|
|
|
Current
Owner: Patrick R. I discovered the Johnny A. when shopping for a jazz/blues electric, read numerous reviews which convinced me I needed to have one. The steep retail price, however, shied me away from buying new. After weeks of watching Ebay and other online dealers, I found a used one in Eugene OR at a Guitar Center. Before I purchased the guitar, I was curious about it’s age so I called Gibson in Nashville and gave them the serial number “JA094”. I learned that the guitar left the factory on February 29, 2004 - a leap year! Well, I knew immediately that this was the one for me so I bought it straight away. When the Johnny A. arrived, I observed that the guitar was almost in "like-new" condition, with the exception that the stock gold humbuckers had been replaced with a variety I didn’t recognize. Later, after they were removed, I learned that they are "Harmonic Design" brand Z-90 single coil soapbar humbucker pickups in a cream color. The originals gold classics were left in the guitar case but were pretty scratched-up from bouncing around therein. Also the plastic pick-up rings had also been replaced with a cream color to match the soapbars. Although the Z-90’s sounded pretty good, I wanted to return the instrument to an OEM-like condition.
To ensure the Johnny A. was treated with Gibson-quality care in it’s rehabilitation, I sent it to Gibson’s restoration and repair shop in Nashville with a pre-arranged work order. A week or so later I had a planned business trip to Nashville, so I walked from my hotel over to Gibson’s R&R facility where I was greeted by a really awesome guy, Dion Edge. He took a break from his busy schedule and discussed with me the many options available to restore and improve the instrument, to include a possible stripping of the stock finish and re-finishing wit with a translucent deep blue finish and also replace the all-gold hardware with all chrome. Well, when I received the original quote, it was considerable dinero but just a bit more that I had budgeted. So, alternatively I switched to plan B. Within a few weeks, my Johnny A. was returned to me with brand new ’57 Classics (a Classic-Plus at the bridge) with gold covers, and the machine heads were replaced with beautiful, precision and equally vintage looking gold TonePro Kluson tuners with “Butterscotch Keystones”. Cosmetically, they look exactly like the original vintage-style tuners, but on closer inspection they have a look and feel of an extremely high quality machine head. They seem very sturdy and have a 15:1 tuning ratio which helps it stay in-tune when using the Bigsby. I considered locking tuners, but the bulkiness of the locking variety was a detractor.
The strings were replaced with D’Addario flatwound chromes Jazz Light ECG25’s 0.012 - 0.052. The neck/ frets were professionally hand-dressed and polished, and I was in awe to see the quality of the adjustments made to the nut's slot height/string-width/height and intonation. This guitar “plays like butter” has a soulful sound and feel across all ranges like that of none I’ve ever heard or played! I LOVE this guitar 
|
|
