1942 Gibson Southerner Jumbo

This guitar is both a rare bird and an odd duck. It was made in 1942 and it’s among the first Southerner Jumbos Gibson made and, like many of the guitars made during World War II, it has a curious mish-mash of features. The first thing you’re likely to notice is the dark strip in the middle of the top. These days it’s known as a Skunk Stripe but its purpose has long been forgotten. During the war, getting new wood to build guitars was very difficult, so Gibson used whatever they had on hand. So, if you look at the sides, you’ll see they are made of Indian rosewood, probably some leftovers from the Advanced Jumbo model Gibson had recently dropped from the catalog. But if you look at the back carefully you’ll notice it is made from mahoganny that has been stained to match the sides, a not uncommon feature on Gibsons from the early days of the war. The neck on this guitar is quite wide at 1-7/8″ and it dosen’t have a truss rod. The neck is made from laminated maple, which suggests that it might have been originally intended for one of the fancier off-brands Gibson made such as the Recording King, which usually didn’t have truss rods. This guitar was built at the beginning of the Banner Era, a period when Gibsons sported the “Only A Gibson Is Good Enough” logo on the headstock, but this guitar has the the 1930s white script logo without the banner. (For more on the Gibson guitars from this periosguitars, check out Kalamazoo Gals: A Story of Extraordinary Women & Gibson’s “Banner” Guitars of WWII by FJ contributor Joh Thomas.) I’ve been lucky enough to have played quite a few Southerner Jumbos over the years and I have to say that for all of their funkiness, the models made during the war have uniformly sounded great. I suspect this guitar is no excpetion. If you’d like to give this rare guitar a new home, just send $27,500 to the good folks at Retrofret.

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