1947 Epiphone Blackstone Carved-Top Archtop Guitar

Overview: Despite its finish flaws, this old Blackstone is an absolute champ of a guitar. Tim took a huge amount of time getting this one ready to shine as it had a lot of stuff needing addressing to get it up to snuff. Suffice to say, it's really appreciating its new lease on life as this is a powerful, punchy, and aggressive guitar with good, solid notes up and down the fretboard.

The top is carved, solid spruce while the back and sides are ply maple. The neck is maple and it has a rosewood fretboard. These guys have a fairly long scale length and so 12s on these are comparable to 13s on a Gibson-style archtop. As a result, they tend to be very snappy, cutting, and explosive when a player leans-into them with a heavy hand. This one has quite good roundness to each note that's a little unexpected on an Epi of this era, however, due to how the repair process played out when we rehabbed the neck.

Repairs included: For starters, Tim pulled the neck and set-about repairing two top cracks under the tailpiece and along the center seam. He then repaired a water-damaged area of the back/side/top seams at the endblock area. Upon pulling the neck, we found that the neck itself was badly-warped by spending too much time with it set at a bad angle (the whole extension area had "bumped up" into a bad ski jump and there was a bit of an S-curve thing going on with the whole thing. On top of that, the truss rod was damaged. Tim pulled the board, planed the neck, routed for a new, Martin-style, non-adjustable steel rod and then we epoxied that in place with a carbon fiber rod also inserted into the steel rod. The board was put back on, the binding refit, the frets leveled and dressed, the neck was reset, and then it was off to the races for final setup and cleaning. It was a huge undertaking that ate up more than half of the value of the guitar to perform but the reward was immediate -- this thing is a player! It's playing spot-on and is ready to serve...

• Weight: 5 lbs 0 oz
• Scale length: 25 1/2"
• Nut width: 1 11/16"
• Neck shape: medium-bigger soft V
• Board radius: 6" or close to it
• Depth at first fret: 0.92"
• Depth at seventh fret: 1.0"
• Body width: 16 1/4"
• Body depth: 3 1/4"
• Top wood: carved solid spruce
• Back & sides wood: ply maple
• Bracing type: tonebar
• Bridge: rosewood adjustable
• Fretboard: rosewood
• Neck wood: maple or walnut?
• Action height at 12th fret: 3/32” bass 1/16” treble (fast, spot-on)
• String gauges: 54w-12 lights
• Truss rod: non-adjustable
• Neck relief: straight
• Fret style: medium/lower

Condition notes: There's a weird "lightburned" spot near the bass edge of the bridge on the top finish. There are numerous smaller scratches, scuffs, nicks, dings, etc. throughout the guitar. The finish is flaking all over near the endblock area of the sides. There's weather-check to the finish, too. There are two repaired hairline cracks below the bridge on the top. The tailpiece is a period but non-original replacement. The endpin is a replacement. It is missing its pickguard. The binding at the end of the fretboard is a replacement. The original truss rod has been replaced with a non-adjustable rod (the original, end-adjusting ones on these are never very useful, anyhow) and, as a result, the neck is quite a lot stiffer and notes feel more "Martin-full" than on Epis with the adjustable rod. It's interesting. The endblock area has binding mismatch/overhang here and there with the side seams. 

It comes with: Sorry, no case.

Consignor tag: NLSJ