1951 Gibson Southern Jumbo

First introduced in 1942, Gibson’s Southern Jumbo is one of the more sought after vintage Gibson guitars. This example from 1951 came to the shop in need of attention to it’s headstock, which had been broken multiple times and previously repaired poorly. It also had several loose braces and was in need of fretwork. Work began on the loose bracing, re-attaching several small portions of braces on the top and back. A number of the braces had been re-glued very messily at some point in the guitar’s past. Next, a thin hard maple bridge plate cap was added with hot hide glue to counteract the strings’ ball ends sinking into the worn but otherwise serviceable factory bridge plate. Next the pick guard was removed in order to repair several small cracks caused by the celluloid guard shrinking with age, pulling the top wood’s fibers with it enough to crack the top. After splining, leveling and touching up the color on the top side, a cross-grain spruce reinforcement was added inside the top and the pick guard was re-attached to the top. Next came the headstock repair. The existing repair was failing when the guitar arrived, and the headstock could actually be moved visibly by hand. Wood was strategically removed from the break area in order to graft on a piece of aged Honduran Mahogany, which was then re-carved to the neck’s original profile and dyed to match the surrounding area. The face of the headstock had an existing overlay of hard maple, which appeared to have been broken again twice after it had been installed. Material was removed from the area around the break and replaced with the same aged Honduran Mahogany, which was then sprayed with black nitrocellulose lacquer and cold-checked to mimic the look of the original lacquer as best as possible without re-spraying over the original portion of the headstock. Once the structural repairs were completed, the frets were dressed and a new bone nut, saddle, and bridge pins were installed. It was a pleasure to add some stability and rigidity back to this beautiful sounding old guitar.