Vintage Gibson Sonex

[dub]

Aww, you’ll hurt it’s feelings. I just got a new bridge for it too!



The neck looks straight enough:

► Show Spoiler

The old bridge was corroded as hell, looks like a nickel finish over a zinc alloy, metric Japanese hardware, the necks and parts for these were done in Japan then assembled in the USA.

► Show Spoiler

Next thing is a new jack socket, I have to give it a clean pretty regularly and it’s not feeling very tight. I wouldn’t take it on a stage with the risk of it cutting in and out under a bit of pressure. Notice one of the knobs doesn’t seem to be original, the numbers have stayed a crisp shade of white.

► Show Spoiler

[Thomas]

That looks lovely!

I love mine. It plays/sounds great. The neck is straight on mine but it has the Sonex neck gap at one side. Similar to quite a few 60s Fenders I’ve played.

I would post a pic bit it’s not working for me on phonescale. It has different knobs on it now. I actually have another one of these apart from the neck.

[dub]

Yeah there’s a gap on the horn side of mine too.

What pickups you have in there?

[Thomas]

Thanks for updating that. It works on the computer just not on IOS...

Its a humbucker sized P90 I had kicking about (Vanson or something, same as Wilkinson etc) and a Tonerider TRH1 Rocksong PAF (overwound alnico II) thing wired up to the coil split. Looks like this now:

[Thomas]

The body/neck issues with the Sonex is due to the body being made of a wood core surrounded by a weird resin type material. Apparently they tested it in really hot and cold environments and alleged it was super stable. The upshot of that is over time a lot of these have cracks at the end of the neck pocket due to shrinkage over time. Its supposed to improve susatain too. the old ad had a graph and everything so it must be true LOL.

You can see the layers in the second photo below.

For the money they're great. I only out about £300 all in and for that I got this guitar upgraded plus a whole other guitar sans neck. I've been on the lookout for an Epiphone bolt on neck to try with it. Tho the necks on these are actually way better.

► Show Spoiler

[westtexasred]

This one is at Guitar Center for $499 including case

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Gibso ... 6217459.gc

[Thomas]

I somehow missed this post. That looks cool as balls and it’s not too crazy a price.

I’m other news after receiving a neck for this earlier this week I had a wee look through my parts and discovered that apart from 2 pickup screws/springs I have everything I need to build the other one of these. The pickups I’m trying are a set of 80s muza hummers (Polish brand that are supposed to be pretty good. Interestingly they are resin dipped like the Marauder pickups. If I don’t like them I have a set of standard HBs I can stick in there.

I was originally going to use this body for the proper project above but somewhat ironically the neck didn’t match up correctly with this body. So now I think I might try that again as that body is in way better condition. Plus I have to paint the guitar and neck to match (Epi neck is red) and the other one has worn through the paint in parts.

I dunno what colour to go for. Any suggestions?