1944 Gibson LG-2 "Banner" Guitar

Mr. Brown brought this guitar and his Weissenborn in for overhaul a while back and this sucker turned-out to be quite the finicky devil. I thought I'd have had it done a lot sooner but it turned-out that every single brace inside the guitar had become loose so there was a tedious time where this hung-out while I glued a few each day going-on weeks. After all that was shored-up, I could finally get to the neck reset, fretwork, and new bridge install. Suffice to say, after sprucing-up, it plays and sounds damn fine. It's a Banner Gibson -- why wouldn't it?

The factory order number at the neckblock is faded but the penciled-in series number is still evident. I'm guesstimating from the features that this is a 1944 build but it could also be a '45. It has the non-truss, maple-wedge-reinforced neck with the big, C-shaped rear profile. The fretboard (and original bridge) are gum and not rosewood. The top is solid spruce and the back and sides are mahogany.

My new bridge is Indian rosewood but does get really close to the look of the original. It has some small changes, though -- the saddle is a faux-through-slot design and is actually a drop-in for easy adjustment (this will be taken on the road so easy = good) -- and it's just slightly larger to give it a little more gluing surface and to allow the saddle to move a little inboard from the front edge of the bridge. I did try to save the original bridge but it had been split and "repaired" and split again over its life and it stressed too much when I tested it under tension.

As you can see, there were a whole lot of old funky repairs to it -- including lots of spray-n-pray gluing of cracks all over the body. Thankfully those are now all cleated and filled as much as they can be, so they should hold-up just fine.

Tone is as you'd expect for a Banner LG-2 -- woody, forward, midsy and punchy, and with an airy, hollow kind of quality that sounds great with a mic fingerpicked or flatpicked.