1964 Gibson J-50 ADJ Slope Dreadnought Guitar

A customer was here for a while today and this guitar got some spa treatment while he waited -- by way of crack repairs, a fret level/dress, yank-out of a magnetic pickup hard-mounted to the top, fitting of a vintage '60s Gibson rosewood saddle (to replace the original ceramic one), and setup tweaks.

It's a 1964 J-50 but it's stamped J-45 on the inside. All the (natural -- rather than J-45 sunburst) finish is original (ragged as it is in places), so that's another quirk for its record, eh? It has the 1 11/16" nut width and medium-C neck profile everyone's looking for and, now that it has the rosewood saddle and a proper setup, it has that sound. You know...? That strum-favoring, chunky, woody, boomy-low-end, '60s slope dreadnought thing.

Its only failing at the moment is the original plastic, bolted-on bridge. It's working for now, but these things have time limits before they fail and split. They just get brittle as they age.

A 1954 DeArmond "hershey bar" single-coil pickup (of the sort normally seen on Harmony Stratotones) was what left the "pickup shadow" in front of the bridge. It had simply been bolted directly into the top and the pickguard cut to allow for it.

Aside from the bridge pins and adjustable rosewood saddle (it's Gibson-made from the same time but not from this guitar), everything else on the instrument appears to be original.