Gibson Custom 50s J-45 Original Sinker Mahogany Acoustic Guitar, Russo Music Limited

From Gibson Custom comes a limited-edition guitar that takes the 50s J-45 story and adds a couple of important chapters. The impetus for this guitar design was to add player focused features to the already well-loved 50s J-45 original guitars, without breaking the bank. Together with the crew from Gibson Bozeman, Russo Music injected some horsepower into key areas of the traditional J-45 design, without losing the essence of the 50s J-45 Original guitars.

Most notably, these guitars are Gibson’s first foray into the world of Sinker Mahogany, commonly used by other guitar companies like Martin for unique builds. Sinker Mahogany is the name given to the old growth Mahogany logs that didn’t make it from forest to port during Central American logging expeditions of centuries ago. These logs instead fell off their rafts and plunged to the murky depths of the river systems, aging in a unique ecosystem of water and silt for hundreds of years after being cut. Fast forward to present day, and these logs are pulled to the surface and milled into lumber that can be used to create guitars. Exact age being unknown, these trees were potentially a couple hundred years old at the logging point, then aging underwater for a couple hundred years after that. So, the back and sides of this series of guitars are roughly in the 400-year-old range.

Visually, Sinker Mahogany will often be darker in color with deep blacks and rich browns. The striations are much darker from hundreds of years of sediment passing over the material. Tonally, Sinker Mahogany guitars have the nice flat EQ we love from mahogany, but they tend to sound aged in/broken in quicker which leads to nice accents across the entire frequency range. This batch in particular has a nice mid-range punch with a strong top end and even bass. They are an exceptional vocal accompaniment guitar.  

The top is Sitka Spruce just like the standard production 50s J-45 Original, but we decided to step up the top bracing to the 30s Style Open X-Brace, or the Advanced X-Brace pattern. Still hand scalloped, but with more room for the top to move under the bridge. On top of that, or should we say in-between, we replaced the wood glue with hot hide glue to adhere the bracing to the Sitka Spruce top. Traditional hot hide glue crystalizes when it dries, transferring vibration from part to part, with less absorption compared to other adhesives. You will also find hot hide glue in the dovetail neck joint for the same reason.

The neck profile on these guitars is the 50s rounded profile from the production run. This being one of the most loved parts of the production model. Also carrying over are the larger pickguard and the factory installed LR Baggs VTC. They may not have had great acoustic pickup systems in the 50s, but we do now so why not throw it in!

Finally, on this Gibson Custom model, the Vintage Sunburst nitrocellulose lacquer has a hand rubbed VOS finish treatment for that vintage gloss look.

**These guitars ship in the original case in which they were received; case color may vary guitar to guitar from the case pictured in this listing.

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