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1960 Burst Restoration

StSpider

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Aug 24, 2002
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2,148

But he converted it into the guitar that it originally supposed to be/what gibson first intended it to be.


I don't want to beat a dead horse, but this is simply false. If anything, Gibson meant for this to be a Custom. That's why they sold it as such.
 

ourmaninthenorth

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Mar 28, 2009
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If this were the case...and this may have been what you meant...they would have had to lift the Standard off the line as a body only, before the neck was attached (this would be my guess as to what happened). Since the binding channel for a Custom is different than that of a Standard, then routing for the binding would have taken place before a neck was attached. And when they did attach the neck, it received a Custom neck, which would be different than a Standard.


Frank


As erudite as ever Frank...:salude
 

MeHereNow

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Aug 13, 2009
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I don't want to beat a dead horse, but this is simply false. If anything, Gibson meant for this to be a Custom. That's why they sold it as such.

You killed the proverbial horse in my opinion by posting this:

"Frankly, I'm appalled that someone can take something cool unique and of historic value and destroy it like this. So sad and distasteful. Besides, this will never be a real burst and you know it. You talk about chew marks? Really? We obsess about these things because they offer cool insights of the manufacturing process that happened in the Gibson factory back in the day. This guitar was another testimony of it, and now it's not. It's just a fake.

This is no "restoration" at all, if anything, it's the exact opposite of it. "

But that's your opinion offcourse, and i respect that.

"False"?

Can you explain why did this custom have a "standard burst" body then with all the unique features belonging to a "standard burst"?
Love to hear your explanation..

 

J.D.

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I don't know the history and am genuinely curious. How was it authenticated as a 1960 body?
 

Tom Wittrock

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No Tom, but I can point you in the right direction to the Department of Sarcasm....:laugh2:

Sarcasm? Please add a smilie so we know what you mean. :ganz


The Standard was in the toilet in 1960, Gibson had a Custom order to fill, not rocket science...

But Customs lasted into 1961. Every 1961 LP Custom [black, archtop] I have seen had an all mahogany body.
Grabbing a Standard at that time makes little sense. :hmm
 

ourmaninthenorth

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Best guess...

An order for a Custom that Gibson lifted a Standard off the line to complete.

Lets face it, contextually the Standard in 1960 was coming to the end of it's life...I think it's a reasonable scenario. I doubt this would have been a big deal and simply Gibson filling an order with what they had to hand.

It can of course join the plethora of Maple capped Customs from the 50's....that is of course if anyone knows of one...

Serial number(s) ?

Anyone?



Sarcasm? Please add a smilie so we know what you mean. :ganzBut Customs lasted into 1961. Every 1961 LP Custom [black, archtop] I have seen had an all mahogany body.
Grabbing a Standard at that time makes little sense. :hmm


I think quoting or highlighting my post in full lessens the perceived ambiguity of meaning. I'm sardonically refuting the claim that a 50's Custom has bit the dust at the hands of this restoration. And asking if anyone knows of a single example of a 50's Maple capped Custom: in other words I share your assertion that there aren't any that I've seen.



To your second point -


I think it's impossible to pin this down, hence my use of the words "best guess".

However that is exactly what we have, a Standard body, finished as a Custom. It may be an indicator of the waning value that the Standards had to Gibson at the time, when one specific model body became a donor for a distinctly different model that still had some sales legs left.

Who knows...
 

J.D.

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Tom Wittrock said:
But Customs lasted into 1961. Every 1961 LP Custom [black, archtop] I have seen had an all mahogany body. Grabbing a Standard at that time makes little sense. :hmm

That is exactly what I was thinking, hence my question.
 

VamboRool

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Nov 25, 2015
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I think the world lost probably the only original maple topped Custom which is a shame. Who knows, maybe Gibson was thinking of giving the Custom a maple top and did a prototype and that's why it has the switch wiring rout of a Standard. Would there be anyone still alive that could say yea or nay to this? Is the shipping ledger for this serial number available? What does it say? IMHO, the guitar left the factory as a Custom, look at the top body binding that was under the fingerboard that had to be put on before the Custom neck with ebony fingerboard and large headstock was installed. If the re-fin had been done in cherry red or cherry sunburst and it remained a Custom, it would have shown off the maple top and still have been a guitar that Gibson actually produced albeit in very limited quantities.

Amazing woodworking skills none the less.
 

marshall1987

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Jan 30, 2005
Messages
3,278
When the guitar was acquired and prior to the conversion work, the incorrect neck specs with the 1 9/16" nut width begged for a fix IMO. I can't even play a guitar with a skinny '60s nut width of 1 9/16".

So if I were going to keep the guitar, something would have to be done about the quirky neck. Instead of doing all the extensive neck work with added shims, inserts, veneers, wings, tall binding, etc., I think I would prefer a nice clean reneck with old mahogany and Brazilian rosewood. Nothin' wrong with the work done to the body IMO.

At the end of the day, the OPs guitar conversion project was a worthy endeavor that resulted in a killer vintage guitar, with PAFs and other vintage parts, and overall, of the player grade.
 

Tom Wittrock

Les Paul Forum Co-Owner
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Messages
42,567
I think quoting or highlighting my post in full lessens the perceived ambiguity of meaning. I'm sardonically refuting the claim that a 50's Custom has bit the dust at the hands of this restoration. And asking if anyone knows of a single example of a 50's Maple capped Custom: in other words I share your assertion that there aren't any that I've seen.



To your second point -


I think it's impossible to pin this down, hence my use of the words "best guess".

However that is exactly what we have, a Standard body, finished as a Custom. It may be an indicator of the waning value that the Standards had to Gibson at the time, when one specific model body became a donor for a distinctly different model that still had some sales legs left.

Who knows...

Okay, I [finally] understand. :##

:salude

So, could this be a Standard converted to a Custom? And now restored? :spabout
 

deytookerjaabs

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Nov 6, 2016
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On the day it left the factory and was stamped with a serial number....that's what it was/is.


Just because it appears to be a one-off you don't get to use mental gymnastics of an owner concocted theory to re-define "original." Obviously the folks who assembled it were aware of using a standard body and for whatever reason sent it out the door that way. You don't know the reason..and you full well know what it originally was.



So, I vote nay on "restoration," that's a conversion. Not that I'm for or against what was done, I don't really have an emotional connection here.

Or, I'll go restore every '59 EB-2 by routing/plugging/reneck into a '59 ES-335, right? I mean, it was just silly they used those magical 335 bodies to build those darned basses, let's restore'em! :laugh2:
 

VamboRool

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Nov 25, 2015
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424
On the day it left the factory and was stamped with a serial number....that's what it was/is.


Just because it appears to be a one-off you don't get to use mental gymnastics of an owner concocted theory to re-define "original." Obviously the folks who assembled it were aware of using a standard body and for whatever reason sent it out the door that way. You don't know the reason..and you full well know what it originally was.



So, I vote nay on "restoration," that's a conversion. Not that I'm for or against what was done, I don't really have an emotional connection here.

Or, I'll go restore every '59 EB-2 by routing/plugging/reneck into a '59 ES-335, right? I mean, it was just silly they used those magical 335 bodies to build those darned basses, let's restore'em! :laugh2:

I had the same idea, but converting all those pimped out ES-355s and turn them into dot neck ES-335s.
 

brandtkronholm

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Dec 3, 2006
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2,737
I thought it was awesome as it was, but so much had already happened to it prior to this conversion that I suppose it just really doesn’t matter.

Custard is perfect.
 

StSpider

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Aug 24, 2002
Messages
2,148
You killed the proverbial horse in my opinion by posting this:

"Frankly, I'm appalled that someone can take something cool unique and of historic value and destroy it like this. So sad and distasteful. Besides, this will never be a real burst and you know it. You talk about chew marks? Really? We obsess about these things because they offer cool insights of the manufacturing process that happened in the Gibson factory back in the day. This guitar was another testimony of it, and now it's not. It's just a fake.

This is no "restoration" at all, if anything, it's the exact opposite of it. "

But that's your opinion offcourse, and i respect that.

"False"?

Can you explain why did this custom have a "standard burst" body then with all the unique features belonging to a "standard burst"?
Love to hear your explanation..


Of course I cannot explain exactly how this guitar came to be, what was the reasoning behind it and such. But all the unique features belong to a custom. The clor of a custom, the binding of a custom, the pickup configuration, neck and tuners of a custom. This was sold as a custom. We even have a photo of the pot cavity and you can see the black color there despite the guitar having already been refinished at that point. That sais to me that I was originally black and sold as a custom.

You may not like my tone in the first post I wrote but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that this guitar was not a standard, but a fairly unique custom.
 

StSpider

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Aug 24, 2002
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BTW I just came up with a reasonable explanation for the guitar ending up as a custom. If you look at the pictures when the guitar was finished in lemon or stripped I see way too many mineral streaks for gibson's aesthetic standards at the time. As cool as they are, we all have heard that Gibson would use only the most pristine and "perfect" looking pieces of maple for see-through finishes.

This one looks kind of borderline, because the big streak on the bottom near the controls can easily be hidden or minimized by the burst pattern, but there are several other minor streaks on the left side.

Maybe someone though the top looked good enough (and in fact it is extremely pretty IMO), but someone else decided that it wasn't "perfect" enough and ordered it to be covered in black and finished as a Custom.
 

marshall1987

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Jan 30, 2005
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You previous wrote this...."Keeping with the neck for now: another challenge was the fact it had been shaved and narrowed in the past, with a near 1 9/16” late ‘60s nut width, and very slim feel, which was unacceptable to me, and there was no way I was going to reneck when all the wood was intact, so I employed a method I’ve used in several other restos where I inlaid a ~2mm quarter sawn tapered mahogany fillet under the fretboard which adds both width and depth, and brought the neck right into chunky ‘59 territory:"

Help me understand how you were able to get the width of the neck at the nut back to the normal 1 11/16"? I just don't see how a ~2mm quarter sawn tapered mahogany fillet under the fretboard can add width to the neck once it's been shaved down to 1 9/16". Once the neck is shaved down how do you get that wood back with a fillet?

Thanks.
 

Tom Wittrock

Les Paul Forum Co-Owner
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Aug 2, 2001
Messages
42,567
On the day it left the factory and was stamped with a serial number....that's what it was/is.

And many of us would like to know what it was when it left the factory, and when it left the factory.
That serial number is a non-original stamp, so it is nothing to rely on.
 
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