This guitar has been sold
*** To hear recordings of the guitar, go to the Recordings page.***
I've now sold this guitar but shall keep this page up for those who are interested in seeing some pictures and hearing some recordings. I sold it to make way in part for the Heiner D and Brook Tamar baritone.
Meet my Gibson J-150. I went into the shop where I bought my Lakewood for some some strings and thought I'd have a browse, as one does in a guitar shop. I saw this ugly, gaudy-looking guitar that screamed out country & western hanging on the wall and thought I'd give it a try. It took just one strum of an open E chord and I was floored. This was a J-200 and, after that chord had been strummed, its gaudy pickguard and over-the-top fretboard inlays were suddenly things of great beauty. GAS had struck! I hung it back up, palms sweaty, heart thumping and walked away. Well, who wouldn't with a ticket price of €4,200?
But of course I couldn't stop thinking about it, and started trying to justify it. I needed a strummer, right? Something loud and flamboyant for when I'm feeling in need of some chest-rumbling bass, right? Long story short, I bought it, got it home, and was horrified to find a crack across the bridge, right where the holes are for the bridge pins. I rushed it back to the shop and awaited the results. A week later the shop guy brought it round repaired but I'd decided that a repaired guitar just wasn't what I was after and got myself a refund.
A month or so later I was in London for the Paul McCartney gig and popped into the Acoustic Center near Liverpool St. Station. They had a J-150 there, which is basically the same guitar as the J-200 but with less appointments, i.e. no binding on the neck or headstock, no rosewood seam down flamed maple back, Indian rosewood moustache bridge and fretboard rather than Honduran, but as far as I could tell, the grade of woods used is the same as on the J-200, but for a lot less lolly. The Acoustic Centre has a pretty impressive inventory and I got to A/B the J-150 with a couple of Lowden Os, a couple of Lakewood jumbos and a Martin D-28; that made me sure that the J-150 had the tone I was after and then the umming/ahhing process began. I'm pleased to report that my lovely wife told me to stop being so silly and just buy the darned thing. So I did!
The guitar came with Gibson Hydrophobics which were really great strings, but obviously I wanted to put on new strings when I got it home. I had bought a set of Gibson J-200 strings in anticipation of the purchase and put them on. They were awful! Truly dreadful strings. The low E string was like mud, and I started thinking I'd made a mistake in buying this guitar. What is it they call it? Buyers' remorse or something like that? So I dug the old old Hydrophobics from the bin and put them back on - and was relieved to hear the clear, rumbling lows once again. The next set of strings to go on was D'Addario EJ16s and they were great! They suit the guitar really well, but don't last very well under my corrosive fingertips! I like Elixer Nanowebs on my Lakewood so I thought I'd try those out. The conclusion is that, to my ears, they really don't suit the guitar at all - the low tones that I love about this guitar just aren't there, and the overall tone is too jangly and metallic. Just goes to prove that what suits one guitar may not suit another!
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