blauserk
Active member
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2002
- Messages
- 1,778
This guy recently arrived at my house. Well-worn, but fabulously playing ES-5 Switchmaster.
You sometimes see guitar ads that say "guitar was never gigged." This is not that guitar. Some jazzer gigged the living hell out of this guitar. As you can see, a lot of playing wear both where the arm wrapped over the guitar and on the back of the f-hole; no gold left on the top of the pups; very little finish on the back of the neck; no finish left on the rim of the neck heel, which is a bit rounder on the treble side. Although the guitar has never had a strap button and there's no wear to indicate a strap connected at the headstock (i.e., it was played seated), he managed to wear through the finish at two points on the back of the body, I guess from buttons on his suit.
Two things of note. As noted in another thread, it appears that the owner managed to wear through the side of the bridge PAF. Middle pickup is lowered; looks like he picked there. The other pickup adjustment screws are still shiny; the bridge pup adjustment screw is is badly corroded, presumably from hand sweat and funk.
Anyone have another explanation?
They're jake underneath:
But although the guitar is a 1960 production, the bridge is a wired ABR-1, with mostly unbeveled screws--a couple have been replaced more recently with beveled screws. The wire arrived in 1962, right?
So what gives? Did the prior owner wear the first bridge out and have to replace it with a wired ABR-1? Or, as has been discussed in other posts, is this an instance where the Switchmasters were low-enough volume guitars that this hung around the Gibson factory until the wired-ABR-1 era before being sold?
If you go to my Lilypix account (same username), you can see larger, more detailed versions of the photos above.
You sometimes see guitar ads that say "guitar was never gigged." This is not that guitar. Some jazzer gigged the living hell out of this guitar. As you can see, a lot of playing wear both where the arm wrapped over the guitar and on the back of the f-hole; no gold left on the top of the pups; very little finish on the back of the neck; no finish left on the rim of the neck heel, which is a bit rounder on the treble side. Although the guitar has never had a strap button and there's no wear to indicate a strap connected at the headstock (i.e., it was played seated), he managed to wear through the finish at two points on the back of the body, I guess from buttons on his suit.
Two things of note. As noted in another thread, it appears that the owner managed to wear through the side of the bridge PAF. Middle pickup is lowered; looks like he picked there. The other pickup adjustment screws are still shiny; the bridge pup adjustment screw is is badly corroded, presumably from hand sweat and funk.
Anyone have another explanation?
They're jake underneath:
But although the guitar is a 1960 production, the bridge is a wired ABR-1, with mostly unbeveled screws--a couple have been replaced more recently with beveled screws. The wire arrived in 1962, right?
So what gives? Did the prior owner wear the first bridge out and have to replace it with a wired ABR-1? Or, as has been discussed in other posts, is this an instance where the Switchmasters were low-enough volume guitars that this hung around the Gibson factory until the wired-ABR-1 era before being sold?
If you go to my Lilypix account (same username), you can see larger, more detailed versions of the photos above.