NVGD! 1964 Gibson SG Standard

[Kevin James]

Thanks to the wonderful Gil Southworth, I am now the happy owner of this beautiful 1964 SG Standard apptly named "The Magic Marker". I will call her Maggie for short. OK, if you want to get super technical it's actually a very early 65 in serial number only but with 100% 64 Specs (and 64 dated pots). If anyone was wondering why I posted that I am selling my 65 Ruby, well, now you know

This deal definitely takes the cake as the funniest deal I have ever done with more twists and turns than I could possibly even remember to write (or anyone would want to read about so I'll skip that here), but all of them were pretty funny to both Gil and myself and I couldn't be happier with how things turned out.

She is an absolute feather weight weighing in at 7lb 2 oz. and she rings like a bell with two beautiful early patent number pickups. The bridge pickup is a super hot 8.44 which screams, and while the neck doesn't read as high output wise they match up great.

She has no breaks cracks or repairs of any kind and aside from the tuners is 100% original. She was Grovered at some point and then a later set of Kluson's was put back on. I am thinking about putting the Grovers back on since the damage was already done there and they are better tuners.

The only other issue which is VERY minor is the solder joints on the top of the tone pots were disturbed when some moron made a slight change how the caps are connected. But none of the parts were changed in the cavity. I will be having the caps moved back to the correct position. The solder joints tying the pickups and harness together are 100% virgin though. For a 48-49 year old guitar I think these 2 issues are minor at best (and really, how many guitars were Grovered in the 60's anyways.... TONS) and this guitar has that 'it" factor.

Gil was a gentleman and was a pleasure to deal with. Thanks again Gil!

And now for a few pictures



And the reason for the name, the top of the veneer had some minor chips and magic marker was used to black it out lol

 

[MiniB]

Awesome. What's the neck profile on the '64?

 

[Kevin James]

Awesome. What's the neck profile on the '64?

Its very nice. This one is actually a little OVER 1 11/16 wide. I wouldn't call it a fat neck depth wise, it's more medium but it just feels great and fits like a glove. Perfect neck

 

[Kirk2000]

Are you going to clean it up or leave it as is? Looks great..

 

[Kevin James]

Are you going to clean it up or leave it as is? Looks great..

I am going to have the caps (which are original) put back to the way they were fr0m the factory before some idiot monkeyed around. I am also thinking about puting Grovers back on since this guitar was already Grovered many years ago.

Other than that it will stay exactly as is.

 

[Old Crow]

Congrats Kevin as you know I really like my 64 and I,m sure , yours, w the pat snickered pups is as good as it gets.
There,s just magic about the complexity in the sound of these standards,

 

[mbowen]

Great guitar,you will love her, i remember seeing her at Gil's ,MIke B.

 

[Kevin James]

Great guitar,you will love her, i remember seeing her at Gil's ,MIke B.

Thanks Mike. I was talking to Gil for about the last two weeks dealing on several guitars before finalizing on this one. What a great guy to deal with and man is he funny. I think he should look in to a second career as a stand up comedian on the side lol

 

[7gtop]

ww


swt SG Kev


She's hardly faded , the cherry looks quite preserved

 

[Actinic]

These '64s are confusing to figure out and their prices are all over the map. Will Cutt has one at $20,000. Gil has another one for $14,000. There are two on ebay now for under $6K, but one has pots dated for 1965. The serial number daters come up with a 1964 build date. A lot of owners, original or not, have monkeyed with the wiring and the pickup covers making me wonder if the pups are truly early pat #'s, versus early T-tops. Will you be slicing open the covers to determine which ones you have? Since someone already fiddled with the ceramic caps in the cavity, are you considering replacing these with PIO caps?

 

[Kevin James]

These '64s are confusing to figure out and their prices are all over the map. Will Cutt has one at $20,000. Gil has another one for $14,000. There are two on ebay now for under $6K, but one has pots dated for 1965. The serial number daters come up with a 1964 build date. A lot of owners, original or not, have monkeyed with the wiring and the pickup covers making me wonder if the pups are truly early pat #'s, versus early T-tops. Will you be slicing open the covers to determine which ones you have? Since someone already fiddled with the ceramic caps in the cavity, are you considering replacing these with PIO caps?

No, I would not even consider replacing the caps with PIO. The caps were moved (and will be moved back) but they (and everything else in the control cavity) are original to the guitar. I am a big believer that the pots and caps as well as the pickups play a HUGE part in the sound of these guitars so I would never want to change any of those components.

I will not be opening the covers either. Chrome covers came in to the picture before the T-top. When you have sealed nickel covers with philips head base screws and unmolested solder joints tying the pickups to the harness you can be very confident they are early Pat Numbers so I have zero concerns there.

Pricing.... yes, its all over the map but it depend on condition. The book for 2013 has them between $8K - $10K USD. That is for a guitar in excellent condition which allows for some play wear, finish wear etc. A mint or near mint example will go for more than the high book. Like with anything else collectable if you want the cleanest of clean, you will have to pay a premium for that.

There are some that are just completely off the map though with no real justification for why. For example one that comes to mind IMO is a 62 at a very famous dealer that looks clean but not mint with an asking price of $26K. Not... Gonna.... Happen lol

The ones that are more difficult to price are issues guitars. Personally, I like to look at the general condition and see where the guitar would fall in to the book range without the issues to get a starting point and then work backwards subtracting for issues. Some issues will have a more dramatic effect than others. That is how I have priced my 65 I am selling.

 

[Actinic]

Did the wiring of the SG you received look like the picture below:

This is from a long build thread

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/luthiers-corner/78773-build-thread-61-sg-14.html#post1652067

I checked my Jr. from that year and it has a Sprague 0.02 uF ceramic cap (10% high) with the circle-2, rotated 90 deg. If you ever get a chance to measure yours, can you tell us if it is high or low in value.

 

[Kevin James]

Did the wiring of the SG you received look like the picture below:

This is from a long build thread

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/luthiers-corner/78773-build-thread-61-sg-14.html#post1652067

I checked my Jr. from that year and it has a Sprague 0.02 uF ceramic cap (10% high) with the circle-2, rotated 90 deg. If you ever get a chance to measure yours, can you tell us if it is high or low in value.

No, that was why it was a red flag as that is what I expect to see. But I have now found a few photos of others wired like this one so I am now confident it is original. And yes, same caps you describe are in all of my vintage SG's.

 

[Actinic]

Sorry, I got my diagrams confused. This is from Jonesy, and reflects how a 50's guitar is wired.

In this diagram, the wiper arm of the volume pot is where the cap is connected, so any filtering is done on the reduced signal. There is a variant of this where the variable series resistance of the tone pot is wired to wiper of the volume pot, and then the cap is connected to that variable series resistance and then grounded. (This is the way it is done on my SG Jr). Electrically equivalent but one of these methods has lower noise in an EMI environment.

Glad you did not have to do any re-soldering. It is always a hassle. Most important thing is that you like the sound, because that is always the biggest unknown with any guitar you get in the mail.

 

[VonPrikler]

These '64s are confusing to figure out and their prices are all over the map. Will Cutt has one at $20,000. Gil has another one for $14,000. There are two on ebay now for under $6K, but one has pots dated for 1965. The serial number daters come up with a 1964 build date. A lot of owners, original or not, have monkeyed with the wiring and the pickup covers making me wonder if the pups are truly early pat #'s, versus early T-tops. Will you be slicing open the covers to determine which ones you have? Since someone already fiddled with the ceramic caps in the cavity, are you considering replacing these with PIO caps?

The price of the '64 up on ebay right now ($6,000) is really interesting to me. If you price it out, piece by piece, and someone wanted to part that guitar, I calculate that you could probably get more than $6,000 for everything. I am talking case, husk, every part and all the hardware separated and sold separately. Maybe i am out of touch with current prices, but seems like a no-brainer to buy for someone in the market... which I am not in the market... Wish I could be!

 

[OBX351]

Beautiful guitar KJ! Great patina. How does it sound? Gil is the SG king!

 

[Kevin James]

I've been looking at tons of cavity shots and I'm happy to say my initial judgment was incorrect. The way the caps are wired in is absoutely original. It is different from how they connected the caps in the majority of the standards and Specials and I'm not sure whythey did itthis way on this one but I have found a couple of Standards wired this way and almost every JR I've looked at has them this way. One cap leg off the center lug of the tone pot, the other leg soldered to the top of the tone pot.

So... turns out the only thing that was ever done was the Change to Grovers and then back to Klusons. Even better

 

[Liam]

Lovely looking guitar Kevin. Pot wiring was all over the place in the 50s too - if the solder looks original, then don't be too surprised to find "modern" tone cap wiring when someone says it should be vintage, or vice versa for that matter.

Gil Southworth? almost all the time - we get on well together!

Liam

 

[Kevin James]

Lovely looking guitar Kevin. Pot wiring was all over the place in the 50s too - if the solder looks original, then don't be too surprised to find "modern" tone cap wiring when someone says it should be vintage, or vice versa for that matter.

Gil Southworth? almost all the time - we get on well together!

Liam

Hi Liam, Yeah Gil should look into a side career as a stand up comic. He's a bag of laughs for sure. Didn't you recently buy a 63 with the sidepull from him?

 

[Mordor]

She's a beauty!Grats!