Buying a 1962 Gibson Les Paul From the Original Family | 1962 Gibson SG Standard Ebony Block

[Music] today I'm going to share the heartwarming story of how this vintage Les Paul found me [Music] welcome back troglodytes to your daily dose of guitar information the troglies guitar show this story starts in November of 2022. when I found an old listing for the Gibson Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster case you can check out this episode right here to learn all about the history of that guitar but the pertinent details to know is John the owner of that shop drove him out to me we met up we bought the three cases and everything was great but then about three weeks later on December 7th I received a new message from him he was contacted by a couple yesterday that wanted to sell a 62 Gibson ebony block SG and it had no case and they had some pretty strong out-of-state offers and this was just too much guitar for him at this point in time so naturally I'm looking at these photos Okay no neck break we can see a clear serial number piers were missing a string and unfortunately a saddle that's going to be expensive to replace but we were missing the really important pictures like the heel break area is the truss rod good is the next straight and generally I don't buy 50s and 60s true vintage Gibson pieces they're just too expensive I can get five to ten other guitars for the same price of these but there's a reason why 50s and 60s is more expensive it's the Golden Era so I thanked him for reaching out and I said my offer would probably be lower just because I don't have hands-on experience with the guitars but if I'm technically closer to them they're more than welcome to reach out to me via my website so that was at 12 44 pm and within 10 minutes I had a new email from the true seller so I was impressed with the speed of that now it took me about a day or two to actually reach out and that's when I was able to get the story of the guitar from the owners hi my name's Stephanie I inherited this Gibson Les Paul from my late father who had received it from his late father who had died in the line of duty he was a sheriff here in Ohio I wish I had this great story on how everyone in our family has played it for years but realistically it would be my grandfather whom I didn't get the chance to meet it was his he played it from what I heard anyways off and on it sat realistically in a safe for 30 years probably more than that realistically and I felt inclined to see that it gets a rightful home my family was a little bit estranged at least the relationship with my father so you know sentimentally there really wasn't a whole significant value in keeping it to me anyways we went through you know kind of family tragedies we had a house fire when I was like 12 years old so material things don't really matter to me as much it's more so the memories I create with my family and friends so I felt it was Injustice for me to keep it when I don't really have a love or passion of guitars and hearing that story from them definitely called my nerves a little bit because whenever there's somebody who wants to move a vintage guitar fast sometimes it's because it's hot so at this point I told him what my offer would be and it was less than what they already had so they weren't interested so I was really just trying to be a helpful guy at this point trying to verify the truss rod status with them if the neck was straight if there's any breaks cracks or repairs or any replaced Parts but as they were saying they're not super experienced with guitars they just didn't feel comfortable taking it apart and I totally understood I even offered them a consignment option to help them get more money for it but they just wanted the lump sum payment so they could do what they needed to do with the money but it turned out that I was about an hour quicker to get to so they really wanted to make a deal with me and this is the story that they used to rile me up a little bit when looking to find someone whether they kept it or you know passed it along we had came across you know several different either dealers private owners talked to people from Georgia Nashville you name it so without getting into too many details because this is the internet the people who were wanting to buy this will eventually see it there's basically a long list of dealers trying to get this thing they're offering to pay for shipping paper to be professionally packed or hey take it to my dealer friend here and then he'll ship it to me so you don't have to worry about that but then that dealer going oh no no no I'm just gonna buy it myself so it's kind of funny there's just like this whole line of dealers trying to get this thing and naturally that gets me excited because since I don't typically deal in 50s and 60s as I was telling you guys knowing that other dealers were willing to pay this amount made me think well I guess maybe I should be paying this amount so at this point I thought how about I offer to come to them because they were planning to drive it down to a dealer the very next day now unfortunately Banks they close really early around here so we weren't able to get the whole money situation or the cashier's check to be fully validated for them to be comfortable for me to go to them because remember they don't know anything about guitars or the guitar Community online so I totally understood I was a complete stranger but once they saw my YouTube channel they were all of a sudden very keen on getting this good tar to me we ended up coming across Austin who the moment we you know we came to his personal home he told us and had so much knowledge of guitars it really made me very happy to you know complete the transaction knowing what knowledge he had and the fact that it is his life and I know it will end up in a place where it's valued and cherished versus me who doesn't necessarily know too much so in a long Twisted tale they eventually ended up coming to me which I'm actually really appreciative of because then we were able to slightly more professionally capture the audio and the video and all that it makes for a better viewing experience and we just made a great little afternoon of this where I got to personally Hands-On you know tell them the history of the Les Paul because they didn't know it and even though I didn't have the visuals with me I told them I would put them in this video so here we go the history of the Les Paul model now keep in mind all the dates I'm talking here are like plus or minus six months because there was never uh hey it's New Year's let's switch to this new style it was always continual evolution of the Les Paul the first production Les Paul looked like this it was a signature model for a guy called Les Paul a fantastic musician and recording artist and the inventor of multi-track recording in general he's a big deal outside of his cool guitars but the first iteration looked like this perhaps the most iconic feature is this trapeze tailpiece right here that makes these guitars very uncomfortable to play and you can't actually do palm muting techniques it's rumored that when they created this model they forgot to count the belly carve right here of the guitar so instead of being able to top wrap it which would allow what players would need they had to under wrap it to get action that players need so modern players like to replace those with one that's designed properly that looks like this but the very first ones did not have a bound fretboard and they had these slotted screws on the bridge pickup only but there are very few out there that actually look like that most of them from 52 and 53 will will have binding on the neck and they don't have the diagonal screws the next Evolution looked like this we've done away completely with the trapeze tailpiece and we now have what is referred to as a wrap tail while these might not be superior for intonation they do have a Vibe even yet today the neck angles were also slowly adjusted throughout the evolution of this but as far as the pickups in color go it was all the same from 54 through 55 but the next stepping stone was in 1956 when they introduced the abr-1 bridge and stop bar tailpiece set up to the Les Paul model so again we still got P90 pickups we just now have better intonation and a Stop Bar tailpiece these are pretty desirable guitars however this iteration did not last very long as in 1957 we have the introduction of the paf humbucker the golden standard as far as humbuckers go as the name suggests the humbuckers got rid of the hum that the P90 pickups are known for because they were single coils now throughout these years you could find gold tops that had a natural back and sides and then you could also find all gold examples this was the birth of one of the most famous guitars in existence because the next year all that really needed to change was the finish the introduction of the Sunburst color this was the birth of what people call the burst and since the new color is not solid we can now see the beautiful flamed Maple underneath a lot of times you just have a plain top and sometimes they might not be perfectly centered and throughout the ages the aniline dyes have faded in different ways so they're all in different Hues yet today in 1958 the necks were pretty chunky in 1959 they slimmed the necks up a little bit and finally in 1960 they slimmed it up even further so as far as 58 through 60 bursts go the biggest difference now there's my new details that we're not going to get into in this video but the biggest difference is the neck profile now despite the burst being 250 000 plus guitars yet today these were not the most popular models back then so Gibson actually had a few different models carry the Les Paul name we have the Les Paul junior introduced around 1954 the special in 55 and then those guys got a makeover around late 58 into 59 where it was was a double cutaway shape despite not looking like a Les Paul at all it still bore his name on the headstock then also throughout this we had the higher end Les Paul Custom which was introduced in 1953 it had the AL Nico 5 staple pickup in the neck and a P90 in the bridge but it stayed pretty much the same until 1957 when they introduced the humbuckers and then you get two pickup and three pickup variations there so with the Junior and special starting to change shape and the bursts not selling well back then obviously it's time to change up the shape again for the core model and this is what they came up with this is technically a Les Paul but now we have a double cutaway shape it's a much thinner guitar which therefore makes it lighter we have the introduction of the sideways vibrola to make it even more versatile but we still have the abr-1 bridge and the output Jack has been moved to the top of the instrument so this started towards the end of 1960 and into 1961 they were pretty much all like this you can still find Les Paul customs in the traditional format but we still got the paf pickups and Les Paul's name is now moved to the truss rod cover instead of being a silk screen now the First new Les Paul's they didn't have the best design for the neck join so it's very common for these things to have heel brakes where the neck just snaps off from the body so I think that's why a lot of dealers wanted the one that they were selling is because it was very lightly played and hasn't been repaired but in this very transitional period of time we had three different trim systems that were used so we got the first one which is the sideways vibrola and then we have the one we're talking about today the ebony Block it's basically a short tram vibrola typically you find a teaspoon arm on it very similar to what you would find on later Firebirds but to fancy it up a little bit they put this whole ebony block that has a mother of pearl insert on it as a side note you could also find stock bigsby's but generally those were custom orders but the final iteration of a Gibson branded tram system is known as the Maestro liar vibrola it's called a liar because you have a little liar heart right here but there were also Customs made during that time they were generally white with three pickups with the sideways vibrola but you can still find some ebony blocks and he also had the Juniors during that time as well as the specials and by the end of 63 Les Paul's name was completely removed from these guitars simply because his contract expired there's a lot of lore out there that he didn't like the guitars he told him to take his name off of it but as far as I understand it from very reputable sources it's just because his initial contract ended and since everything was changing anyways he wasn't really Associated too much with this new shape in fact it seems Mary Ford used this new shape more often than less so it was eventually renamed the SG for the solid guitar so yes this thing is technically a Les Paul still and we could continue and talk about all the other iterations of the SG but this is technically a Les Paul so that's where the story ends for us today here so history aside let's get back to what I bought the ebony block from 1962-ish why does it not have a case my mom ended up throwing away the case because my dad had my mom sign a prenup and in the prenup was that this was one of his we were able to uncover obviously the guitar that was in late father's safe for years it had in a case for quite some time um but when he had passed everyone was confused on where the case was and I asked my mom you know where where did this case go and she's like you know what I think you're going to be a little bit upset I said well why would I why would I be upset I'm sure it's somewhere right she said well no I I threw it away everything happened with your father because if he was going to take the guitar I was going to take the case so if he held it over my head for years then I was going to take the case and I was like well at least I guess she didn't take the guitar and throw it away God forbid I think she had a little bit more sense than that but emotions got the best of her in that manner which is kind of sad because to buy one of these today you would have to pay this guy 1600 bucks because he happens to have a spare now whether or not that's typical going prices I'm not 100 sure but if I was going to get one for this guitar I'd probably want the kind of faux crocodile skin one that we've got going on here as I believe that would be the most correct one for this particular guitar however when they dropped it off to me I slapped it in my SG Sorrento artist case because that thing's styling and out of all the SG style guitar models I've always felt the ebony block was by far the coolest and it's the only one that hasn't ever been properly reissued by Gibson I mean you might find a custom order here or there or like the Brian Ray SGS where is like one of the first times that they brought it back in a production run but as far as ebony block SG standard always being available as far as I'm aware it's never happened but obviously I had to do my due diligence so I took it to the workbench I took it apart I verified all the parts and I taught them about the whole black light process and things like that and in the essence of entertainment I'm just gonna walk you through that whole process again here in a minute but this thing is filthy unfortunately when it arrived the nut was cracked on the E string we were Officially missing that saddle this thing needs a little bit of TLC and in the vintage guitar Market some guys hate it when you clean it some guys don't for me I'm gonna clean this thing up and make it look as beautiful as humanly possible because it is in very clean condition for a vintage guitar from 1962. but while we get this thing cleaned up how about we learn what they plan to do with their Newfound cash flow [Applause] my stepdaughter her mother's really not in her life it's always made me feel very you know sad for that because my relationship with my father like I said was quite estranged and we are planning on taking the funds of the guitar I want to see that she gets a car she graduated a year early from high school we couldn't be more proud of her and I just want to you know give her her a car for Christmas and since my father was never really there for me and her mother was never really there for her it made all the sins in the world to kind of make sure that that happens for her with you know some of the funds from the transaction foreign so there we go that's the tale of how this Les Paul found me and how through peer pressure I ended up buying it so we could document it so let's get this thing all cleaned up and I will show you the details and then get to that playing demo after two hours it's definitely a lot cleaner but still has all the Mojo So check out these tan lines what you're seeing here is the Finish was covered over by the Plastics so it hasn't faded out by the Sun so you can see a very clear color difference between what this is and you can also see that on the back here in a second but yes just like the bursts you get the whole Sun fading thing here but now the Moment of Truth for the pickups in 62 you can actually find a few different combinations of the pickups if you're lucky you have two pafs in here which is the Holy Grail of all electric guitar pickups in the humpbacker world anyways but you can also find a patent number which is the one that replaced the paf later on apparently they're very similar but generally collectors want double pafs in here so this is the moment of truth we've got a Holy Grail paf in the neck position and then I had them on edge because I told them the exact same story so even though they had never heard of that before they were still hoping that it was double pafs and yes it is so this is a very nice example we even still have the original water slide decals on it which those are very prone to flaking off and it doesn't look like anybody has ever messed with these at all as far as taking covers off but here we can see the neck Tenon extending into our pickup cavity as well as what the Tenon cover normally covers which is the maple block capping off the truss rod everything's looking the way that I would want to see in here then here's our Bridge pickup cavity everything's looking good there you can also see all the white dust forming from the Springs aging I decided to leave that part alone got an mr490 marking on our Bridge pickup ring then an mr491 on the neck perhaps the more famous marking is the m69 right there visible on both of them but what do Holy Grail pafs read I get a 7.46 in the bridge reading that doesn't make much sense in the neck and within the circuit the middle is 7.33 so yeah probably need to clean out the electronics we're getting some error there but yes this thing cleaned up beautifully the top is faded on this one and that's pretty much the only thing you could say is bad about this example I mean it's got some Nicks and dings in the common areas it's not mint condition but I would definitely put this in the very good to excellent category as far as true vintage guitars go anyways so let's learn about our bridge and tailpiece here so this is a true Gibson abr-1 what's kind of interesting is how it slopes up and then reads abr1 I've never seen that in person before and the original Saddles are pretty interesting they have like a bone nylon mix to them and those are mounted traditionally directly into the body but now let's learn about the ebony block so this is pretty much the exact same thing of what came next the whole Maestro liar vibrola because those guys also Mount using two screws and then they just have a decorative plate back here and the way the whole system works is you put the ball into the string right there and then you just basically Bend this metal bit and hope it goes back in tune it's not the best trem system it's very dated it's pretty much the exact same style that they later use on Melody Maker guitars except for those have three screw holes that secure them to the front and they don't even try to hide them that is the whole point of the ebony block is to hide the screw holes here so this is purely decorative you don't even have to have it on the guitar if you don't want to but it's cool you got three mother of pearl diamond shape things and then on the back you can see the raw Ebony and then they also have a felt pad on the back side but unlike the reissued ones that have like a small set screw on each side the vintage ones actually are just mounted using those holes right here so basically what we have right here are two little barbs that stick out and it's just like Legos you plug it in but here's a quick look at the two screws that are securing the whole thing to the guitar and underneath that we have a ground wire foreign Ops go beautifully aged here silver top hats two volumes and two tones labeled individually so yeah don't forget and you have a three-way toggle switch with your output Jack on the front now outside of cracks right here and cracks at the typical Brake Area you also have to watch out for cracks right here the wood is very thin on these and I don't think we have any cracks on this example but we do have a little bit of a darker stain in these areas perhaps somebody greased these pots and then that kind of sank into the wood grain that's also a thing that happens so unfortunately as these pickguards age they start to warp and this one has a very prominent warp right here where it's pretty much all by itself yanked the screw out of it you might have noticed earlier that it wasn't in there that's because when I first tore this apart when they were here I decided not to put that back in until I was ready to fully secure it but this has got some nice age to it all in and of itself here's what the back looks like after I've cleaned it there's our Tenon cover area and the tendon cover itself now the Customs they had Les Paul Custom right there when they were still called lust balls anyway now our Frets are looking so much better after they've been polished I also conditioned our Brazilian rosewood fretboard and SGS have mahogany bodies by the way but look at the awesome aging to these inlays they look pretty sweet now we do have a little bit of fretware in the first like cowboy cord area you'll see on the back side of the neck there's a couple of dings on the neck so obviously this guy was not much of a solo guitar player but hey that's okay that's probably why it survived in such great condition that's got a 24 and three quarter inch scale length with a nut width of 1.7 inches by the 12th 2.05 we've got a first fret neck depth of a skinny .83 wow and then only 0.91 by the 12th that's crazy but here's that neck at the first fret and the 12th fret it's just really rounded it does widen up towards the 12th but it's just so round you don't really notice it there's no shoulder to it like usually 61 reissue SGS tend to have I mean this is a comfortable neck in my opinion it's nice and rounded feeling now unfortunately when this thing got to me my heart sank as soon as I saw that the nut was actually busted this had been strung up with flat wound strings for who knows how long just sitting I actually decided to save the strings that were on here so I could show them to you yeah flat wounds that's also why we don't have tons of fretware on this thing but the pressure of the low E string was too much it actually cracked the nut right through the slot so my options were to either replace it or maybe try to glue it now I tried to take it to a professional but unfortunately he wasn't feeling well so I gave it the old College try and yeah I'm hoping this is gonna at least last me long enough to get a demo for this video and then I don't know we're probably gonna have to replace the nut at some point in time but our headstock is beautiful again I always say you can never know the true condition of a guitar until you clean it because you could not see these lines on the headstock before I cleaned it that's pretty common to see on these two because the veneers of this is actually made of Hollywood you see this layer right here that almost kind of looks like a binding that's actually the Hollywood that you're seeing that they placed on top of the mahogany so I'm betting what we're seeing there is just like the wood grain of that wood underneath but our truss rod is perfect on this one probably wasn't used Too Much here's our very cool Les Paul truss rod cover nice and aged moving on to the back side now you can see an interesting dark splotch in the mahogany body but you definitely have a few light Nicks and dings back here predominantly in like this area I mean it's not mint conditioned by any means but they're being 60 years old it's in pretty good shape and I'm far from an expert on true 60s so if you see something that looks wrong you let me know but cross-examining this with other ones I would say everything's stock in Here original strap buttons yet the other ones at the heel now this was a really scary line to see at first but now it's just wood grain it's not a crack the neck on this one to me looks 100 perfect that there's nothing ever been done to it honestly we don't even have that many finished check lines on it like there's a few right here but as far as the only thing that you need to make an excuse for on this example is it looks like the fretboard might have tried to lift just a tad and that caused the Finish to crack in this area I guess it could be very lightly in the wood too but it's not your typical actual brake I mean there's nothing you can even do for that along those lines The Binding is just a little bit loose could definitely stand to get glued back down but I think I'll wait for somebody who has like the exact right stuff to get that done it's definitely not like falling off by any means looking up the back of the neck it retains most of its red color except for the areas that it was played in so once again you can see the cowboy cord areas where it's lost its stain now sadly it looks like he wore a ring or had a capo or something that kind of chewed the finish up in this area so that is a little bit of a bummer because you can feel that while you play it that's not just a normal light ding that's like a slight chip into the Finish then we can see our double ring single line cluesome tuners I've seen other ones with the same style and I removed these with them here and I didn't see evidence of anything else being on here and our serial number of 88295 and literally every 60s SG has a ding right here on the treble side of the headstock it's funny start looking for them and you'll see every single one has that same mark foreign test they really enjoyed getting to see this in person because they said they also took this to a Guitar Center and they took it away into a back room and they didn't show them the black light test they just remember vaguely hearing something about it so they enjoyed learning about this this just shows us the evenness in the Finish like if any touch-ups have been done this could help us see that because of the way the Finish ages now if the whole guitar has been refinished at the same time now we're not going to be able to tell but I I don't have any suspicions of this being refinished however I would be interested if anybody is a little bit more knowledgeable on these tram systems Have You Ever Seen The Walrus tooth arm with this variation I mean I'm sure it could be a potential possibility but normally you see the teaspoon arms but this definitely looks vintage to me and since nothing else has ever been changed on this it seems unlikely that he would have ever did anything but it's possible this is a later arm but our knobs are glowing the way I would want to see this also helped show some of the dings in the lacquer on the top in the arm area our inlays are glowing cool then our headstock is also looking fantastic so far nothing to worry about oh yeah this is looking cool so the reason why this looks a little bit different is because we still have the brighter Cherry finish back here so you can see that's just a little bit more into the wood grain so that helps us see that but if you were to fade this out in the sun it would look exactly the same as the top here's a look at our Electronics you can see a little bit of finish wear up here probably where they were rounding over at the fretboard edges new from the factory and then everything's looking okay here here's that fretboard lifting area by the way just right here under black light and moving up the back side of the neck you can see those chips in the finish that I was talking about here a little bit more clearly but thankfully no cracks in the headstock everything is very evenly glowing and when each pickup is worth as much as a Les Paul reissue on the used Market you also have to black light these and I would say our Bridge pickups looking okay as is our neck pick up here kind of fun to see the cavities under backlight foreign here we go all strung up probably for the first time in 30 some years for the purposes of our demo today I just borrowed a saddle off of an 80s Gibson avr-1 Bridge not exactly the same as the original but it'll get us going for today I'm not sure how long that nut's going to last but it did string up just fine so I'm going to demo it as is all said and done this one weighs 7 pounds four ounces let's go ahead plug it in and hear how these paf sound okay unfortunately I have very very sad news the neck pickups broke it it doesn't work I tried messing with it I pulled it all apart again to see if something was shorting it out I moved around some wires without breaking any original solder joints I tried getting my multimeter out to see if the pot was bad or if it was the pickup I could no longer get a reading out of the pickup like normal so I don't know it's the one thing I didn't check while they were here but I'm not gonna hold it against them that's my fault I'm sure it's a simple fix yeah I was hoping it was going to be a simple fix but I opened it up I even pulled my audience over on my Facebook page to see if somebody saw something that just didn't quite look right there were a lot of different theories but at the end of the day nothing fixed it so unfortunately I had to break my solder iron out on a completely original 62 Les Paul SG take the neck pickup out to take the reading direct because that is the only way we could further find out is it the output Jack that's bad is it the toggle switch is it the pot and unfortunately it's the pickup itself that's right the five thousand dollar pickup's dead so I took a trip out to Jam City guitars because he deals with these true vintage guitars all the time remember he loaned me his 57 custom in this episode and he offered to take a look at it but unfortunately to look at a pickup you kinda have to remove the pickup cover and even though that kind of sucks it's a dead pickup you're gonna have to do it to fix it anyways because I was already talking to Lindy freylen I was going to send it out to him and he was going to end up doing that anyways so I figure you know maybe there's just like something in here that could be a quick fix but unfortunately all we found was that the slug coil side has died so I was very appreciative of Jim helping me out here but it still needed to go out to Freeland to get rewounds out yeah it's going to be a rewound neck pickup not as cool as all original untouched but at least we know it's still the original pickup so unfortunately we don't have the neck pickup for this one [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign foreign [Music] that a fun journey I think now we realize why they're still trying to recreate the magic of these pafs that is one of the best sounding Bridge pickups for the style of music that I play anyways it's very articulate and clear it plays well with touch so if you really Hammer into it it distorts more but if you soften up it really reacts to that I mean that's what the pafs are known for it's a real real shame that we couldn't get some juicy neck pickup tones out of this so what is the fate of this one well I was ready to add it to my Personal Collection even though when I purchased this I was initially thinking ads is just a buy and flip I want to document it like all the other dealers but in my opinion the ebony block SG style guitars are the coolest ones because they're so blingy and flashy they don't get enough love in my opinion so if nothing else troglodytes I hope you enjoyed tonight's episode because I know I sure did I had a lot of fun with this SG it sounds pretty good too don't forget to like comment and subscribe and we'll catch you tomorrow on the next one take care if you enjoyed tonight's episode how about this other 50s double cut didn't leave the factory is a double cut but hey that's the story of this Les Paul

Channel: The Trogly's Guitar Show

Views: 310,575

Keywords: the trogly's guitar show, trogly, gibson, gibson les paul, fender, 1962 ebony block gibson sg, Gibson SG Les Paul, Gibson SG ebony block, Gibson Ebony Block, SG Ebony Block, Vintage Gibson SG, Vintage gibson sg, Vintage Gibson Les Paul, 60s Gibson Les Paul, 60s Gibson, 60s SG, 1961 gibson sg, 1962 gibson sg, original owner gibson, original owner vintage gibson, gibson sg, trogly 1962 gibson sg, gibson sg standard, Buying a 1962 Gibson Les Paul From the Original Family

Id: h0aGTyvLLjM

Length: 36min 23sec (2183 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 18 2022