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Thread: Less Collectible Gibson's

  1. #26
    Full Grown and Cussin' brunello97's Avatar
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    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    Can I have the '39 L-00, Jim?

    Mick
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  2. #27
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    All right, if you insist!
    Jim

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  4. #28

    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    Quote Originally Posted by bluegrasser78 View Post
    Well I totally disagree with TOBIN the Gibson's of the 30's had some fantastic instruments. don't know what he's saying about terrible sunbursts, not sounding good et... 1935's were great looking as were other years, so much variety in each model. Some of the F-5's sound just great, talk to Grisman or Sam Bush! Certain A's and F's with certain configurations are way better than teens to 20's Gibson's, It's to one's own ear but I think most everyone is so stuck on "THE MYSTIC LOAR ERA" nothing compares. Loar didn't build em, he was just given a title and overseer of some of the instruments. Sure 30's budget brands weren't the best but I wouldn't be knocking the real Gibson's of the 30's! Mandolins or Guitars.
    I gotta agree with all that... my 1933 A 50 is amazing sounding (and has a great sunburst), and has more tone and volume than my 1924 Snakehead. Plus my Kalamazoo's from the 30's also have a distinctive sound and visual quality that is certainly appealing to me. These are maybe not interesting to a collector but certainly a great value for a player and lover of stringed instruments.

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  6. #29

    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    The whole collectible market makes no sense to me sometimes. Thirty years ago I traded a 72 Strat for a Warmouth parts bass and some cash. The Strat was heavy, had thick poly all over it so thick it climbed up the sides of the frets. It had the horrible three screw neck mount and it sounded so brittle as to be useless for anything but funk rhythm. They go for $2000 now for no good reason.

    Someday an 89 Taurus will be collectible too.

    I still play the Warmouth bass.
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  8. #30
    two t's and one hyphen fatt-dad's Avatar
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    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    in response to the OP: Paddleheads. Non truss-rod Gibsons for well under 2K are a pretty good deal, if you ask me.

    f-d
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  9. #31

    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    I guess it depends on what "collectable" means to you. With the exception of a very few pristine examples pretty much any Gibson A model from almost any year is not particularly collectable. There are thousands upon thousands of them. A2z and very early Gibson ( like maybe Orville made it himself) mandolins might have some interest to a collector. Popularity is a big factor in creating value. Went to a guitar show and hanging on a wall we're maybe 50 early fenders with $25,000 price tags. There were probably at least a dozen more here and there in the same room being sold by other vendors. I concluded that since there are probably a whole lot more of them not in that room that they aren't rare just desired and therefore collectable. There were something like 64 Martin 230's made,they're beautiful and worth maybe 1/100 th of what a Loar is worth and there are 3 or 4 times as many of them. If I bought an A model in the 1970's for $150 which I have and sold it now for $1500,which I have, it seems to me I lost money on the deal!
    .

  10. #32
    Registered User John Kinn's Avatar
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    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    My 1949 A 40 bought thirty years ago, is a very good sounding mandolin (avatar). I had a 2003 Gibson A9 for a while,but sold it. It was a bit louder, but the A 40 blew it away tonewise. I't's a great little all-round mandolin, and it will stay here. I have also played Webers and Collins mandolins, but none have the tone of that old A 40. Maybe I just got a good one.

  11. #33

    Default Re: Less Collectible Gibson's

    Quote Originally Posted by Tobin View Post
    And to me, at least in terms of collectibility and price, it wasn't just about the construction. The aesthetics were terrible too. The sunbursts in the 1930s were uninspiring at best, awful at worst, and unfortunately this sort of retro-extended itself to factory refurbs they were doing on teens and '20s models as well. Not to mention that they were fond of replacing original tuners with newer, cheaper, uglier ones.

    I realize, of course, that part of this was a natural change in style across the board (everything in society, including architecture, lost a lot of elegance after the 1920s), so it's perhaps not fair to put all the blame on Gibson. The Great Depression changed everything, and then WWII. Nothing was the same after that for any instrument company.

    The post-war era was a move towards more industrialized techniques and aesthetics, now that everybody was in "quanitity over quality" mode from the war, not to mention a huge boom in population. Despite having a roaring economy and lots of growth, American manufacturing was unable to return to the days of high quality. This is where we entered the era of mass production with cheap materials and low quality in everything from housing to instruments. This, in turn, gave rise to the great misfortune of importing instruments from overseas sweat shops, which is where a lot of the companies started going. Most of them never came back.

    The 1950s and 1960s sunbursts were even worse than the 1930s ones. While I would call a 1930s sunburst "uninspiring" due to the lack of elegance in color transition, I would call the 1950s-1960s sunbursts downright "hideous" with their orange-pinkish hues. This is where they really started to try to bring back the aesthetics factor, but failed to focus on construction quality. Everything was gaudy and chunky. And it lasted through the 1980s, as far as I can tell.
    ...think you are stretching the dates a little inre to "through the 1980's",,,remember the F5L mandolin was introduced in 1978, so given that date, it would allow for all the "1980s" models to pack some credentials !

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