May the Schwarz be with You
With apologies to Mel Brooks (whose line I “borrowed” for this post, this has nothing to do with Star Wars, Space Balls or any other movie). This post is about Gerhard Schwarz and his line of repro parts branded St. Helens. Repro parts have had a heavy presence in my posts because it’s a really vital part of the vintage experience (and not always a good one). The biggest problem I have, as a dealer, is the “all original” guitar that is not. Often, the seller is just repeating what the seller before him said. That seller is sometimes a dealer but more often, an individual. Most sellers are honest but most sellers can’t tell certain repro parts from a correct vintage part. And, with the prices of vintage parts going through the roof, a single wrong part can change the value by thousands of dollars. I’m not just talking about PAFs here. The cost of a real vintage pickguard for a 58-60 ($1500) a tailpiece ($2500 or more) or a bridge ($1800 or more) will ruin your day. Enter St. Helen’s guitar parts made by Gerhard Schwarz of Germany. Gerhard has been around for awhile but this line of parts is relatively new. Do we need more repro parts?
Answer: Yes we do. There are some really accurate repro parts on the market but many of them share a common feature:they aren’t branded making identification somewhere between difficult and nearly impossible. I really like the Montreux stop tail. It has a fairly accurate short seam that is much smoother than the originals which makes them easy to recognize. Not as effective as putting the name of the maker on the part but better than nothing. The Gibson made Historic no wire ABR-1 is nearly dead on. On the older ones, you could tell it was a repro by the missing manufacturers brand mark. Gibson later added it making it nearly identical to the originals. There were still two ways to identify the repro: The letters on the underside weren’t as sharp as the originals but if you don’t have an original to compare it to, then it will be hard to know. The other way is foolproof. Look under either “E” string saddle. If there is a circular tooling mark, it’s a repro. If there isn’t, it’s real. But why am I going through all this when this post is supposed to be about St. Helens parts?
Gerhard’s parts come in this cute little “lunchbox” that has all kinds of uses beyond holding your stash, I mean your lunch. Thanks to Jim Weyandt..I borrowed this photo from his Facebook page. Note the branding on the stop tail.
Gerhard’s parts (the ones I’ve seen anyway) are very accurate and accurate beyond the cosmetics. He has duplicated the materials as well for a level of accuracy often missing but invisible. But he did something I appreciate even more than that. He branded his parts. The lightweight stop tail has a near perfect short seam correctly roughed up and it would be ready to fool the best trained eye except for one thing. There, in small but bold letters, is the name St. Helens. I’m told the early versions didn’t have the brand mark which would have made the problem worse, not better. Beyond branding his parts, he is also producing some very hard to find parts like the low profile ABR-1 found only on 1958 ES-335s . They almost always collapsed under the pressure of 12 gauge strings (those were the lightest you could get in 1958). The replacement was almost always a shaved full height ABR-1. Now, with much lighter gauge strings, the low pro ABR-1 should stand up to hard use. But most of them collapsed decades ago. As far as I know, there is only one other parts producer making this part and that’s Pigtail. Good for both of them. I bought a few of them.
I’m really happy that St. Helens and Pigtail put their names on their parts. It keeps the dishonest folks honest (or at least a little more honest) and they are providing a hard to find part for 58 ES-335’s
Gerhard also makes a compensated wraptail to replace the “lightning” wrap tail as well as one to replace the standard wrap tail that had no compensation at all (other than an angled installation and adjustable ends). The compensation is subtle so they appear, from a distance of about a foot, to be the original uncompensated type. There is also a low profile wrap tail that you can wrap over on a 52/53 Les Paul, another useful part although they have been around for awhile from other manufacturers. He makes a compensated and uncompensated version of the low profile one.
So, welcome to the rather crowded field of vintage parts makers. It’s nice to see more accurate parts and more makers. The branding is important to me so that everybody knows it’s a repro. There will still be sellers who try to pass off repro parts as the real thing but every repro part ever made has some “flaw”. The trick is to find it.
