The Saga of My 1955 Gibson L5

[VintAxe]

Well this section was my idea so I guess it is up to me to start it off. My story is not about a guitar I have restored, but rather a damaged 1955 Gibson L5 I inherited and had restored by luthier Keith George. My story is rather long winded so don't get the idea that you need to write something like this to contribute to the Forum. I'm just trying to record the story of the L5 before my memory fails and the saga is lost forever.

The L5 belonged to Johnny Myers who was a friend of my father. From the time I became reasonably proficient on the guitar, my dad wanted me to jam with his friend Johnny who had been a professional musician in the late 50's and early 60's. After a couple of years of talking about setting something up, dad showed up at my house one day with Johnny in tow. Since Johnny didn't own a guitar anymore, I broke out a couple of my guitars and we spent a few hours banging through some standards, all to the absolute delight of my father who never stopped smiling for the duration of our session.

Several months later, I got a call from dad telling me Johnny had died and he wanted to bring something over to me. He showed up at my door carrying an extremely beat up Gibson jazz box case. When I opened it up I was both delighted and horrified. The delightful part was that it was a tobacco burst 1950's Gibson L5; the horrible part was that the top had been smashed and the back had a couple of serious cracks. It seems there were two stories of how the guitar was damaged. According to Johnny, he came home from a gig late and drunk, and his wife took out her frustration with him by jumping on top of the guitar as it laid on the floor in the case. Apparently, the wife's version was similar in that Johnny was both late and drunk, however, in her version Johnny fell on the guitar himself. Regardless of the source of the impact, the damage was extensive.

Being a college student at the time, I didn't have much money for a restoration but I decided to send it back to Gibson to see if they could do anything with it. After a couple of months the guitar was returned to me with "repair cost prohibitive" written across the checklist that documented everything that would need to be repaired. A few years later I ran across Honest Ron Lira, a luthier working for a music store I frequented. He agreed to take a look at it if I would bring it by his shop. Honest Ron gave the guitar a through inspection and suggested I sell it for parts. I just put it into storage.

Many years later, I relocated to a larger city and heard about Keith George, a local luthier reputed to perform fantastic restoration work. My friend John was working at a music store at the time and Keith used the shop as one of his pickup/drop-off locations around the city. I gave the guitar to John to see if he could get an estimate for repairs. Keith agreed to take on the job and gave me a very reasonable estimate for the work. I was excited to finally get the L5 fixed and began thinking how I could use it for recording. Well, a year went by with no word from Keith. I realized the job might take some time but I was started getting a bit antsy to have it returned. Another 6 months went by and still no word from Keith. John had stopped working at the guitar shop so I had also lost my primary means of even contacting Keith. I finally acquired Keith's number from one of the guitar salesmen and called him directly. When I described the guitar, he responded, "Oh, you're talkin' about my puzzle". I was relieved that he had done some work on the L5 but it still sounded like it was far from completion. This conversation began a ritual where I would call Keith every 6 months or so and he would update me on the slow progress being made on the guitar.

After two more years of our ritual phone calls, I began to doubt whether Keith would ever finish work on the L5. I finally suggested he either finish it up or let me come pick it up to give to someone else to finish. At this point, he promised to have it done by Christmas. Well, it didn't make it in time to go under the tree but when I called in February 2001 it was done except for some final lacquer work. A few weeks later Keith delivered the guitar to my house and it was a beautiful sight to behold. The cracks in the pieced together top blended into the natural crazing in the finish and are hardly noticeable. Keith did a fantastic job of saving the old finish and retaining all the character of the original instrument. It was a long time coming, but it was certainly worth the wait. You can see the restored guitar in the Guitar Gallery section of VintAxe. Thanks Keith for giving the old girl a second life.

[cheepaxes]

I'm going to forward the URL for this post to a luthier friend of mine who was showing me a couple 90-year-old Gibsons he'd restored - an L-3 and an L-4. I got a chance to play them last Thursday. Very cool, interesting-sounding instruments.

-Scott