Re: 1920s F4 tuner buttons
Those tuner buttons are beautiful. I became a huge fan of coffee-colored buttons after buying a banjo that had them. Now I just can't go back to cream/ivory-colored buttons.
At any rate, I'm not much of an expert on old Gibsons, despite owning a couple of them, but I'm not completely convinced that the tuners on that F4 are original. Coffee-colored buttons were sort of rare, but they did exist on F4s of the time (below is a link to a 1924 F4 from the archive as an example). But the arrow-end tuner plates seem to have been standard, regardless of button style. These round-end plates don't seem to fit in with other examples of that time period, and they look way too clean and shiny to me. My guess is that they're replacements, and not particularly old ones. Even the screw heads on the gears look like they've never seen a screwdriver in them. The plating on all the pieces looks more like a modern nickel/chrome/something other than what we see on vintage ones.
I could be wrong, of course, but these look like fairly new tuners. Even the buttons themselves have no wear or grime or anything. They're perfectly shiny. It just doesn't look right to me.
http://www.mandolinarchive.com/gibson/serial/76587
Keep that skillet good and greasy all the time!
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