool actually did this to a perfectly good 175. I think the odds against this are overwhelming.Last edited by nevershouldhavesoldit; 01-04-2022 at 06:40 PM.
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01-04-2022 06:15 PM
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no chip on my shoulder. Sincerely wondered if you read my reply? And I do ok on guitar... Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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I never doubted that for a minute. Originally Posted by jzucker
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Well if we are going to have a pissing contest, I would like to take credit for being the first poster in this thread to discuss the Japanese multi-listing practice.
Whether this guitar is a fake, a one off stop-tail 175 or a modified 175 (maybe done well, maybe not), the fact remains that unless you are in Japan and can check it out beforehand, it is a poor risk to buy it hoping for the best.
As luck would have it (and I do believe that we make our own luck), I have three ES-175's and have zero interest in this one. Frankly, I don't even like a TOM on a 175. I want to hear some woody hollowbody sound from a 175 myself. A TOM and a Stop tail? No thanks, I'd rather play my Les Paul for that sustained electric guitar sound . YMMV
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It looks like a legit Gibson just modified. While I don’t expect staff to know much about archtop construction, I would also be pretty surprised if the purchasers at Miki Gakki were duped by a faked ES-175.
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At least some ES 135's have a fair amount of hollow-body character (supposedly the earlier ones have a balsa block). A guy I know (Matt Davis) has one (with P-100s) and he gets a beautiful tone out of it. I lot of it is his touch, though. Originally Posted by jzucker
I think this is closer. But come to think of it, i've never seen a blonde es-137.
But also, having owned a couple 137s, they do not have a lot of hollow character to them. They sound more like a 335 than a 175. Not sure if the 135 is any different...
SFAIK, it's his only electric guitar. Makes me feel pretty silly having more than one.
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You guys are making me nervous about my recent purchase from Kazakhstan. The internal bracing is redolent of a barnyard, but it has more thunk than my 175 VOS. I do have to play it outside, though, and if the ambient temperature reaches 45 degrees, I have to use both a face mask AND hand sanitizer or the guitar winds up in quarantine!
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Needs a Bigsby. Originally Posted by yebdox
You guys are making me nervous about my recent purchase from Kazakhstan. The internal bracing is redolent of a barnyard, but it has more thunk than my 175 VOS. I do have to play it outside, though, and if the ambient temperature reaches 45 degrees, I have to use both a face mask AND hand sanitizer or the guitar winds up in quarantine!
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Do you think I can make that fit with a palm bender at the same time? Also wondering about converting to a headless configuration to minimize neck dive.... Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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A shot of the butt to see old tp holes would settle this.
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I didn't see it listed on the Miki Gakki site yesterday. Admittedly it's hard to navigate a site in Japanese if one doesn't know Japanese. Originally Posted by ThatRhythmMan
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Just ship it to yourself via UPS or Fedex. It'll arrive headless. Originally Posted by yebdox
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They also have it on Reverb. Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
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It's still there right now. I even flushed the cache twice to be sure no stored pages or images remained: Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
It's also the only guitar pictured on their sites that has that mottled, damaged background behind it (see upper right corner of the image in the red rectangle).
I agree that it would be very odd for such a large and apparently reputable dealer to be hawking this without confirming that it's real. But it's also weird that they're using the exact same ratty pictures found on the other 6+ websites offering it for sale right now. I strongly doubt that Miki Gakki took this photo, given the perfection of every other picture on their websites. And I'm very surprised that they're using it. If they actually have the guitar, why didn't they take and use a complete set of good pics? These look to me like they could actually be pictures of pictures, which would be even more weird on their site. It's what I would expect from the "brokers" trying to score a profit by selling it short at a higher price.
I also strongly doubt that any reputable dealer would take in a fine guitar that had been bastardized with ill advised and amateurish "modifications", let alone try to sell it without showing pics of the altered areas and the Gibson label inside. I don't think that any large American chain like GC or SA would have taken it in trade or bought it outright, since they have a stock of good instruments to sell. Offering a Frankenaxe like this one at an appropriate price would take away sale of another instrument that's less likely to be returned or cause other problems for them. Trying to sell it at close to the retail value of an otherwise similar but unmodified one would guarantee it a permanent place on their wall.
No question at all that this is very strange. I'd love to know what's behind it, but I suspect we never will.
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Yep! Originally Posted by Woody Sound
In the immortal words of May West when asked by the judge if she was trying to show contempt for the court - "No, your honor - I'm trying to hide it!" Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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I guarantee Guitar Center would buy it and have a description that would say “Excellent condition” and nothing else. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
It's still there right now. I even flushed the cache twice to be sure no stored pages or images remained:
It's also the only guitar pictured on their sites that has that mottled, damaged background behind it (see upper right corner of the image in the red rectangle).
I agree that it would be very odd for such a large and apparently reputable dealer to be hawking this without confirming that it's real. But it's also weird that they're using the exact same ratty pictures found on the other 6+ websites offering it for sale right now. I strongly doubt that Miki Gakki took this photo, given the perfection of every other picture on their websites. And I'm very surprised that they're using it. If they actually have the guitar, why didn't they take and use a complete set of good pics? These look to me like they could actually be pictures of pictures, which would be even more weird on their site. It's what I would expect from the "brokers" trying to score a profit by selling it short at a higher price.
I also strongly doubt that any reputable dealer would take in a fine guitar that had been bastardized with ill advised and amateurish "modifications", let alone try to sell it without showing pics of the altered areas and the Gibson label inside. I don't think that any large American chain like GC or SA would have taken it in trade or bought it outright, since they have a stock of good instruments to sell. Offering a Frankenaxe like this one at an appropriate price would take away sale of another instrument that's less likely to be returned or cause other problems for them. Trying to sell it at close to the retail value of an otherwise similar but unmodified one would guarantee it a permanent place on their wall.
No question at all that this is very strange. I'd love to know what's behind it, but I suspect we never will.
The brokers almost always just steal the actual shop photos post them on eBay.
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Easy now, this is a family site. Originally Posted by Woody Sound
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Some people are very anal.... Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
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Reminds me of a song I heard once...
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You guys are worrying too much, even if things go wrong it’s easy to repair.
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That's a bridge too far. Originally Posted by grahambop
You guys are worrying too much, even if things go wrong it’s easy to repair.
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Reminds me of my decoupage days…. Once I switched to epoxy from shellac, I felt such freedom of expression! I decoupaged the neighbor’s expired cat to the hood of his car for him, still looks fresh to this day and that was 10 years ago. My dogs look a bit nervous when he drives by, though… Originally Posted by grahambop
You guys are worrying too much, even if things go wrong it’s easy to repair.
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