Strange note on the label of my L5N

[Fred Archtop]

Dear jazzers,

Although I own this (great!) guitar for quite a few years, I've never realized that there is something noted on bottom part of the label. It is written 1 1/8.



Any clue on what it could stand for?

Here is the full guitar. It is from 1940.



Many thanks for your help.

Best and take care.

[jeremiahzellers]

Can’t help with your question, but my god that’s a nice looking guitar.

[wintermoon]

it refers to the bridge as Gibson was experimenting during that time w/ at least two different size heights
there were also two different corresponding top thicknesses/neck angles

[ccroft]

That's some esoteric stuff right there. Seems wmoon prolly knows more about Gibsons than Gibson!

[Fred Archtop]

it refers to the bridge as Gibson was experimenting during that time w/ at least two different size heights
there were also two different corresponding top thicknesses/neck angles

Thanks Wintermoon! I've recently watched the video made by Matt Munisteri on his new L5N from 1948. Here, he says it was a special order with a thin top, 1/16 inch thinner than usual tops. He also insists on the thinner bridge this guitar is equipped with.

Maybe it's the same feature with my guitar? It has a bridge that seems as thin as on Matt's guitar. In addition, it's a 2-footed bridge, as it occured on some old L5 I read.

I would love to hear you on this point.



FWIW, the guitar was delivered to Dave Barbour, husband of Peggy Lee, and guitarist in the Benny Goodman band, on April 2nd 1940.

Here is the guitar in Dave's hands, along with Peggy Lee.


Same guitar with Dave, Peggy Lee, and Woody Herman.


The guitar can be heard here, on this demo I did years ago.

Many thanks and regards.

[wintermoon]

Hey there Fred, been awhile hope you're well!
I'm not certain that you could special order those mid 30s/early 40s L-5s and Super 400s w certain bridge heights/top thicknesses when they were making them or you just got what they shipped out which seems odd, but I suppose it's possible. I'd be very interested to know more on the subject.
I haven't seen an orig 2 footed rosewood bridge on either of those models either but 20s/early 30s 16" L-5s came w 2 footed ebony bridges. All of the original pre 60s 17" L-5s and 18" Supers I've encountered had single footed rosewood bridges, that doesn't necessarily mean 2 footers don't exist, though I've never seen one and I kind of doubt it.. I'm almost certain that by the time Matt's guitar was made in the late 40s they were standardized, I think the different bridges and top thicknesses was a prewar experiment and I'd be very surprised if his had the bridge height written on the label like yours or that it was custom ordered w a thinner top.

I think I mentioned when you acquired Dave's guitar, I think it's been 4 or 5 yrs by now? that it has the rare optional/upgraded metal button Kluson Sealfast tuners as opposed to the standard Catalin plastic buttons Yours originally had an earlier L-5 tailpiece, likely the hinged version judging from old photos. I can tell in one photo you posted w Peggy at the table its the earlier design though the hinge isn't visible. The one on it now is a postwar t.p. w 3 engraved lines on the crossbar. It's possible the original broke at the hinge as they sometimes do, but that's really not a big deal of course, it's Dave Barbours guitar! He was a really fine player that's all but forgotten today unfortunately, but thankfully you're keeping his name out there in your own way by owning and more importantly making good music w it!

[Fred Archtop]

I think I mentioned when you acquired Dave's guitar, I think it's been 4 or 5 yrs by now? that it has the rare metal button optional Kluson Sealfast tuners. Yours originally had an earlier L-5 tailpiece, likely the hinged version judging from old photos. I can tell in one photo you posted w Peggy at the table its the earlier design though the hinge isn't visible. The one on it now is a postwar t.p. w 3 engraved lines on the crossbar. It's possible the original broke at the hinge as they sometimes do, but that's really not a big deal of course, it's Dave Barbours guitar! He was a really fine player that's all but forgotten today unfortunately, but thankfully you're keeping his name out there in your own way by owning and more importantly making good music w it!

Thanks Wintermoon for all your knowledge. You're such an educated person when it comes to archtops! When I acquired this L5N, it was equipped with an Ibanez L5 style tailpiece, and I reverted it myself to a postwar tailpiece because the Ibanez one was such a shame... Here is a photo attached where this guitar, still in the hands of dave, has a non original tailpiece. Dave was probably a kind of tinkerer and he must have taken off the original tailpiece for obscure reasons.


This is a fabulous guitar that I've decided to honor in my last album with a series of nice pictures done by a pro photographer. Here are 2 of them:




Best and take care.

[Rob MacKillop]

Fred, it’s such a joy to hear you play. Really, you are one of my favourite players - always tasteful and (an odd word to chose, perhaps) respectful. How can I get hold of your album?

[Lionelsax]

Great ! It's too late !
Gibson, Inc. Factory and Office Building - Wikipedia
Maybe the new factory will maintain it for free, who knows ?

[wintermoon]

Ah, so! I've seen that pic before and forgot about that tailpiece. Maybe he didn't like the mass of an L-5 t.p. and preferred a trapeze? Or maybe the orig broke and that's what he replaced it with. Have you checked the mounting hole pattern? But anythings possible w him, you're correct, he was a tinkerer. He put dampers in the strings between the t.p.s and bridges on some of his guitars.
He had a custom single pickup ES-5 iirc that might not have had a stock t.p. as well. He plays it in some old videos w Peggy.

Were you able to find out any history about what happened to the L-5 after Dave owned it?

But enough Gibson specs for now, those pics are great! Congrats my friend......

[Fred Archtop]

Were you able to find out any history about what happened to the L-5 after Dave owned it?

I bought it in jan 2018 to François Charle vintage guitar shop in Paris, probably the best vintage shop for old Gibsons in France. The guitar was here for a couple of months.

I met later on the former owner, a French archtop afficionado who has a tremendous collection of guitars. He told me he bought it year ago in the US, in Florida if I am correct. It was René Duchaussoir, the famous gibson book writer, who unveiled that Dave Barbour was the first owner. René compared the figures of the flamed maple between this guitar and the numerous pics that can be found on the internet with Dave Barbour and his L5N.

It's the guitar you can see and hear it on this historical video from 1942 and it still had the original tailpiece at that time.

Best and take care.

[Rob MacKillop]

So cool to see your guitar in a b&w movie. It just goes to prove that we are just caretakers, not owners.

[oldane]

Here's another video from 1950 of Peggy Lee's hit song with Dave Barbour's quartet. I tend to like this slower version better than the one with Goodman. The lazy tempo suits the song and Peggy Lee's singing well. Class and elegance not seen too often these days. Unfortunately, the image quality of the video is too bad to see any finer details of the guitar other than at this point it was equipped with a built in PU (a p90?) and controls (but maybe it's not the same guitar?). It sems to have the same kind of replaced tailpiece as the one showed above. Barbour has dampened the strings between the bridge and the tailpiece, so who knows, maybe he just didn't like the sympathetic ringing of the big brass L5 tailpieces and replaced them with something like the ones from say the ES125 which rings less.

[Cavalier]

My guess would have been #1 of a series or batch of 8 as many companies did such runs of a model back then. Economies of scale and all that. Did you ever measure the top thickness?

Great piece of history,.

[Fred Archtop]

My guess would have been #1 of a series or batch of 8 as many companies did such runs of a model back then. Economies of scale and all that. Did you ever measure the top thickness?

Great piece of history,.

Great guess! No idea of top thickness. I'll ask my guitar tech as I don't have the tool myself.

Best.

[wintermoon]

My guess would have been #1 of a series or batch of 8 as many companies did such runs of a model back then. Economies of scale and all that. Did you ever measure the top thickness?

Great piece of history,.

interesting theory but it's known that it refers to the bridge height.
wish I could link an article but a quick search didn't turn up anything, but the info is out there somewhere.
I'm certain George Gruhn can verify it.

ps the French collector/historian was the late Andre Duchossoir

[bluenote61]

Here's another video from 1950 of Peggy Lee's hit song with Dave Barbour's quartet. I tend to like this slower version better than the one with Goodman. The lazy tempo suits the song and Peggy Lee's singing well. Class and elegance not seen too often these days. Unfortunately, the image quality of the video is too bad to see any finer details of the guitar other than at this point it was equipped with a built in PU (a p90?) and controls (but maybe it's not the same guitar?). It sems to have the same kind of replaced tailpiece as the one showed above. Barbour has dampened the strings between the bridge and the tailpiece, so who knows, maybe he just didn't like the sympathetic ringing of the big brass L5 tailpieces and replaced them with something like the ones from say the ES125 which rings less.

The guitar in that video is a L5 with cutaway, whereas OP's L5 is a non-cut.

[Fred Archtop]

The guitar in that video is a L5 with cutaway, whereas OP's L5 is a non-cut.

Definitely not the same guitar; That one must be an ES5 that was also owned by Dave Barbour.

[bluenote61]

Definitely not the same guitar; That one must be an ES5 that was also owned by Dave Barbour.

Yes, you're right.

[Ol' Fret]

Not much esoteric science (at most some confusion?) when prerouting archtop guitar plates using an old-style copy router - which was what they used back then.
Tops: thick or thin? (prewargibsonl-5.com)

It all depends on the leading and clamping of the soundboard (or back plate) during the routing process.
On a pantograph copy router it's relatively easy to offer different top thicknesses. My guess is that they led the router bit the way as I've tried to outline below.
In theory, they could as well have routed the upper surface of the soundboard, and afterwards, in the second step, deepened the carving of the bottom side of the board - but I think that would be a little more complex to achieve, demand thicker wood billets, etc.
It's hard to get the idea that they tried different neck angles at the same time when offering two soundboard thicknesses, but wo knows? After decades of wood deformation it can hardly be measured today in a reliable way ... the same is unfortunately for measuring if these two versions (thicker/thinner top thickness) show a different arching height or not. Down the road it's an academic question, if the guitar sounds (and the player plays) great, like in this case.

[oldane]

The guitar in that video is a L5 with cutaway, whereas OP's L5 is a non-cut.

Oops, how could I miss that.

[ThatRhythmMan]

Here’s the label in the Al Valenti owned 1940 L-5.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Fred Archtop]

Here’s the label in the Al Valenti owned 1940 L-5.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks! Same annotation, same year.

Best.

[Ol' Fret]

From Tops: thick or thin? (prewargibsonl-5.com):

<< Author Tom Van Hoose mentions this on page 10 of his book: 'The Gibson Super 400', where he states: "The difference in thickness between the two tops was approximately 1/16 th of an inch, and the thin top version had a somewhat lower, thinner bridge base than the thick top version". >>

<< So, did the terms 'thick' and 'thin' refer to the actual thickness of the finished top or the thickness of the blank from which it was carved? >>

<< Stewart adds: " Andre Duchossoir (author of 'Gibson Electrics - The Classic Years') suggested that the billets themselves might have been different sizes ... >>


An archtop guitar bridge can comparably easy be changed or replaced, while the guitar won't change its main tonal character.
What's more important: the guitar body or the bridge? And how would the guitar salesperson or customer know that they had to deal with a different guitar body?
Yes, Gibson, IMO, must have used spruce blanks of different thicknesses to make thick top (the regular model?) or thin top models, and that was to what the "1 1/8" had been pointing. Conversely, this would imply that they used two different soundboard templates or models for reading off when making the copies on the pantograph router.


Whether they used just one template (like on my oversimplified little drawing above) or two different ones for the routing process: not only gets the soundboard thickness changed, but also the arching curves and their height.
We all know that a thinner top, especially a thin recurve, results in a boomier sound. My 1996 L-5WM with a comparably thin top, and very little gradation differences between the center and the recurve, is the boomy monster. A thick top tends to be sharper and more percussive, just like one would expect of many prewar L-5s.
An insight into the top thickness is given on Gibson L-5 top thickness (prewargibsonl-5.com) , and we see the thickness range reaching up to a bold 7.6 mm, with many measuring points reading around 5.6 mm.

When you thin out such a guitar top by 1/16", using the same tonebar dimension and string set, you'll weaken the top stability considerably: stiffness is proportional to thickness cubed (not squared!). The solution of the luthiers has been for centuries to add stiffness by simply increasing the arching height. Of course, this is neglected, if your CNC-machine puts out hundreds of identically dimensioned soundboards, and, yes, a major post-processing by hand would be possible, though quite time-consuming and demanding for a highly trained and skilled person, thus hard to find in the archtop guitar world today.


Anyway, it's the arching shape that has a fundamental influence on the timbre. The slighest change in arching will increase the amplitude of some frequencies, and decrease others. Overtones are very important for coloration, completeness and presence of tone. Also, these help us hear and project articulation.

[floatingpickup]

Hey there Fred, been awhile hope you're well!
I'm not certain that you could special order those mid 30s/early 40s L-5s and Super 400s w certain bridge heights/top thicknesses when they were making them or you just got what they shipped out which seems odd, but I suppose it's possible. I'd be very interested to know more on the subject.
I haven't seen an orig 2 footed rosewood bridge on either of those models either but 20s/early 30s 16" L-5s came w 2 footed ebony bridges. All of the original pre 60s 17" L-5s and 18" Supers I've encountered had single footed rosewood bridges, that doesn't necessarily mean 2 footers don't exist, though I've never seen one and I kind of doubt it.. I'm almost certain that by the time Matt's guitar was made in the late 40s they were standardized, I think the different bridges and top thicknesses was a prewar experiment and I'd be very surprised if his had the bridge height written on the label like yours or that it was custom ordered w a thinner top.

I think I mentioned when you acquired Dave's guitar, I think it's been 4 or 5 yrs by now? that it has the rare optional/upgraded metal button Kluson Sealfast tuners as opposed to the standard Catalin plastic buttons Yours originally had an earlier L-5 tailpiece, likely the hinged version judging from old photos. I can tell in one photo you posted w Peggy at the table its the earlier design though the hinge isn't visible. The one on it now is a postwar t.p. w 3 engraved lines on the crossbar. It's possible the original broke at the hinge as they sometimes do, but that's really not a big deal of course, it's Dave Barbours guitar! He was a really fine player that's all but forgotten today unfortunately, but thankfully you're keeping his name out there in your own way by owning and more importantly making good music w it!

Wintermoon:
I have often wondered when the two-fitted bridge became available. I have tried to get a definitive answer and I assumed that Tom Van Hoose’s Super 400 book is probably reliable. On page 115, he seems to say the two-footed bridge base came out when the tune-o-matic saddle was introduced around 1954. Does that sound right to you?
Keith