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I don't think I'd clocked quite how old it was - so it's a late 50's?
It sounds like it's had quite a journey. There are some odd sounding injuries.
You'd never put anything other than a jr bridge on it, and wouldn't replug the bridge to refinish so I'd have thought redrilling the bridge would never be necessary (it can't have come from the factory like that? or maybe it came from the factory with an innaccurate scale length?)
the original tuner holes had also been moved so they had to be drilled and plugged and redrilled in the correct position as well... Quite a lot of wood had been taken off the headstock so he's had to put a thick veneer on the front to strengthen the whole area...
I guess someone changed tuners at some point for ones with shorter posts and just thinned the whole headstock to make them fit!?
christianSpaceman-
The pots date it as a '59, I always thought it was a '58... That explains the edge contouring a little bit but the neck should be wider and flatter than it is if it's a true '59... Maybe it's a transition model? Who knows?!?
I'm looking forward to seeing it finished... Part of me is very, very tempted to get it done TV now... I'm hoping that feeling will pass...
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Looks a bit sad, doesn't it?
Finish wasn't poly, best guess is it was some type of epoxy resin... Took forever to get off and was hiding a multitude of sins... Very thick, wood wasn't very flat underneath...
Serial isn't original, wrong font, pots actually date it to 1959... I've been reading the '9' as an '8' for twenty years...
There were 27 drill holes in the back of the headstock, all filled now and the original tuner holes had also been moved so they had to be drilled and plugged and redrilled in the correct position as well... Quite a lot of wood had been taken off the headstock so he's had to put a thick veneer on the front to strengthen the whole area...
So much wood had been taken off the front that the control cavity was in danger of collapsing (SG style) so he's had to reinforce that from the back... This (partly) explains why the knobs always sat so high!
Stud holes had already been drilled and filled with a softwood that resembled cheese, redrilled and plugged with mahogany...
I think that's it... The guy is ready for paint, just waiting on the decals to arrive... He's actually talking about getting a stencil cut for the Gibson logo, I quite like that idea... Wish he'd told me a week ago, I would've saved $30...