QUESTION

I am doing a restoration and i see that you sell vintage guitar parts. I am looking to buy a jack plate for my guitar and I see there are many repros out there and I saw a few at a recent guitar show that were aged and look real how can I tell

REPLY

Thank you for e mail and yes that is a real problem these days there are companies making incredible repros and makes all our lives that much harder. I always say this but must repeat it buy from someone who will guarantee and stand behind what they sell you if they say no refunds as is run there is a problem.

Ok the first trick taught to me by the Jedi master uncle lou years ago was hold the jack plate up to the light and if you can see the shadow of your finer through the plastic its fake  real plates are not translucent . I have seen some of the best repros made by a company retrospec and they look to be the best and even they cannot pass this test . The ones from retrospec on a guitar are impossible to tell so be careful!!!!!

Real burst jack plates were stamped out not cut with router. some of the great repros you see today are cut with routers. The reason is because two years ago some original  rolled plastic was found in warehouse that was for making these jack plates out . i assume it was too brittle to stamp out so what they did was cut jack plates out with a router and did an excellent job i will say and so these were flooded onto the market and are really hard to tell because the plastic used was now old stock!!!!

The argument of thin verses thick is a useless one as far as i am concerned. the earlier ones were thinner yes   and the 1958 1959 were a hair thicker and i mean barley thicker. But i have seen mint 1958 goldtops with thinner jack plates let m tell you Gibson never threw anything out and once and  a while i am sure old stock was found and used. First worry about if it is real or not then if you cant sleep at night look for the thicker or thinner one you need.

I will be glad to look at an evalutate any you have for free or can give you a number of someone who swill for you if you are not sure. Just by following the few things i mentioned you shoudl be fairly safe. If you need more help contact me at  the parts drawer and i will answer all e mails within 48 hours

JIM PASCH

ji pasch