Product Description

Today we have a rare bird indeed, an early Gibson SJ with a rosewood body. The Southern Jumbo is essentially a fancy J-45, built for the southern market, and designed to compete with the fancier Martin guitars that were popular at the time. The SJ has parallelogram inlays as well as multi-ply binding on the top and back of the body.

Our rosewood Gibson SJ featured here has a factory order number of 8074H-17, putting it right with the first group manufactured during 1942. There were a few production batches of rosewood body guitars around this time, however Gibson would ultimately opt to use mahogany for all SJ guitars built afterwards.

In addition to rosewood back and sides, the guitar also features an adirondack top, bound rosewood fingerboard, and a 5-piece neck that is three pieces of maple with two walnut stringers. The neck is lacking a truss rod like many of the era. It is a 19 fret neck with 14 frets clear of the body. Additionally, though this Southern Jumbo is a Banner-era guitar, ours can be identified as an early one due to the white script Gibson logo.

The back and side wood is beautiful and rich with the varied dark striations premium rosewood is known for. Ours once had a tailpiece added, and there has been some finish touchup done. The bottom belly bridge and maple bridge plate are expert replicas. The original neck block is square, and made of mahogany. The original Kluson tuners are 3 on a strip with earlier riveted gears. This one also features a back strip between the two pieces of rosewood, as well as the rare skunk stripe down the top's center seam: extra finishing touches to enhance the presentation and elegance of the guitar.

This guitar has been played extensively, with plenty of wear to the top around the soundhole and the finish worn off the back of the neck. It has a bold sound, with a nice round bass note, not much in the way mids, but nice clear top end. It takes a bit of power to drive the top and get volume out of it, but it's sound is pretty stellar at volume. Single notes are clear and articulate, and individual notes can be easily picked out when playing chords. Though this is a rosewood round shoulder dreadnought, one that gives us some D-28 vibes, it's a wholly Gibson-sounding guitar.

Ships in a non-original hardshell case.

Product Details