1963 Gibson FJN Folk Jumbo Guitar

This is, perhaps, one of Gibson's strangest models. It's a 12-fret dreadnought guitar with an elongated, square-shouldered version of the usual, rounded-shoulders, J-45-style body shape. It's braced lightly and the intention of the model was to be an instrument useful for both steel strings and nylon. As the owner has a variety of other guitars that do steel very well, he decided we should set it up and string it up with nylon after work was done. Does it sound good this way? Well, heck yes! Would it sound good with steel? I'm sure it would!

Aside from the saddle, the guitar is entirely original and in pretty good shape for its age. Just like many of these guitars, the finish sprayed over the big, factory-original, white pickguards had caused a chemical reaction with them and there was a surreal amount of scrubbing to be done to remove its sticky, nastiness and get them looking right again.

As far as playing right again, this guitar arrived with a big problem -- a shorn-off truss rod! In this case, the repair involved removing the fretboard, routing and installing a new, aluminum-channel-enclosed, single-action rod, and then reinstalling the board, giving it a level/dress of the frets, and fitting a new saddle and setup work. Whenever the boards come off of a guitar, all of the demons rush out, of course, and this was no different than any other time.

Ancel did all the work and the instrument has turned-out beauitfully. Yes, Ancel, I'm proud of you. Good job!