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A friend just purchased a lovelyt 1957 ES-225 - it is in remarkably good condition. However when it arrived it had something rattling around inside - I pulled the pickup and there is a block of wood inside. With some effort I was able to fish it out thru the pickup hole

The block is 3 x 3-1/2 x 1. It has rounded corners on one side and a coat of glue on the other (kind of an shiny amber color). The guitar itself is a thin hollow body with laminated arched top and two braces running the full length of the body directly under the P90 mounting screws and the bridge. The bridge itself is built into the tail piece and has two adjustable feet, sort of like a ToM without the studs.

Looking inside I can't tell if the block was in the upper bout between the p/u and the neck block or under the bridge feet. There seems to be a little glue residue under the bridge but not what I would have expected if it had originally been there. Also I don't see the big long neck block that I would expect to house a normal Gibson M&T joint but it also is way too thin for a dovetail.,

Anyway, the block is out, its going to be a son of a gun to glue it in either of those locations (if anyone knows where it was originally). It was all I could do to work it out the hole - trying to put it back with glue on it and then clamp in place is going to be extremely difficult. My friend has talked to the seller who would surely have known about this - my guess is it got thunked during shipment (however there is absolutely no other damage).

I'm hesitant to tension the strings if this was a structural part of the top. I could in theory make a thinner block that would be easier to get back in, but I also would like to keep this beautiful old guitar original. My friend could send it back but he really doesn't want to.

Thoughts?

That was not in there originally, someone tried to add it for some reason and didn't get it clamped proper... Lucky for you.

_________________
Brian

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

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Thanks Brian. It was definitely poorly fitted and poorly glued to the top roughly under the bridge/tailpiece feet. The fact that it barely fits thru the p/u hole tells me it was added after the guitar was built. A discussion at a different forum suggests that people did this to reduce feedback. I'm telling my friend to leave it out but keep it in case he ever wants to put it back in.

Kind of looks like a store-bought tail block

Ed

Yeah it was added at some point to bust feedback. P-90's of that era, some of them could be smokin hot pups and combined with a semi-hollow body feedback could be an issue.

This is before heavy metal vomit music so the noisy pups were not yet fully appreciated.

It does look like a g*bson acoustic tail block though from here, can't be sure so this may have been a f*ctory mod throwing in a poor fitting tail block to bust feedback. Please note the superb workmanship.... likely one of the reasons why there is a common expression in this trade that goes like this: "good enough for a g*bson..."

Cool guitar and in really nice shape too!

The add a block thing was a hayseed engineering thing.... Gee, a 335 don't feed back, oh look they say it has a center block! Let's add one!

I have seen iterations of that concept as well as sound posts like a viol.

_________________
Brian

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

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

What a beauty! That's all I gotta say. Well that and, it looked like a tail block to me too.