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1974-5 Gibson J45

Year: 1974-5
Brand: Gibson
Model: J45
Class: Guitar
Scale:
Owner: Chris Rasco

Well this one was road hard and met the bondo king! It's a 1974-75 Gibson j45. All the binding was gone, bridge missing, and someone coated the top with bondo. Rasco asked if I could turn it back in to a player.

This one was a lot of hours and almost 6 months.

2022-10-25: The first order of business was getting to the top of the guitar. A bit of lemon oil and scraping was in order.

In the process I found a second sound hole that would need a bit of work. I believe I can clean, sand/smooth sure up this original top..... but she has a long way to go.

2022-11-20: Binding time. Removing the top binding was easy, the back was a harder job as it hadn't dotted away as much. Here is a nice contrast between the new and the old and the new matching double guards.

2022-11-03: Couple of coats of lacquer an more to sanding. Purfling patched, almost ready to set the top and move on to cleaning up for binding. Thought I would do a quick mock up with the bridge and new pick guards.

2022-11-08: Patch/top reinforcement with stain treatment to closer match the original tops aged color.

and after the binding work.

2023-01-01: The sound board was shot so , it was removed and replaced.

After the sound board was in place it was time to set the bridge.

I ended up re routing the bridge slot for a double wide bridge to properly intonation the low E string. The neck has a slight twist, pretty sure this was just compensating as the bridge placement and slot were correct.
Before

After

2023-02-23: So I took it out for an open mic test drive the new K&K pickup and the strap slipped off. It wasn't necessarily a hard hit but it was a good enought and split the back pretty good and knocked the old glue loose.

This ones on me, but it was likely going to happen and better now than later. A couple of extra days work and a little lacquer it was all better. It wasn't to worried about making it invisible to the eye as I was making it smooth. With the texture of the top it fits the over all instrument. This shot is before sanding an lacquer (you can still see the glue). I didn't get a final after shot of this part of the work, sometimes I'm too busy with work for photos.