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As some of you know, I acquired an L-12 about a year ago. My guitar tech pointed out that it has a fingerboard radius of 6" which was a big surprise to me. I had never heard of a Gibson with such a curve. So it was an odd ball right from the star. Recently, I discovered some older threads in this forum about kerfing on older Gibsons. I got really curious about my own so I borrowed a tiny camera on a goosneck and peeked inside. Guess what? Carved braces. I figured I was doing something wrong so I showed it to my guitar tech who confirmed my observation. I asked him to check again, just in case, but he came up with the same result.
The camera I used was pretty good, with its own illumation, but I am going to check again with an even better one. I will try to get some decent pics (the device I used before was not an actual camera but just a probe that displayed an image on a cellphone-sized screen).
The threads I followed on this topic seemed to say that 1935 was very late for carved braces but as I said, this guitar is already a little odd because of the radius. I talked to a few other owners of L-12s from the same period whose guitars had the same radius, Given that Gibson was not always consistent and did a lot of custom orders, I wonder if these features are not as unusual as I thought. Maybe there are more L-12's with carved braces.
In any case, I am going to get some photos to prove (mostly to myself) that I am neither blind nor crazy. This may take a little while because we are in the middle of a deep freeze where I am in Canada and I am not going out for a little while, let alone with a vintage archtop!
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01-25-2022 12:57 AM
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Well, that is a cool discovery! Is your L-12 a 16” wide guitar? I look forward to trying something like that someday.
A 6” fingerboard radius does seem unusual on a Gibson. I have a ‘47 Epiphone which has a 6” radius, and it’s very comfortable.
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6", is that even playable? Most sanding blocks and radius gauges only go down to 7.25".
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The guitar is 17" and I find it somewhat difficult to play but probably not much more than an early Fender (7.25). Some people love the radius in that range. I am slowly getting used to it.
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1935 is when Gibson was transitioning from 16” to 17” for most of the archtops. A 17” would be expected to have carved braces and most likely (although not always) be x-braced. The radius is still a mystery. I’ve never seen that.
Originally Posted by doc w
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If you have a 17" Gibson archtop from 1935, it is from their "Advanced" line. It was the 16" archtops from early to mid 30s that had kerfed braces. I don't mean to diminish your guitar, but solid braces are not unique for your model. I had a 36 L7 that sounded great and had solid x braces.
The 6" radius is also not unheard of. Here's another example from someone who used to post frequently on the forum. I never measured the radius of my 36 L7 but it was definitely quite rounded, probably around 7-8".
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I don't think that my humble L-12 feels diminished. Originally Posted by omphalopsychos
I was just surprised that the L-12 had carved braces and had them as late as 1935. I wanted to share that little bit of historical data.
I am still pretty new at all of this and have owned only one archtop, this L-12. In fact, I have played only three; the L-12, an L-47, and an L-50. This forum is a treasure chest of experience and information and I rely on folks like you a lot.
You probably don't remember that we had a brief conversation about that crazy radius a while back. It is still somewhat baffling to me and many others. I would still love to know why it was used in the first place and on which models it was used.
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I suppose it's possible that the neck was refretted and re-radiused at some point in the past. All sorts of things are done to guitars.
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You're not kiddin' ! I am learning that strict specifications with regard to model was not a real thing with early Gibsons (and lots of others). Also, as you say, lots of things got "done." Originally Posted by sgosnell
On the other hand, the guy who refretted the guitar said that it had not been refretted before and that this radius looked like it "belonged." Also, the other L-12's I have found with that radius are all from 1935. So maybe it was something with which Gibson was experimenting but later found to be too much for most tastes.
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Higher-end Gibson archtops from the 1930s (and perhaps other models as well as other eras) had a lot of hand-labour once the parts came off the rough-carving machines, and often exhibit many small differences even within a particular model. I had the good fortune to own two Advanced L-12 guitars for awhile, one from 1937 and one from 1938, and there were many small differences between them.
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