Apologies, but I am having zero results with forum searches, so I will ask a question...well, I'll try to start with only one.
I am awaiting delivery Thursday (if I am home when it arrives) of a guitar I was willing to take a chance on. There are a lot of things wrong about it, possibly even the listing, and I have seen SO many inconsistencies in Gibson listings I don't flinch anymore.
It's supposed to be a 1949/1950 ES-150 with several items changed, including the P-90 pickup.
I bought a bargain altered 1956 ES-135 in 1986 that was misidentified repeatedly until internet access provided more info than previously available. I had restorations done (that were possible), and it is a really nice looking and sounding 'keeper'.
So I took a chance this time and was willing to invest a little more than last time in another abused guitar. I will verify for myself upon delivery the lower bout width and scale length and dental mirror/flashlight tour of the interior.
I will take my own photos and come back. I'll start with a few descriptions of not the awful discrepancies, but the mysterious ones.
1) It has no pickguard. OK, maybe it got ugly & was removed. But I cannot see any prior mounting holes. I will check in person instead of the listing photos. I do see a lot of photos of ES-150's with no finger rest/pickguard but not enough photo quality to see whether there were holes from missing hardware.
2) The end of the fingerboard is elevated parallel above the body in a way I cannot see in lousy internet photos of other ES-150's or L-5(x). I am no expert, but did not expect this detail. The neck heel and set joint look 'normal' to me (like it's not a neck set problem causing the gap).
3) I find errors in re-used seller listings frequently, and only worry about them where necessary. Seller has a contradiction in scale length...25-1/2" in one place and 24-3/4" elsewhere. I will verify. Either it's a sloppy re-use of another listing, or the guitar has a scale & body dimension combination anomaly.
4) The P-90 was replaced for some reason with a Seymour Duncan Antiquity Dogear P-90. I personally encountered an early 50's P-90 with an open winding. Maybe that's why, or some other irrational reason. I still own it (rewound but not ideal, so I may have it rebuilt). The adjustable pole screws are absurdly extended (looks like 3-6 mm in the photo). Maybe someone used a bridge P-90. (Stew-Mac Parsons St. P-90 bridge version warns that version has no height adjustment & is not suitable for some neck installations). Or maybe it should have a spacer or other trim ring for this guitar. I thought it was an optical illusion initially, but it clearly is further from the strings than normal, perhaps partly due to the elevated fingerboard end and/or partly due to incompetent P-90 installation height.
From 1, 2, & 3 above, I am prepared to discover this may be something else other than an ES-150. I am going to look for a s/n or FON inside, as there is none on the headstock. I am also going to look for other anomalies. I think I read that Spiegel or Montgomery Ward Gibson builds may have the short scale neck on the 17" wide body and their own markings.
5) It has simple dot neck inlays. Maybe that isn't odd for 1949 or 1950, but inlays were the last thing I was concerned about in searches for other '150's. If the lower bout is actually 16-1/4" I will protest that it is an ES-125, but I don't think ES-125 has an elevated (gap) between fingerboard end and the top of the guitar. My '56 'ES-135 has the fancier inlays (I hate calling them trapezoids, because to me they are NOT...the sides are curved, unlike any math class trapezoid. I want to compare them to ancient Grecian urns but have no clue what part of history to reference...'just real old'. Maybe ES-150 was truly a lowly model that quickly earned its place in history, but plain peasant dot inlays is just so...humble...
I did say I'd ask a question...I almost forgot. Do the apparent (so far) absence of finger rest/pickguard screw holes near the fingerboard and rear waist/ binding and the parallel gap between fingerboard end and top plate sound meaningful to you (patient) readers?
Last peculiarity (to me)...I see no upper strap button (or hole) on the neck heel (top or back), but the 'diamond' trapeze tailpiece that has the expected strap button is 'newer'. Minor detail, but I just saw a photo of someone (Mary Osborne?) with a guitar that had something tied around the headstock as a strap. Maybe strap buttons didn't appear until a certain era when people stopped playing formally seated.
Neck-end strap buttons weren't standard on acoustic and acoustic-adjacent guitars until later than this guitar. Some acoustic archtops are still made without neck-end strap buttons. I have a '90s Heritage archtop that did not come with a neck-end strap button.
Some (more expensive) Gibsons had a tongue of wood supporting the end of the fingerboard over the body. The L5 is an example. Some less-expensive Gibsons had a fingerboard that was set closer to the body and had either a very thin tongue or no tongue at all.
I ordered pickup riser set, reproduction guard/rest & hardware, and reached out to VVG about rebuild of my 'early 50's P-90.
I found to have an open winding & had someone rewind it, but he observed degradation on the bobbin and it had dimensions unlike any of the other P-90 components he had. So I always thought it wasn't 'done yet', but I didn't have a place for it.
Now I do have a use for a properly repaired vintage P-90.
The penciled information inside makes no sense to me. It doesn't seem to conform to any of the documented FON or s/n formats.
I don't see 1950 & later specimens with dot neck...usually the large inlays I prefer to call urns (parallel tops, curved sides) to trapezoids.
1946 had a different logo. 1947-1948 & maybe 1949 seem to have logo like mine & dot inlays.
It's documented that FON's were commonly absent in 1947.
I don't get to change the year based on conjecture, so I'll go do another lap around the interior so I know I looked everywhere.
Intonation is increasingly sharp when fretting progressively higher up the neck...and the bridge almost contacts the pointer hardware under the pot hardware so it does seem to be positioned incorrectly
I got the guard/rest, mounting bracket & P-90 spacers today. I am argumentatively sure this is older, like 47-48, but only want to know for the sake of knowing. The guard was for 1950-1952.
I e-mailed Pete Biltoft about my previously rewound (someone else) old adjustable P-90. He asked for photos & agreed the pole spacing looks weird. He used a photo app that calculates dimensions including angles from a reference (metal ruler inserted in photo as requested).
He gave me a couple period-accurate rebuild quotes depending what he actually finds. If there is an audible benefit to the older P-90 over the Duncan Antiquity, I'll take the Biltoft solution. Otherwise the old P-90 sits in a drawer.
Then there is the need to find a case, ideally locally. I am 90 minutes from Elderly in Lansing MI so maybe I'll call ahead. Most unlikely at other stores in my area.
I say 1947-1949 because 1946 had different headstock logo. '50-56 had fancy inlays (& bound fingerboard?). Post-war were reportedly the worst for missing or inconsistent internal factory marking. Like they didn't give a rodent's hindquarters...
I bought P-90 riser/spacer kit(s). First the MojoTone set, than upon seeing how many more sizes and number come in the Lollar set, ordered one of those too.
I had an open-winding early 50's P-90 rewound by someone as a favor and he complained the bobbin had a problem and he didn't have a same-spacing replacement bobbin to replace it with. He finished the rewind 12+ years ago. I sent it to Pete Biltoft for evaluation, since it's elderly and perhaps appropriate making sure that it was properly re-done. An apparently bad photo made Pete think it did indeed have weird pole spacing, but he confirmed it was normal upon inspection, magnets are close in Gauss strength to his, inductance is slightly higher probably due to the metal backing plate, and resistance is close to his. Wiring is opposite polarity (-) of normal (+). He couldn't determine the age with confidence. Me neither.
I kind of suspect the Seymour Duncan Antiquity Dogear P90 'UPGRADE' (?!?) is focused on 60's solid-body market, so I decided I could not violate this guitar more than it already has been, it can't go back to original, so why not use something else? I decided the rewound old P90 goes back into a drawer for hibernation.
I bought a Vintage Vibe Guitars/Biltoft Blade pickup in Dogear P90 footprint. I chose for my two magnet set options AlNiCo-ii (installed) and AlNiCo-iii as the extras for a rainy day. Pete suggested 3/16" spacing to start.
So the question is whether anyone has an opinion on -ii or -iii AlNiCo differences. This composite of choices are kind of out in the weeds and I may not be able to predict what's right before it's set up and played a bit. Martin Retro Monels 11-50 were chosen because that's the existing string set gauge and I met three people in a week who use them (two electric & one acoustic).
All I can say is that I'm aiming for an older sound and maybe the low magnetism of the Monel alloy will contribute to that along with the Blade pickup design.
Hopefully the setup doesn't reveal any more surprises.
Oh, I poked around inside the guitar with an inexpensive USB industrial endoscope (I'd call it a borescope because that's more industrial inspection-oriented and endoscope suggests diagnostic to me, perhaps ignorantly). I got bored after not really seeing much of interest other than the weird pencil'ed FON or whatever it is). I realized there wouldn't likely be any other markings in there anyway. I'm lucky there is one. There are never two.
I'm deciding whether it would be wiser to take the guitar to someone familiar with guitars of that era instead of picking a local luthier I trust but who has minimal knowledge or interest in jazz, let alone my experimental tack.
When I think about what I actually play … like ACTUALLY … it’s 95% solo or trio. So I’m either getting a lot of mileage out of moving bass punches in my solo playing, or I’m playing some pseudo...
I attended a trio gig yesterday. Not jazz. Two guitars, bass and three part harmony vocals. Pop tunes of various styles. My personal favorite was a very nice version of Suite Judy Blue Eyes with the...
They’re just there to decorate the work of the rhythm section. Actually I have no beef with brass and reeds. Some keyboard players on the other hand … Although no complaints with our current chair.
Here's 3 choruses of RC in Bb about 140.
Would have done more but the beginning of this Brazil/Norway match has been interesting, I keep getting distracted.
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