I know what you mean about the hinged tailpiece. A few months ago one of my students brought in a Gibson 50's archtop that he found in his grandparents basement. It had stood in a couple of inches of water at some point in it's life and although the affected wood was restorable, corrosion at the hinge caused a separation of the metal. In his case, it seemed possible to weld the separated metal back together. My suggestion was that he take the instrument to a luthier in tune with vintage instruments and get expert advise about how to approach the repair.
In your case a repair may be possible, or you may need to replace the tailpiece with a vintage part from a parts guitar. There is no easy way to procure a vintage part. You are stuck watching eBay with the rest of us or you might get lucky and your luthier has the correct part lying around. Given the value of your instrument, it will be worth your time to get an opinion from an expert luthier. Hopefully your dead pickup is nothing more than a corroded volume pot.
Speaking of value your 1956 model with P-90's is worth somewhere in the ballpark of $7,000. Too bad you didn't get the itch to play guitar a couple of years later. The 1958 model ES-295's with humbuckers have approximately twice the value at $14,000.
If you want to sell, I say sell later. The vintage guitar market is depressed under the current economy, let's hope for better days.
It might be worth $50 to let Gruhn take a look at your instrument in it's current state. They may be able to advise you on the best way to approach your tailpiece problem. You have a fairly valuable instrument, you don't want to do something to drastically reduce it's value just to make it playable.
Here's a link to Gruhn's Shop, just click "appraisal" on the left side menu:
Statistics: Posted by VintAxe — Thu Jan 14, 2010 6:29 pm
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