What's a Gibson from 1960 Like?

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tonight we're going to check out a Gibson from the year 1960 welcome back trog nights to your daily dose of guitar information the trogly guitar show now don't get too excited I don't think anybody's putting a 60 burst in here but it is a burst in Hue this is an es 125 Sammy just purchased this guitar and he wanted me to check it out on the show and share it with everybody cuz he's really excited to have a one pickup archtop guitar and hey we might as well learn about these weird little goofy things so the es-125 is basically the student model version of an archtop guitar you got to remember these things were all the rage at one point in time before the Les Pauls came around and there's still a lot of people who enjoy full hollow body guitars but the es-125 was offered in so many different variations so what version is this one well it's got a cutaway so that's going to add a c into the title and it is a thin line design meaning it's not obnoxiously thick like an es-295 so that tells us it's an an es25 TC because we only have one pickup here if it had two pickups then you would also have a d within the title as a dual pickup model but these were introduced all the way back in 1941 but the initial version had a slightly smaller body and only lasted for about two model years before being discontinued and then eventually brought back in 1946 and then we saw various different versions of this all the way until about 1970 so you can find a full body version that just has the one pickup you can find a full body dual pickup version you can also find a full body one with a cutaway you can also find the Dual pickup version of the Cutaway you can find just the Thin Line with one pickup you can find the Thin Line version with two pickups as well as the one we're documenting today the Thin Line cutaway single pickup then you can also find the tcd Thin Line cutaway double pickup then don't forget about the 3/4 sized version so d c CD T TD TC CD it all gets kind of confusing but once you understand what they mean then the titles make more sense cuz not everybody wants a cutaway so there's a little bit of something for everyone they were relatively affordable at that time but most of these things are like a darker almost tobacco Sunburst color and that's what's cool about this one being 1960 because it's actually a cherry sunburst and the' 60s they don't fade because the Finish was a little bit different just like the original Les Paul bursts so it's kind of like a breath of fresh air to see one that's a little bit different than the rest and it's obviously got some fading to it but yeah know let's just check this out for what it is I'm not an expert on these but we've got an old P90 so it can't be that bad in 2024 these really aren't that expensive somewhere within the $2 to $33,000 range but yet you can still get all the Beautiful Finish checking and a vintage Gibson but straight out of the box even though it's a thin line it still has a good amount to it I mean it just feels closer to a less PA really cuz the top and back are still carved so even though this is thinner it's still quite a sizable guitar but this is also a really inexpensive way to have a real Brazilian rosewood fretboard on a guitar cuz that's back when Brazilian was just the standard it wasn't some super ultra rare tone wood that you had to jump through a lot of Hoops to get at that point in time let's go ahead and throw this guitar on the workbench to take an individual look at its parts and specs before we get to a playing [Music] sample inside our friend from 1960 this top is just looking gorgeous beautiful cherry sunburst Hue and I'm not normally a big fan of these but it's more so akin to like Heritage cherry sunburst out of the 80s where it has that really nice dark border before they got really Clowny but you even have like a little bit of figuring within the wood that shows out now maybe a little bit of bird's eye and dancing wood grain but let's check out our P90 they didn't have any markings you just have to kind of know what to look for and I'm not necessarily an expert on 50s and 60s P90s looks close enough as compared to what I've seen and it has a nice strong reading 7.42k ohms within the circuit and our cover looks like this lightly worn then we have the UC 451 markings on the inside now these utilize a floating Bridge system so I had to tape it down but we currently have a wooden bridge on it and it does have two thumb Wheels however I'm going to take them off because I wanted the action just a little bit lower on this and I think that's going to give us the movement we need before we go shaving anything down here's one of our vintage style trapes tail pieces this one's got some pretty good patina worked up on it and it just mounts to the bottom side of the guitar with two screws and your strap button then here's the sad fate of a lot of these archt Toops people will take them got the electronics use them to restore more valuable guitars thankfully these knobs still appear to be original it's just a master volume and a master tone I'd say this looks pretty good without a pick guard but here's a close-up look at it it is the tortoise shell color so the more light that you get underneath it the more the marbling stands out but this is real Celluloid so it will bend and warp over time all things can considered not too bad shape but it utilizes like a little ebony block spacer right here since the body slopes down here now let's see what we can find with our endoscope because the shop this viewer bought it from said they couldn't find a factory order number or serial number so here's the base of our heel not seeing anything there and here's looking towards our strap button you can see where they've got a block of wood in there as well as our grounding wire and over there is our output Jack and here's the bot b side of our pots they look like they could be the original style cuz I don't have markings on the bottom they're going to be on the edge but my endoscope is not quite good enough to read them but we do have a r 6731 Space 7 over here but here you can also see some of the top bracing and the bottom side of our Maple top and this is back over by the neck block area you can see some of the curving that they use along the edge as well as the Cutaway over there so overall we didn't find anything too crazy in here but speaking of the Cutaway this is known as the Florentine cut it's a little bit more exaggerated and pointy over here whereas the Les Paul style is known as the Venetian but just like an es335 these are crafted the same way it's a three ply Maple popler Maple sandwich that they press and then form into the top the same is also true for the edges and the back then this model utilizes a mahogany neck with that rosewood fretboard these Brazilian boards can get really dark like I would not fault you if you thought this was ebony that's how nice and black this particular one is but this was played quite EXT defensively you've got fretwear pretty much all up and down the thing some fingernail dividing I do want to say when I had the conditioning treatment on this there's a lot of cool like red streakiness in this board it all just gets lost because of how dark it's become but you've got some light chipping of the Finish along the edge and here's a good look at the edge of the fretboard how it dips down underneath it and these Rock 24 3/4 in scale lengths but I measure 1.69 in at the nut 2.09 by the 12th first fret neck depth quite skinny 8 and88 by the 10 you know I never realized just how thin this neck was until I took the measurements since the body is still pretty chunky as compared to what I normally review here's that neck at the first fret and the 12th fret still nice and rounded c-shape it's just rather thin moving on to the face of the head stock first off our truss rod everything looks good there plenty of life left and no fancy model markers on the headstock just lots of nice finish checking and our Gibson decal logo my truss rod cover is just one ply black nothing too fancy can't really tell top from bottom all strung up again what was the final verdict I thought it was strange when I first unboxed it this thing was flying about in the case even though the bridge was all taped out but now I realize why it is somebody had previously remove that thumb wheel because this does play okay just like that but you need just a hair over here like you could get away with half of that cuz it plays great until like right here where everything starts to fret out if you just run it completely bare without THB wheels so I'll let the owner of this decide what he wants to do when he gets it moving on to the back now it's such a dark cherry I just love the wood that they used back here it's looking pretty sweet but what's really surprising here is you know from 1960 this thing is in great shape despite being played as much as it was on the Frets like you got a small ding right here but there's not like Buckle worming or anything I mean you might have a little bit but it's mainly just finish checking as to be expected with the age of this and like a little patch wear back here I'm sure most of that would polish off here's a look at our sharp pointy cutaway and some of the character that we've got on the edges looks like maybe a small crack by the output Jack and here's the other side and now let's check on our neck always like the way these cherries fade on the neck from playing it cuz it kind of creates that bursted effect that they then later used in the 70s on cherry sunburst colors I wonder if this is where they got that idea from to go from red to Yellow on the ne we've got a little bit of ring wear on the back but mainly just finish checking then it looks like we're still rocking the original Three in a line tuners not as good as a modern tuner but they also have a lot of age to them all said done it weighs about 5 lb let's go ahead plug it in and hear how this Jazz box [Music] sounds [Music] got a nice dark vintage tone to it I like [Music] it when you roll that tone down just a couple of notches it gives you a really nice thump sound [Music] is and yes it will feedback now kick on some Distortion yes you get feedback sometimes you can use that to your advantage though like infinite sustain on this one [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] you can tell this P90 is really good but you know being in the neck position there's only so much you can get out of it like you really want it in the bridge position for like you're really rocking out stuff but it's got some really nice solo [Music] legs got an interesting harmonic ring out thing very space likee There's No Effects added there and don't forget it's still an acoustic guitar as well [Music] there we go a circa 1960 es25 what are my final thoughts I didn't really know what to expect going into this I've had a few of these vintage Arch tops and thin lines before but but I haven't had one in a while and it really just makes you think about playing the guitar differently so even though this might not be what you think you want to play maybe pick one of these up if you're just kind of stuck in a rut and need some inspiration this thing was making me think about guitar a little bit differently and you know the fact that it's got a lot of history even before when I got it just makes you slightly in awe of the instrument and while these things are still certainly expensive guitars it's nowhere near what a burst would run you or even a Les Paul Jr I mean you're talking like 3,000 dollars here for something similar to what we documented today so in many ways for me that's great because I'm not scared to hammer away at this it's not a rare collectible it's just something that could give you inspiration that's readily available on the market at any given time but I'm just really digging this back in this lighting situation but all right trites I need to get this one sent off to Sammy 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 consider subscribing I post videos like this every day and you might even enjoy this next one
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Channel: The Trogly's Guitar Show
Views: 41,124
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: the trogly's guitar show, trogly, trogley, gibson, gibson les paul, fender, gibson es-125t, gibson es-125tdc, gibson es-125t 3/4, gibson es-125tc, gibson es-125c, gibson es 125 tcd, gibson es 125 3/4, gibson es 125 acoustic, gibson es 125 blues, gibson es 125 unplugged, gibson es 125 tdc 1967
Id: EdA-Tvz8Q2g
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)
Published: Sun Jan 21 2024
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