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I have an arrival to my shop for potential TLC. I told the customer that before any time is invested in repair work the value of this guitar should be determined. There are no logos or numbers of any kind anywhere. The bridge has a pair of machine screws under the pearl dots in the bridge. Mahogany body and top. Mahogany neck- very chunky. Painted headstock front and back. “Gibson Deluxe” tuners. Fretboard looks like Rosewood. Possibly Brazilian? 12 15/32” to the twelfth fret. 24.9” scale? Ladder braced top. The bridge plate is behind the bridge enough that the pins miss it. So of course the string balls are pulled up into the top. No bindings. Somewhere along the line the neck angle was reset and shims are visible at the top of the heel against the body. Yikes.
Any body have any ideas what this old gal is?


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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

Well those tuners are replacements. I can see the marks of the originals peeking out at me.

Do you think the bridge could be a replacement?

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

The head stock isn't quite right is it? Though it is close enough that who ever built it should worry about Gibson suing them

A picture of the front of the peghead and the back of the neck and heel might be helpful.

Looks like a Gibson employee guitar, there were lots of these and employees during this era were permitted to make a guitar for themselves out of spare parts.

It also looks like it's had the finish stripped and then it was refinished at some point.

The bracing is a clue that it's from the 30's or so and I agree with Brian that the tuners may have been replaced and the new one's look like they could be from the 50's or newer, hard to tell from here. I'm on the fence on the body shape if this is one of the two different L-OO shapes or a LGO type shape, also hard to tell from here. The later would make this one newer.

If it's an LGO type body this would be from the 50's.

It's also hard to tell from the pics but there looks like there is a lot a fret wear explaining the replaced tuners.

As to value it's not overly valuable there were lots of employee guitars back in the day before Gibson was run by the CEO who nearly tanked the company, the last one.... It is cool though and I would value it as is as only worth several hundred dollars because of the refinish and because it's not an official Gibson but an employee instrument. It likely needs some serious work too and once all the work was done it could bring $800 - $1,200 with the right sort who wants it. May need a neck reset too, it's due.

Tell me do the inside of the sides have visible side tapes glued to them?

Mr Howard. I pulled one of the tuners off and did not see any sign of different tuners having been installed.
I went to a vintage Gibson website and found a description which fit it. An LG-1.
It does have side tape. The pick guard looks to be added. It needs alotsa work. And yes it needs a neck reset.
Thanks for your input. And always a pleasure Mr Breakstone.
I will post a few more pics when I get back to the shop.


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_________________
"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

It's a plain Jane, but it has a very good vibe to my eye. I didn't know about Gibson employee guitars but I think that line of reasoning works very well with this old axe. Now, it just comes down to the time and the potential cost. Estimate a fair number of hours and expenses to the customer and give yourself at least 10% for contingencies that you haven't seen yet. If the customer is good with that, go for it and do your best work. If I were a repair person (I am not...at least on guitars) that's what I would do. I would like to see this guitar brought back into tip top playing condition. I don't care what it's worth. The main thing is what it is worth to the owner.

Explaining my point of view:

In 1963 my Mom and I bought a guitar for my dad. It was a fun instrument, but it was not a fine instrument. Last year I had the neck reset and I bought it the first hard shell case it had ever enjoyed. Then I spent that amount all over again to ship it to my niece who remembers her Grandpa. In short, I spent about four times the initial purchase price on this little venture. Was the guitar inherently worth the expense? Heck no. Was the experience of passing on an heirloom worth it? HECK YES!

A few more pics of the old lady.


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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

Yeah. I definitely get that thinking. Unfortunately the fellow I might, (underline and caps might) be working on this guitar for doesn’t have a whole lot in the world. There are a couple reasons I will end up turning this job down. Lack of experience in some of the work it will need, the repairs if I charged properly will exceed its value. (He has no emotional attachments to this), and I wouldn’t get paid properly for the work, anyway.


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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

I'd be interested in what it looks like INSIDE.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Brian is right. There is an imprint of another tuner that I missed.
Has to go back and take another look after his comment. Thanks!
If this were a Gibson build would there be a serial number somewhere?

_________________
"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

Chris when I’m back out in the sho tomorrow I’ll see if I can get some good pics of the interior. After I get the huge family of dust bunnies out.


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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

When a busy and successful business takes on a near or full restoration that will suck ten plus hours that's ten clients some regulars some pro musicians who will not get pups installed, set-ups, fret dresses, cracks repaired, etc because of the time suck of this one. It's also ten clients who may learn to go elsewhere.

I have a PM from a few days ago in which a member here out of the blue asked me specifically to keep, like it or not... expressing the view of what it's like to be working in the trade with a successful shop. The perspective is VERY different from that of the hobbyist who has the luxury to from afar proclaim that something is worth a great deal of someone else's time and money to be brought back to being whole. My perspective is that of the people who do not have an emotional attachment to something and instead have a responsibility to put food on my table AND provide the utmost value and quality service to the most people that I can. I'll add as well that the single greatest pitfall of why most Lutherie repair businesses either never grow or outright fail is unbridled ego seeing everything for the challenge that it may represent and not for the opportunity honestly assessed against the "opportunity costs" also honestly represented.

I'm happy to see folks restore these when someone has the chops, time, money and inclination. This is the second thread in four days or so that I expressed that this is not something that as a professional shop we would do and in the end the OP was not interested in doing the work either for many of the same reasons.

Yeah I clearly see the imprint too and again these Klusons were not what came on LG1s.

Employee guitars were not serialized and that's one of the hallmarks of them.

This might be a good opportunity to provide a view from the trenches of a busy working shop in terms of estimating this one.

In our market which is NOT the highest priced market by far we shoot for about $100 an hour for experienced, very high quality professional work guaranteed and properly insured with a dedicated tooled up location with proprietary tooling and hundreds of five star reviews.

1). Neck reset $600
2). refret $400 including new nut
3). bridge work likely removal and reglue with HHG nixing metal hardware and a new thru-saddle, bone of course. Bridge plate cap and fitted for slotless pins $300
4). Top crack repair, glue, cleat, fill, brace reglue, perhaps if it's bad enough retop: $500 - $1,500
5). If it's an employee guitar this finish may be the original but I can't tell from here. Leaving it as is N/C
6). Tuner servicing, back plate removals, parts cleaning, packing with grease and straightening any bent shafts and reinstalling. $100
7). Set-up $100 including premium for an unserviceable thu-saddle design that has to be adjusted from the top requiring recrowning.
8). Insuring the thing, heating, cooling, security, overhead interacting with the client etc. N/C
9). Scope creep or all the things that will be wrong with it such as a loose back, loose back braces, cracked neck or tail blocks etc possibly more. Not priced..... and represents only more risk and uncertainty.

All up $2,000 to $3,000 dollars AND my entire point is that even at these rates it's more profitable for a successful shop with more clients than we can handle to turn these away. Not what you might think, eh....

Really not compliant with any one Gibson model, but certainly could be an employee guitar. It seems to me to be wartime in terms of some details such as lack of an adjustable truss rod, but the 20 fret neck would not be something seen on a small body Gibson before the mid-1950's.

- No bridge bolts on small-body Gibsons before 1935, and then not used consistently until late 1930's
- I cannot find an L series flattop or LG that was not bound on at least the top edge
- Gibson did not use the curved side peghead until 1942
- No truss rod would place the instrument in the 1942-1944 time frame (war-time steel shortage) if a Gibson
- LG series instruments were 19 fret until mid-1950's, and L-0 and L-00 guitars were 19 fret through their original production runs; the OP's guitar is a 20 fret neck.

The guitar does not line up well with any of the Gibson sub-brands, either, so definitely a puzzler. Maybe a Franken guitar?

I doubt there's a good argument for any real value here beyond 'nice old guitar'...if the owner has deep pockets and wants to put the money into the work, that seems fine, but as the boss says, "Where is the value prop?" and "What is our opportunity cost?"

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

That is the type of guitar you buy for $25 at a flea market and use to learn how to repair guitars. If you get it back into playing condition you might be able to get a few bucks more for it, assuming you can find someone interested in it. If you want to learn how to do more than just setups and refrets you have to start somewhere. It's best to start with some old beater that you own rather than on someone else's old beater. That way you can bail out at any time.

Nice to see a couple realistic posts without the romantic and unreasonable view that hobbyists often have and businesses often perish over....

"Frankin guitar" is an excellent term for this one, thanks Woddie and the Boss. G*bson was well known for guitars that did not match perfectly anything in the books. They batch built at times batches as small as six and used what was laying around. They were a toy company with one foot in the grave much of the time and throwing together a batch and selling them to a retailer was a way to keep the lights on. Not the romantic endlessly toiling by candle light with sharp chisel in hand view that some may have thought, eh.

Anyway employee guitars were the the finest examples of Franken guitars in so much as they often used available parts that were not available in enough quantity to build a production batch. As such these won't match anything known to us as a regular model.

We see employee guitars in this area from time to time and they are not at all uncommon. They can be decent but because some of the specialization of Henry Ford's production line doesn't go into these with one employee often doing all tasks they can suck too and be poorly built. Being unfinished as this one is is also common for employee guitars although this is not always the case and this one could have been stripped and refinished at some point.

As Clay said it is an opportunity to learn some things worth learning since it has a proper dovetail joint and it's a good mule for learning fretting even though g*bson fret boards of this era were rolled often at the edges making seating fret ends more of a pain.

Crafting thru-saddles is something worth learning if you are going to be in the repair business and this one needs one of those too.

Cool guitar just not something that would be economically feasible for a commercial business unless they have lots of time with nothing to do.

Get new glasses cause I can see the marks left by the original tuners in the lacquer at the bottom of every one in the first pic....

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Someone please enlighten me about "employee guitars". I have heard this rumor about many companies like PRS and Martin. I know for a fact that PRS has never done this , at least in the way described where an employee built the guitar. Martin has no records of such activity either, at least what Dick B. told me a few years ago when I asked him.

So how was this supposed to work? Employee built with spare parts in there off time?

First built where? In the factory? a factory is a line of works stations so the employee would need to know every job and be familiar with every station.... doesn't happen in a factory! most people know 3 different tasks and that is all they are trained for. There are not many luthiers working in guitar factories, not now or then.

Second, when? when the factory is open, lights on and running all the stations have employees doing there job. At the end of the day you really think they left the lights on, doors open and these folks ran around the factory gathering up what they wanted and putting it together unsupervised for themselves? Maybe a shift supervisor who had the keys to the door may have been able to do this but a regular sally at a work station who just spent 8 hours gluing in pearl dots.... I highly doubt that.

Third, Spare parts? While i know inventory control was not like it is today with computerized tracking and jellybean production schemes but certain components would almost never be spare.... Sides for example, unless they were defective they could always be used on a guitar. Same with tops, fretboards, head plate overlays, bridges........ so just finding enough leftovers would take longer than building a guitar. Unless they were taking from production stock, which is why the doors are locked and no employees present outside of normal business hours.....

So does anyone have any actual, written documentation of this practice?

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

I'm not certain how other areas of the country are, but employee guitars are relatively common here...perhaps I am just very fortunate in my associations, but I have seen an even dozen thus far in just under four year's time. The shop where I work is about a 90 minute drive from the PRS factory in Stevensonville, MD, so most of what we see are PRS employee guitars - usually once or twice a year, either as a result of the employee gifting the guitars to family or close friends or a sale of the guitar to a third party. My recollection is that a full-time PRS employee may have a guitar built for the cost of materials after two years of good service, and every two years thereafter, with some significant restrictions on choices of materials, inlay, and furnishings (e.g., no Private Stock BRW, etc.).

These instruments are labeled 'EMPLOYEE GUITAR CUSTOM BUILT FOR (Name of Employee), carry a PRS serial number and Mr. Smith's signature, and may or may not carry a PRS logo. If you visit the PRS web site and review the 'Careers with PRS' section for the employee benefits, you will find the following noted under the Employment Benefits section:



If you search for 'employee guitar(s) PRS' and other manufacturers, the AGF, UMGF, The Gear Page, TDPRI, and other enthusiast sites should offer more in the way of details. I doubt Martin and Gibson's employee guitar programs were or are as formalized, but we do get guitars in now and again with origin claims in the Martin or Gibson factories as employee projects.

Finally, here is a link to the PRS web site story on the charity auction of an employee guitar:

https://www.prsguitars.com/blog/post/michael_reids_harpy_guitar_charity_auction

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Brian. I did go back and saw the imprints of different tuners under the Kluson style that is on there. It’s not the glasses. It’s the guy wearing them. Thanks


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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

More to the point, the riveted 'ears' where the worm gear is supported on some vintage three-on-a-plate tuners result in the two divots seen in the finish in line with the worm and shaft. While a refinish may remove the evidence of an earlier set of tuners, those rivet clearance divots are often deep enough to still show some signature even after a dip-and-strip.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

More to the point, the riveted 'ears' where the worm gear is supported on some vintage three-on-a-plate tuners result in the two divots seen in the finish in line with the worm and shaft. While a refinish may remove the evidence of an earlier set of tuners, those rivet clearance divots are often deep enough to still show some signature even after a dip-and-strip.[/quote]
Thanks Woody.


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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

Brian I don't know about any other manufacturers like Woodie does with PRS (thanks for that Woodie) but G*bson is well known for having some employee guitars out here.

These were made with likely seconds or one-off parts and they were produced on down time in the f*ctory by.... you guessed it.... G*bson employees. I've likely seen half a dozen of them in these parts.

They are usually unmistakably G*bson body shapes but lack nomenclature on the headstock or anywhere else.

G*bson at times was a very loosely run operation and I would encourage you to get and read the book about G*bson by John Thomas Kalamazoo Girls it's excellent although I can't recall if he mentions the employee stuff.