Ebay Gibson FrankenTenor????

[Gary Hedrick]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Gibs...item19d8d2c447

This one is very curious to me. Post war logo......spliced strip on the back....trapeze tailpiece......color is a early 1950's sunburst.....tuners are the old banjo type...

Just what in the heck am I looking at....I didn't know they had a tenor model like this....

Sooooo is it a Frankenstein tenor??

[billhay4]

I'd like to know what's going on with that back, too. Especially those dowels.
Bill

[Gary Hedrick]

Yes those dowels look really scary.....it almost seems this is a parts guitar...hence the Frankentenor moniker....

[delsbrother]

I think whatever that was it started it's life with more than 4 strings.

[allenhopkins]

Hard to tell from the pics, but is it a round-hole arch-top? I would guess so, from the bridge, and trapeze tailpieces wouldn't normally be found on Gibson flat-tops, but not sure...

[Gary Hedrick]

Allen, I believe that it looks like a flat-top and therefore as you say the bridge is all wrong. But there appears to be no sign of a mounted to the surface bridge. It just looks like a bunch of pieces and perhaps is a conversion but the neck joint doesn't say that....just plain strange...

[Bernie Daniel]

I'm pretty sure Gibson did make some carved (arch top) oval hole guitars -- in fact the L-2 was one - made from 1902 to 1926. But obviously they had 6 strings. The L-2 was later re-introduced as a flat top but this was in the 1930's and so it would had a script "Gibson" not the block letters.

But that neck is obviously a Gibson tenor guitar neck but as far as I know there never was a model TG-2? There was a model TG-25 -- it looks a lot like this one but it was a flattop with a fixed bridge.

My guess some on took the fixed bridge off a damaged TG-25, refinished it the top and fixed the back --then and put an original Gibson trapeze tail piece, and made a sliding bridge. But why?

The dowels were mentioned -- what would they be doing on the back?

[FL Dawg]

Very bizarre mixture.

Body style: KG-11 small type from 1930's
Wood: maple back and sides, I've only seen that on early 1940's wartime guitars
Tuners: early 1930's Grovers
Logo: post-1947 modern logo
Pickguard: doesn't look like vintage material

[mrmando]

I'm pretty sure Gibson did make some carved (arch top) oval hole guitars -- in fact the L-2 was one - made from 1902 to 1926. But obviously they had 6 strings.

I have a 1934 TG-L4 ... carved archtop tenor, round soundhole, flat maple back. Same headstock, tuners and tailpiece, I think. Photos:

http://s568.beta.photobucket.com/use..._1005.jpg.html

With a FON of 521, this eBay monstrosity could be from either 1933 or 1934, but maybe refinished or retopped and patched in the back by Gibson in the 1950s.

[Bernie Daniel]

I have a 1934 TG-L4 ... carved archtop tenor, round soundhole, flat maple back. Same headstock, tuners and tailpiece, I think. Photos:

http://s568.beta.photobucket.com/use..._1005.jpg.html

This eBay monstrosity could be from the early 1930s (there are a couple of different possibilities with a FON of 521), but maybe refinished later and patched in the back.

That's a real beauty. Also I've never seen a true vintage hard shell case like that for a tenor guitar. I have a 1936 TG-0 -- but it is a flat top and the original case is soft shelled. Great sounding tenor though.

[mrmando]

Yes, it's a nice Geib case. I have another for one of my National tenors, and a chipboard one for my Kalamazoo tenor. Somebody put one of those cases up on eBay recently for $695:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1920-1930-GE...item23278fd711

Back to the tenor we're discussing, the ad now says the top is slightly arched, but I frankly can't see it in the photos.

[FL Dawg]

I have a 1934 TG-L4 ... carved archtop tenor, round soundhole, flat maple back. Same headstock, tuners and tailpiece, I think.

You may have solved this. The guitar on ebay could be a retopped version of what you have. Check out the photo of the funny fingerboard extension.

[mrmando]

Yep, same little squidge at the end of the fretboard. The top of the eBay one IS arched after all ... the seller sent me some more photos. So it may be just refinished, not necessarily retopped.

[goaty76]

Here is an ad for a tenor guitar I listed a while back. It is very similar to the ebay one except the pickguard is raised instead of stuck on. Just to note, none of the items in the ad are still for sale.

http://theunofficialmartinguitarforu...dolin-Guitar-H

Phil

[JeffD]

Wierd. Maybe its not. I see markers on 3rd, 5th, 7th 10th, octave, and 15th fret. But the dots on the side of the neck are wrong - showing the octave double dot at fret at 11. Weird.

[mrmando]

Here is an ad for a tenor guitar I listed a while back. It is very similar to the ebay one except the pickguard is raised instead of stuck on.

Yes, that's another TG-L4 like mine. What's left of your pickguard is original. The stuck-on guard on the eBay guitar is similar to what you'd find on some of the Gibson flattop tenors from the '60s.

But the dots on the side of the neck are wrong - showing the octave double dot at fret at 11. Weird.

Mine has similar dots, but with the double dot in the correct place at the 12th fret.

The TG-L4 is not a common instrument. If you Google it you'll find that Elderly and Greg Boyd have both sold one at some point in the past. The Elderly one had a K5-style tailpiece IIRC. If the eBay guitar really is a TG-L4 with a factory refinished top and rebuilt back, it's probably a decent instrument for the final selling price. Maybe not worth a whole lot more than that price, but still a lot of tenor for the money.

[Gary Hedrick]

Gentlemen, thanks for all of your wisdom on this one. I have indeed learned something about these.