Myths that Won’t Die
You love ’em or you hate ’em. Nylon saddles made their debut in 1962 on the no wire ABR-1. Most folks think they showed up in 63 on wire type ABR-1’s. The idea was, I believe, to make Bigsby equipped guitars stay in tune better since the strings slid smoothly across the nylon rather than getting hung up on the metal saddles.
I recently did a post about pickup misconceptions and I got a rather large response. Most of you felt like you had been duped for decades by sellers who didn’t know their stuff. Thus, there are lots of 65 ES-335’s with their “original” T-tops. Again…no T-tops in 1965. But there are other persistent bits of “conventional wisdom” that eat away at the true timeline for Gibson parts. I’m sure Fender parts undergo the same revisionist history but I’ll leave that to the Fender guys.
The one that is perhaps more pervasive than even the T-top start date is the introduction of the wire type ABR-1 and the nylon saddle ABR-1. It’s not a chicken or the egg thing either. It’s pretty clear. As usual, at Gibson, new features and parts were introduced over a period of time. The new part didn’t simply show up on the day they ran out of the old ones and in the “waste not want not” philosophy of the folks at Gibson, everything got used up one way or another. The no wire bridge was a stock part on ES-335’s until 1963. Yes. 63. Not 62. Not 61. And yet, I keep seeing wire ABR-1’s for sale from 1961 and 62. Funny, I don’t see no wire ABR-1’s dated 1963. I wonder why that is? Is it because just about everybody’s greedy and wants to get the most that they can for their sale item (older is usually more valuable). And you fool a lot of people and the wrong parts end up on that “all original” 1962 with a wire type bridge. There are wire bridges and no wire bridges in 63 but not in 62. Of course, I’ve seen them on a 62 but a lot of folks swapped out the flawed no wire for a wire type to keep from losing saddles during a gig (and nobody carries around extra saddles in the case). Or they were led to believe a wire bridge was correct for a 62.
Then there are the saddles. Ever seen a 62 with nylon saddles on a no wire base? I’ve seen plenty of them. The nylon saddles predate the wire bridge. The original idea was (I think) to help keep Bigsby or Maestro equipped guitars in tune. The strings slide easily through the nylon saddles whereas they can get hung up on the metal ones and slip out of tune. Gibson tried a few solutions for this problem. They tried to shave the bottom of the bridge into a “rocker” which sort of worked. They tried domed thumbwheels which didn’t work. But nylon, as far as I can tell, showed up in 62. I think they were on Bigsby (or sideways) equipped 62’s first and then, in 63, they went to all nylon. They also phased in the wire type base in 63. You will definitely find either base on a 63 and there’s a chance you’ll get metal saddles but I’m pretty sure those were swapped in.
I’ve got room for one more and it applies to Les Pauls as well as ES guitars. In 1960 (but not at the beginning of the year) a bunch of changes were made. They were mostly cosmetic but over the years have made a tremendous difference in the value of 1960 guitars, especially when compared to 1959 guitars. Recently, anything Gibson from 1959 has received a kind of revered status. The conventional wisdom is that 59 is the absolute pinnacle of guitar building at Gibson. Because changes weren’t made by the calendar (like automobiles), it can be tricky to figure out what guitars are 59’s and what guitars are 60’s. I use the serial number but when someone really wants a 59 and can’t afford it, the line between 59 and 60 gets, at best, blurred. At worst, it gets erased. There are three things that happened-probably sometime around the Spring of 60. The tuners went from single ring tips to double ring. The knobs went from bonnet to reflector. The big change was the neck profile. It had already gone from big and chunky to something more medium in the Fall of 59 and that profile continued well into 1960. It’s easy to swap in bonnet knobs and single ring tuners to make your 60 seem to be a 59 build (yes, you can always check the FON). But I’ve started seeing very slim necks (which occurred somewhere around April) with 59 features. I don’t have a handle on when all these changes occurred because so many guitars have been “upgraded” to 59 spec.
Les Pauls have gotten this treatment way more than ES’s. A 59 burst is worth a whole lot more than a 60. Then somebody came up with a catchy term for the early 60 bursts that still had the big neck. Those are identified by the “double 0” serial number- for example 0 0125. A “double 0” gets treated like a 59 lately and that makes sense. We are all too hung up on numbers. I’ll say it for the zillionth time…guitars didn’t have “model years” back then. There were never newspaper or magazine ads that said “come and see the new 1960 Gibson line of guitars”. A new model might be touted but a new model year was not. Because we are so hung up on the numbers, we designate model years. Maybe we should pay more attention to the features we want and ignore the numbers. I’ve found some killer 60 335’s that are every bit as good as 59’s (and have all the “right” features.
There are a few more of these myths out there and I’ll get to those down the road. It’s not an exact science by any means. I’m going from strict observation. When I get a mint example that’s had just one owner, I can make assumptions about originality that I can’t make on a ten owner beater. It helps that I’ve seen so many and there are, of course, exceptions to any parts timeline I might come up with.
This is an excellent example of a 60 that is kind of a 59 that is kind of a 58. This is serial number A32612. That’s pretty early in 1960 but I’ve found two others like this-one has a much later serial-A33765 which is August 1960. What’s so unusual? Big fat 59 neck. All 59 features and a 58 FON. Call it a 58? Call it a 59? Call it a 60. I called it a 60 when I sold it but nothing about it said 60. Of course, I mentioned the 58 FON in the listing but folks still wouldn’t pay a 59 price for it. Why? Because it’s not a 59.
I had a repair and used shop in the early seventies through to ’84 in Toronto. We would frequently convert no wire bridges to wire bridges when guitars came in for set up. Drill a couple of holes and bend a guitar string to shape and Voila!
I personally did dozens of them. It was a frequent request.
I feel no shame LOL!