610 RSW From The Vault! - A 1974 Gibson F5 AMERICAN CLASSIC Low Neck Angle Repair
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ส.ค. 2024
- Another one from the vault. This one is a classic mandolin from the Gibson Company. Unfortunately, it was built during the 1970s when Gibson's quality control was at an all time low... at least in my opinion.
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Happy Birthday Jerry
Perfect analysis. You gotta hand it to Jerry.
Good fast repair, customer should like it !
Thanks!
Oh the teaser opening
The fellow that was in charge of mounting the neck assemblies I had made the previous week, at Flatiron, told me they were at an approximate 4 degree angle but each one was fit individually. The two electric mandos I built years later, had about a 4 degree angle, which made for optimum play ability and easy to adjust. I sold my first e- mando to a jazz music player who "had to have it". He gave me a check for 16 hundred bucks.
I'm older than you are. I remember the folk boom of the 1960s. It's interesting that you should mention a lack of quality with Gibson at that time. What I was most familiar with was the lack of quality of many of the Gibson guitars during that time period. I remember seeing a brand new Gibson J-200 with a loose pickguard. But that was practically nothing compared with other problems. Gibson guitars had cheap bridges, like the one you took off this guitar. Worse yet, there were some bolt-on plastic bridges that you could actually SEE UNDER on brand new Gibson guitars. No kidding! You could actually see under the bridges! There were Gibson guitars that had wood shavings IN THE FINISH and bindings that were put on crooked! I owned several Gibsons and I avoided the worst of these. However, I had to work on one brand new Gibson guitar that I had bought for about a week before I could play it properly.
Understand that the first professional quality guitar I bought was a Gibson Country/Western. That one was a very good guitar, but it had been built right before Gibson's quality went bad. I bought it used and in immaculate condition for $165.00 (plus another $7.00 for a soft shell guitar case). I bought it somewhere around the early to mid-1960s. I loved the guitar but my brother talked me into selling it to a friend and buying a used Martin D-28 instead. We were interested in Bluegrass music at the time and Martins seemed to have a lot more punch than Gibsons and were probably better for playing Bluegrass music.
Bringing things more up to date, Gibson dropped their quality again at times during the last many years. All over the Internet people were complaining about quality problems with Gibsons. There were still some good Gibsons available, but ordering one was a gamble. You had to personally check each Gibson guitar before buying one to make sure you got a good one.
Now, in case anyone thinks I'm making any of this up, we have a very well-known music store here (McKenzie River Music in Eugene, Oregon) that was a Gibson dealer for decades. This store discontinued their dealership with Gibson. That was a few years back and I don't know if they ever started selling Gibsons again. The owner would not order guitars. He would buy directly from factory reps after personally inspecting each instrument. The Gibson guitars he had in his store seemed OK, but they were carefully handpicked by him and that's why.
I bought a (Chinese?) Gibson mandolin a few years back that was HORRIBLE! I had bought it from Musician's Friend and I had to return it. The mandolin had 1/3 of the nut missing! The screws that were holding the truss rod cover on were just dangling in midair! There was no wood under at least one of the screws. The fret heights were off and varied across the whole width of the frets. In other words, individual frets had several different heights across the width of the same fret. When I called Musician's Friend to get return instructions, they tried to offer me a discount to keep the mandolin. I told them it would cost more than a new mandolin to fix this thing. I asked them how they could sell something this bad and they lied (they surely must have been lying) by telling me that they weren't allowed to look at Gibson mandolins before selling them! What a lie and insulting answer!
I'm not up on the absolute latest quality of Gibson instruments. I hope they have improved by now, though.
Norlin era Gibson's, like when coke changed the recipe, recognizable but something changed for the worse. Not sure if it is a Norlin era instrument but early 70's put's it in that time frame. It could be in worse places right now but for the grace of God it's found it's way to RSW and the Rosa String Wizard, Jerry. Excellent as ever.
(Matt Mayes) great running into you old buddy. you're an amazing human being. Now i'm in Taos, NM. Hope to see you at a jam some day
You'd do better placing the bass and treble sides by slot thickness on a later Collings saddle: They are fitted backwards to the traditional way. 😁 You did well to make it payable. That was a horrible era for their mandolins, having lost their way (and the plans, you'd think) from the mid 1920's. Well done, Jerry.
I would agree this mandolin is "vintage" - - but I for one would not agree that it is an "icon". I think that it is the opposite of that. Poorly designed and built with much thicker wood than necessary, these were not great sounding mandolins. I once had one for a year in around 2005 or so. It sounded exactly the same as a $500 Morgan Monroe MMS-3 that I compared it to one day. Too bad this owner did not spring for putting the wedge under the fret board -- putting more slope on the neck and thus more string pressure on the bridge might be one thing that would help that mandolin? What it really needs is though a re-graduation of the top and back boards. That said -- I've heard several say that taking the neck or top board off off that model was a nightmare. They did not have a dovetail joint but some kind of a patented by Gibson "straight slot" mortise and tenon neck joint.
???? So HERE'S a story for you, Jerry - I mentioned that I was hoping to finish setting up the second acoustic guitar build soon. Preparing to string it up today, my first ever attempt at reaming bridge pin holes. On a couple of holes, I went a bit too deep and wide so that the pins wouldn't jam in tight enough, pins popping out under string tension. Crud, now what? Impossible to string up the guitar! So after thinking about this for a bit, I thought hmm. Big prob. Thought some more. There has to be a solution. I need a shim! How do I shim a conical hole??? I have a tiny hand held pencil sharpener, the type we had in school. I re-sharpened a pencil and took the shaving, wrapped it back around the tip of the pencil (which is conical), deposited the tip of the pencil with shaving into the bridge pin hole, removed the pencil, pushed the shaving into the hole, packed it in, dropped some superglue, sprayed some accelerant, waited, trimmed sanded and re-reamed carefully, and now the pins fit perfectly, strings are on. Tomorrow I'll take on the action as the nut slots need work and the saddle is proud - you've already taught me about that. Would you have done different?
Jerry, as you no doubt know, Gibson style mandos were built in Bozeman, MT in the '80s. The Flatiron was building them better than Gibson, so Flatiron was sued, but later was swallowed up by Gibson, which for many years in the latter '80s to mid '90s, made a better product. Bill Monroe came to our shop for several days. Yeah, I met him and have his autograph on a mando I got to build for myself. Then, shortly after, the shop was moved to Nashville and eventually China. Gibsons are still made in Nashville, I think
I would never recommend removing a back to fix a low neck angle. My humble opinion / solution would be to remove and wedge the fret board. I would rig up a tapering jig where a plunge router with a lowering knob could be used to get an adequate taperd wedge. It might take a couple tries, but a sloped set of rails for the router to travel on would do, I believe. It would zero thick on one end, and maybe 5 to 7 mm thick on the other end. I do not know, but make up a few dummy /test wedges til you find the proper angle. You could use ebony, maple, or any stainable resonate hardwood for the final piece. Just my ideas for your project. Good luck my good sir. Bob in cold Montana
Jerry I was wondering how to intonation the two internal courses of string, I know you sale the deer antler saddle, are all four courses ?intonated?
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻😊🎸🎸🎸
S. Randell Gibson head mandolin builder 70-74 ?
Rendell not Randell. Stanley E Rendell
@@luckydawg7180 Also, Rendell was not the builder -- rather he was the President of Norlin the company that owned and wreaked Gibson. That mandolin design was developed in late 1969 and they were pathetic -- every one of them. But Gibson at the time (i.e., Stanley Rendell) thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. He was very proud of them and considered them to be the best mandolins ever. It took nearly a decade before he finally left the company and Roger Siminoff showed Gibson how to make the kind of mandolins that they had had made before WWII.
I wasn't sure about it, hence the question mark. His name is on the list with Siminoff, Derrington, Carlton and the rest. Thanks for the info. I know Norlin was turning out junk, just didn't know who was running the entire debacle.
can you put a shim under the fingerboard? violins do it all the time... what am i missing? sending my regards
Jerry did it go through your mind to remove the finger board and slightly planing/ramp the neck? Is the truss too close to the top to exclude this?
hi jerry . why are guitars never painted on the inside ?
@EDP: Because it deadens the sound/resonance.
Instruments without a finish, on the outside sound better than finished
but Need a finish for durability.
I thought it was too hard to get the Binx and air hose through the soundhole!?$
I've heard you play a dozen or more mandolins in your videos, and this one didn't sound very good at all. Not a comment on your setup, but probably due to the low bridge and string angle. How did it sound in person?
Shame th finish was marred by the saddle.👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✅✅✅✅✅
some times you should just tell the customer they either got to piss or get off the pot as my dad used to say jerry
My...that's terrific customer relations...
Too many commercials, zombie Zionists 😂