Stinger Things
Saturday, May 27th, 2017One of the cooler looking Gibson features is the headstock stinger. You know, that black pointy painted thing on the back of the headstock on many high end arch tops, the occasional 335, 345 and lots of early 355’s. In most cases, it’s a decorative thing. But not always. Now, why would you go looking under there to begin with? In general, there’s no rational reason for anything sinister to be going on, is there? I mean, c’mon it’s the Gibson factory in the Golden Age. What could they be hiding?
Gibson, like Fender, didn’t like to let things go to waste. It’s bad for your profit margins. So, maybe a little repurposing of damaged parts was normal. A bad sunburst paint job was often sprayed over with a custom color over at Fender. A piece of flawed maple plywood got a deeper sunburst at Gibson and a “2” stamp. I had a 65 335 with a graft in the wood of the rim that the seller insisted came from the factory that way. So, there’s no doubt that the company policy for both Fender and Gibson was “waste not”.
So, back to the original question-what’s under that stinger? Well most of the time, nothing at all. I think. I don’t go removing stingers to see what’s under them but I had occasion to do so a while back. I had a 60 ES-355 with a cracked headstock-or so I thought. I took it to my luthier to assess and he noted that there was a piece of veneer on the back of the headstock and it was cracked-not the neck. My first thought was that somebody veneered the back of the headstock to cover extra tuner holes but the guitar still had its original tuners. So, maybe they had been taken off, different ones put on, then taken off and the originals put back on and the holes covered by the veneer. OK, makes sense. I’ve seen it plenty on 335’s but most people don’t take the Grovers off a 355. In any case, the veneer was cracked and it had to come off. Better a cracked piece of veneer than a cracked neck. So, we decided to remove the offending veneer and see why it was there in the first place. The result was a surprise.
Under the veneer there were filled holes but not the holes we expected. These were tuner shaft holes that were in a completely different location on the headstock. A quick measurement showed me that they were in the exact location of the tuner shaft holes of a 335 or 345. How do we explain that? Pretty obvious, actually. The headstock of a 335 or 345 is smaller than the headstock on a 355. So, if you have extra 335 or 345 necks that you aren’t using and you have a batch of 355’s that need to be built, what do you do? Well, the headstock of a 335 is made up of three parts. The middle is the same piece of wood as the neck blank. The edges of the headstock are two smaller pieces of mahogany usually called wings. The face of the headstock is covered by a veneer of holly wood so you can’t see the seam of the wings from the front but if you look carefully, you can see them on the back. The only difference between a 335 headstock and a 355 headstock as far as structure is concerned is the size of the wings. So, a 335 headstock can be converted to a 355 headstock by putting on bigger wings. The inlays in the front of the headstock are different but they are inlaid into the holly overlay and not the mahogany, so turning a 335 neck into a 355 neck should be pretty easy. New wings and new holly overlay and correct inlays. But what if its already been drilled for tuners? Therein lies the reason for that piece of veneer on the back that wasn’t supposed to be there under the stinger. Because the 355 headstock is wider, the tuners are in a different location. Using an already drilled 335 neck would require those holes to be doweled and the tuner shaft holes re-drilled closer to the edges of the headstock. No problem on the front-there’s the holly overlay. But on the back, you would be able to see them. The solution? You guessed it, a thin piece of mahogany veneer and a stinger to cover the whole thing up.
My initial thought was that it wasn’t a common thing until months later, I had another stinger 355 with a headstock break. We scraped a little of the finish away from the edge of the stinger and saw that this one had veneer over the back of the headstock as well. Since we were repairing the headstock anyway, we took a peek under the veneer. Same thing. I don’t know if every 355 with a stinger has a veneer covering doweled tuner holes but we found two of them.
Just in case you want to see the other one-here it is same deal but there are additional tuner holes in this one.