The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Posts 1 to 25 of 39
  1. #1

    User Info Menu

    Before I saw the pics this seemed like a very good deal, not that I'm interested
    Is that a couple screws holding the headstock on?
    Don't try this @ home folks....

    Update 1/26:
    This guitar w the same pics and description was sold on eBay yesterday in the Phila area. Now it's for sale on Reverb at a significantly reduced price in Belgium. I'd advise to proceed w caution if interested in purchasing, something stinks on ice here...

    Update #2. Sold again, hope no one got ripped off

    Gibson Super 400 Ces With Case | Naima's Boutique | Reverb



    Gibson Super 400 Ces With Case | eBay
    Last edited by wintermoon; 01-26-2022 at 04:30 PM.

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

    User Info Menu


    How can that be on such a guitar ?

  4. #3

    User Info Menu

    Every so often you let yourself think, gee, Can the world get any crazier?
    Then this Super 400 comes along.
    Yup, it can.
    Lol it’s been screwed.

  5. #4

    User Info Menu

    Frankly for the right price and a proper repair the guitar would make a killer player. Done correctly it will only effect the vintage value but sure make a great guitar to play and gig with.

  6. #5

    User Info Menu

    Geez, somebody was having a bad day. Just when you think it can't get any crazier! What a shame!

  7. #6

    User Info Menu

    OUCH!!! Heh heh, no mention in the description of how that happened or that it even did. It there was a major break and it was repaired like THAT, it certainly was not done with any kind of professional skill.
    Oh man!!!! I'll bet it was ugly when that happened.
    1) Hey, could you hand me that beer? Right next to the guitar?
    CRAAAASH!!
    2) F-----K!!!!! Maaaan that's totally F-----ked!
    3) Quick, get the elmers glue, the crazy glue, the aquarium sealer. Bring it all here.
    4) Hmmmm. That doesn't look half bad dude! Let's put it on craigslist. 6K for a Super 400. These things are like heroin for collectors. Just don't mention the "repair" in the ad. Normal wear. We're normal, right? Duuuuude.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by deacon Mark
    Frankly for the right price and a proper repair the guitar would make a killer player. Done correctly it will only effect the vintage value but sure make a great guitar to play and gig with.
    I thought of that deacon but seeing as how it was done so poorly to begin with it's probably not going to be easy to undo what's been done and get a solid repair. not impossible but......

  9. #8

    User Info Menu

    DIY Reptile Dentistry (Update 1/26!)-screen-shot-2022-01-20-5-09-42-pm-png

    Quote Originally Posted by deacon Mark
    Frankly for the right price and a proper repair the guitar would make a killer player. Done correctly it will only effect the vintage value but sure make a great guitar to play and gig with.
    What do you think? Doesn't that look like a vertical split line along where the scarf join line is? Is that a further horizontal crack in the back of the peghead?
    Honestly, I wouldn't trust anything short of an entire peghead join rebuild; I'd put a V join with a reenforced volute. That's a LOT of work.
    How'd you do it? I agree that it'd preserve the rest of the guitar, but gosh, it looks like that poor guitar's been through a lot. Would you take on a job like this? I guess you'd recommend the work be done if a customer brought it in the shop. Just curious if you'd do it and if it'd be undetectable when you're done.
    Last edited by Jimmy blue note; 01-20-2022 at 06:10 PM.

  10. #9

    User Info Menu

    Wow…..

  11. #10

    User Info Menu

    If youre really lucky that one screw might even touch the trussrod

  12. #11

    User Info Menu

    I wasn't prepared for that!

  13. #12
    Oddly enough it's located close to a gig I'll be playing Sat.

  14. #13

    User Info Menu

    Splines, lots of them, and some expensive refinishing. I've shelled out for lesser instruments.

  15. #14

    User Info Menu

    The eloquence of the text is also worth a moment's appreciation:

    "Vintage 2001 Gibson Super 400 Ces With Case. Very excellent condition w/hsc. One repair which does not effect playability. The gold is in excellent shape. One owner who has taken great care. There is a 14k gold logo rendered by an artist on the case. This ax will sell soon so buy it now with this tremendous savings. I am selling it because I want a player to enjoy this classic guitar as long as I have enjoyed it. Some candy is included in the sale. Sell the photos."

    However, while he (presumably "he" anyway) mentions the minor repair in passing, he doesn't mention the apparent crack in the top in the bass side upper bout by the fingerboard...

  16. #15

    User Info Menu

    Interesting thought on this guitar. Say you are Mark Campellone and can buy this at a decent price. Then repair it to completely no issue. I suppose you cannot win unless Mark Campellone actually buys and does that................but I wonder...........given I don't know the price to get it.

  17. #16

    User Info Menu

    Very excellent condition indeed! It would be a great project for someone. If you could get it for a couple of grand maybe. I'll pass.

  18. #17

    User Info Menu

    So what would it cost to get a first rate luthier to fix that the right way (i.e., structurally sound and as close to undetectable as possible)? I would think on the order of a couple of grand, considering how mangled that is. How much is a repaired Super 400 worth? 5 grand? I find it hard to see how it makes sense to take that on, unless maybe you can fix it yourself and want to go through the experience.

  19. #18

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by deacon Mark
    Interesting thought on this guitar. Say you are Mark Campellone and can buy this at a decent price. Then repair it to completely no issue. I suppose you cannot win unless Mark Campellone actually buys and does that................but I wonder...........given I don't know the price to get it.
    I've bought disasters like this, and it's always been for the personal challenge. I'll tell you why I don't take these in from customers. When they made this neck, it was joining two pieces of wood in a scarf join, easy to do especially when you've done it hundreds or thousands of times. Clamp it up glued, take it and rout the peghead, rout the neck/fingerboard and contour the neck (I'm simplifying, but...), it's an operation of well knowns. It's smooth sailing and it's a pretty basic woodworking project. Fast and painless.

    But this type of repair involves a LOT of time contemplating just HOW it's done, exploration of just how much crazy glue is under that fiasco, very probably deciding that it can't be used for any gluing surface even remotely encompassing the breadth and depth of that effected area, very likely (for me) cutting off the peghead veneer and crafting a new peghead with a V join, which given that I'm not working with two pieces of wood blanks but rather an existing neck with a considerably smaller working cross section, making this all fit and crafting the necessary jigs and rejoining and re-aligning the new peghead, and this is BEFORE any clean up and refinishing.

    This is the kind of restoration that, if you're Mark Campellone, means you could've done 5 necks of your own and it'd have your name on it, have your own contours, from your own 5 year waiting list, and all that is in your pocket with people who are happy to sing your praises.

    Now dealing with a repair like this, yeah maybe one person will sing your praises, but more likely they've, in the end, spent enough to get two campellones, and they're worried that given the precarious nature of traumatic repair, never feel it's 100% reliable. They're never going to own their real dream guitar because of what you had to charge. Maybe this 'little' boo boo was the result of a serious drop in the case from some transcontinental flight cargo mishap, the previous owner got the insurance settlement and has happily played it in frankenstein shape yet doesn't mention the grain line crack that can only be seen by mirror where the neck cantilevered upwards and broke the top grain along the neck block... Maybe the new application of the finish comes out ghost white because it's down to the bare wood and it takes a LONG time to match an aged nitro, and the customer looks at the bargain Super 400 and thinks "I paid WHAT for THIS??!". Maybe there was a hidden glue line crack in the neck pocket and 6 years from now the list of trauma related injuries starts to come to light. You don't think that's going to be one unhappy guitar owner who doesn't think their money in the repairman's pocket was a waste? Ask yourself: If the owner had this guitar, and paid a pretty penny for it, don't you think it would have occured to them to have it repaired properly...unless... that repair was prohibitively expensive, he wanted a quick fix, felt it was good enough and then wanted a quick buck.
    And in the end, if you're a luthier who has invested a lot of time to build a reputation, don't you think Mark Campellone is better off furthering their own cause for an infinitely better and integrally superior piece of their own soul?

    This is the reality. I've taken in broken guitars and repaired them...because I could and it only cost me my time, but I'll tell you this, I would NOT pay more than a grand for a bag of disasters like this and I would graciously pass the work to someone else, especially if I want my time to be spent furthering my own lutherie projects.

    Just sayin'

  20. #19
    I just looked at closeup shots on my tablet, wow, that's really nasty looking.
    If someone wanted to buy and try to fix it more power to them but personally I'd look the other way, there's always another guitar...

  21. #20

    User Info Menu

    All your comments are true, but given the price of Super 400s on the used market, and the fact there are always people with more money than sense, it might be “worth it” for some well-healed buyer to think he got a bargain and pay someone else to fix it up.

    In the car world we call these “fright pigs”. Some people have a history of buying them and seeing if they can invest a modest amount of money to make it worthwhile, then they brag about it incessantly to their friends.

    Or occasionally they put some money into, decide to bail, and then sell it to another sucker. (Which may be what happened here.)

    A couple of other thoughts—I realize Jimmy is approaching this from the expert luthier approach, but it’s possible that even though the fix looks horrible, structurally it’s not bad at all, and just needs some cosmetic work—start with removing the screws LOL. Or it can be fixed appropriately by someone with some woodworking skills to yield a very functional guitar—doesn’t have to be a high-end luthier, it could be a kid just out of school.

    Anyway, we spend a lot of time arguing about damaged guitars, maybe because the fixability and final value are so debatable. These guitars always get sold to someone in the end.

  22. #21

    User Info Menu

    BTW I am a woodworker with a fair amount of skills. Never done a guitar repair of this nature, but I did rescue a 1970 Electra bass from the trash, after a fretless conversion gone bad. Looks like the neighbor kid decided to pound a few posts into the ground with it after that. The neck was disconnected from the body.

    I fixed it up and made it into a very presentable and playable bass that I sold to Conor Oberst’s guitar tech and business partner for $100.

    DIY Reptile Dentistry (Update 1/26!)-b553d735-ca8e-4aaf-8872-e8a3a24ce846-jpg

  23. #22

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
    In the car world we call these “fright pigs”.
    Also from the car world, "there's an ass for every seat".

    I'm amazed that the seller doesn't describe the modification on that 400 as a microadjustment device for string angle over the nut.

  24. #23

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
    All your comments are true, but given the price of Super 400s on the used market, and the fact there are always people with more money than sense, it might be “worth it” for some well-healed buyer to think he got a bargain and pay someone else to fix it up.

    In the car world we call these “fright pigs”. Some people have a history of buying them and seeing if they can invest a modest amount of money to make it worthwhile, then they brag about it incessantly to their friends.

    Or occasionally they put some money into, decide to bail, and then sell it to another sucker. (Which may be what happened here.)

    A couple of other thoughts—I realize Jimmy is approaching this from the expert luthier approach, but it’s possible that even though the fix looks horrible, structurally it’s not bad at all, and just needs some cosmetic work—start with removing the screws LOL. Or it can be fixed appropriately by someone with some woodworking skills to yield a very functional guitar—doesn’t have to be a high-end luthier, it could be a kid just out of school.

    Anyway, we spend a lot of time arguing about damaged guitars, maybe because the fixability and final value are so debatable. These guitars always get sold to someone in the end.
    I think a well-heeled buyer who buys that S400 might not be so well-healed in the frontal lobe area, though like the guitar we'd probably need to know more about the original injury and treatment decisions to draw any firm conclusions ...

    I'm not an expert woodworker at all. I come from a long line of men whose wives wish they wouldn't try to fix things and would just bring them to a competent repair person from the get-go, but no, we just have to try it ourselves first. That guitar looks like I fixed it. Hint: don't buy a guitar I fixed.
    Last edited by John A.; 01-21-2022 at 01:34 PM.

  25. #24

    User Info Menu

    The biggest issue with getting this one right is that you don't know how well it was glued to begin with. Which type of glue was used? The presence of the screws suggests the possibility that the glue wasn't doing the job by itself. Attempting to re repair a poor repair can be complicated.

    Jimmy blue....these are not scarf jointed necks.

    The pics aren't the greatest, but it looks like the top may have been over buffed. The lacquer looks flat. You can't see where it shrinks into the spruce grain. I would rather see some superficial imperfections than a an over buffed top. This always bugs me. It makes lacquer look more like a poly finish.

    If I took this job on if would be by the hour.

  26. #25

    User Info Menu

    My thought was simply replace the entire neck! Headstock and all!