Gibson has been raiding the archive for inspiration and emerged with a handful of meticulous Murphy Lab reissues of classic acoustic guitars of yesteryear.
Light Aged in at the Bozeman, Montana acoustic Custom Shop, these all bear the hallmarks of the Murphy Lab M.O., offering a box-fresh, just-made version of a vintage instrument with a hefty but not vintage price tag for the collector’s market, and it’s a collection that takes us all the way back to when Herbert Hoover was in the White House with the 1929 Nick Lucas Special Reissue.
A compact 12th-fret acoustic, finished in Argentine Grey, is is an L-00 that manages – somehow – to both look upscale and blue collar.
The blue-collar vibe could be attributed to that porch-friendly L-00 mahogany body shape, the white buttons on open-gear tuners.
With that old-school Gibson headstock logo, inlaid in MOP, it looks like it’s got Delta blues and folk tunes in it. And yet it was built for one of the original jazz guitar soloists – it was built for pizzazz. Those Waverley tuners are gold, there is gold sparkle binding, gold sparkle in the rosette, and just look at those custom inlays on the rosewood fingerboard.
In other words, it’s complicated. And it might be small but it has a deep-depth mahogany body, and so maybe bringing a bit more to your chord work, with a thermally aged red spruce top, traditional scalloped X-pattern bracing under the hood. It is priced at a cool £8,749/$9,999, so not really blue collar at all.
It should be said, all of these have aged tops. The build is on-point as far as vintage reproductions go, with necks with a period-appropriate shape and feel, all glued to the body with hot hide glue. Their guitar cases are also faithful to the era.
The other Pre-War delight from this new drop is a very different beast. This is an early example of the King of the Flat-Tops, an SJ-200 with rosewood on the back and sides and again with the red spruce on top.
This is a bigger, bolder, dressed to the nines in all the finery you’d expect from the “Super Jumbo” – four-bar moustache bridge, the floral pickguard, the gold Grover imperial tuners and mother of pearl graduated crown inlays on the ebony fingerboard.
Even the neck is a work of artistry; two-piece, AAA maple, with a walnut stringer. In the real-world of vintage guitars, these rosewood Pre-War SJ-200s are unicorn rare on account of the straitened economic times in which they were originally made, so all things considered, £7,399/$8,499 for this Faded Vintage Sunburst model looks pretty decent.
Moving on chronologically, the 1955 J-45 Reissue in Vintage Sunburst strikes us as the high-end strummer for those looking for a big-lunged round-shouldered dread for folk, and doing the whole Bob Dylan thing.
Now, this is a blue-collar guitar – yes, it’s the quintessential GIbson w******se [cliche redacted] acoustic.
Here we have the acme of acoustic tone wood combos, with thermally aged Sitka spruce on top, mahogany on the back and sides. Details that we like include the Grover three-on-a-plate strap tuners with cream buttons, the 20th fret (which was a 1955 update to the model as the J-45 went from 19 to 20), and that round profile mahogany neck is sure to be as comfortable as worn-in denim. This is priced £5,249/$6,499, the most affordable of these new models.
Next up is an 1957 SJ-200 that’s available in Vintage Sunburst and, for a premium, Aged Natural. It makes a neat compare-and-contrast with the Pre-War model.
This is all AAA flamed maple on the back and sides with Sitka spruce on top. A a checkerboard marquetry strip runs down the back of the guitar.
Again, it’s ostentatious, would match your most decorative western shirt, and might remind you of players such as Jimmy Page, Gene Autry, Elvis, etc, and it’s priced at £6,799/$7,799 for the sunburst model and £7,299/$8,299 for the Aged Natural with the latter arguably the classic example of the type. Arguably.
Rounding out the new models is another aesthetically audacious work of lutherie, and a guitar that has been used by the likes of Tom Petty, Elvis, Alex Lifeson, etc, and that’s the 1963 Dove Reissue.
Again, in Aged natural, Sitka spruce on top, flamed maple on the back and sides, the pickguard grabbing all your attention until you notice the rosewood bridge with MOP doves. It’s a classic.
A square-shouldered dread that wasn’t quite as popular as the Hummingbird but could certainly hang in that company and similarly had songs in, the Dove has always been cool.
And having recently been reissued as an Epiphone guitar in the Gibson sub-brand’s Inspired By Gibson Custom series it was only fitting that the Gibson Custom Shop upped the ante. The Dove is priced at £6,899/$7,899.
For more pics and details, see Gibson. And if these are a little, well, let’s say you wanted something really high-end, the Bozeman Custom Shop did just release the one-of-one Monarch SJ-200 #100, yours for just $99,999.
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