Gibson "faded/worn" finishes

Sérgio said:

That Martin is BEAUTIFUL!!!

Click to expand...

yes... she rings like a bell. The 0-17 was one of Martin's 'inexpensive' models in 1936 when
it was made. No inlay, no purfling lines, no binding. Just decent rosewood and excellent construction. She sound different than other acoustics, partly because of her age but also
because she's a small "parlor guitar' from an earlier time. Original retail price in 1936: $20.00...
But that was a week's pay for a working man in those days.

This is what Rosebud sounds like:
https://soundcloud.com/michael-hough-5/welcome-back

She's got a surprisingly big voice for a small guitar. And a well balanced sound.
That's her in my avatar, onstage at a festival. For most of the time I've owned her
I resisted the temptation to install electronics inside her. It just seemed wrong, so
I used microphones only. But recently, I had my favorite luthier install a Baggs Lyric
microphone inside of Amber, my 1975 Mossman dred, and I've had such a great experience with
that.... I decided to put one inside of Rosebud.

The key is that it's a reversible mod. It's a microphone, which picks up the acoustic sound of
the guitar and sends it to the P.A. to get louder. The Baggs Lyric is the best thing I've come
across, in the endless quest for tone. It's not cheap, but for anyone (like me) who uses an
acoustic guitar onstage, it solves problems and projects the acoustic guitar's tone so well that
I would recommend it to anyone.

To de-electrify your priceless classic acoustic, simply get an ebony sleeve from Stew-Mac, remove
the input jack and the offending apparatus, glue in the ebony sleeve and re-install yer classique
endpin (if you still have it). Rosebud's classique end pin was hand carved out of a wooden
clothes pin (for hanging yer workman's coveralls up to dry in the wind).


Even though she was NOT expensive when made, her tuners are Waverly keys...
What you see in this picture are replacements I bought from StewMac. The original tuners were worn out from so many years of use. Waverly Tuners are the best there is.
And StewMac offered the exact replacement for the old ones, made by the same company.
They were expensive, but it only took me about 5 seconds to decide to buy them.

If you want to protect it you could use Virtuoso polish on it. It does gloss it up some though. And you can if your a good buffer apply a few coats and really polish them up. I use it to clean & protect my guitars. A lot of nice ones in here. I liked every faded I had here. Great guitars!