1972 Gibson J-40 Dreadnought Guitar

This is a customer's old J-40 that has been hanging-around the shop for ages awaiting repair. It's finally done and, post-fixing, sounds and plays a treat!

Gibson changed their "slope shoulder"-style guitars from short scale and rounded corners to long scale and squared corners (Martin-style) in the '70s and bulked-up the bracing at the same time. In addition, they began to use thinner bridges with low saddles and sometimes, like on this one, "tie-block"-style bridges rather than pin bridges.

The latter two changes yield less power and punch from these guitars "as-is" from the factory. However, if you reset the neck and get a decent, tall saddle on there, you can get a lot more power and omph in the bottom-end out of them. That's what's happened here -- I reset the neck and recut the saddle slot wider (for better intonation) and Jose gave it a level/dress of the frets, made a new saddle, and set it up.

Per the usual for these years, this is spruce over mahogany, double-x-braced, has a 3-piece neck with volute (nice and stable and practical, don't mind the haters), and is built tough.