OK Guitars

A very interesting coda to my unfortunate experience with Charlie Gelber: I posted the aforementioned 335 for sale on Craigslist and was approached by a fellow who owned a ’62 Les Paul (the one that looks just like an SG) and was interested in doing a swap, straight across. We made an appointment with a vintage expert so that the expert could check out the LP/​SG and give it a clean bill of health (or not). This dealer/​expert had already checked out my 335 that I had bought from Charlie prior, at an earlier meeting. By uncanny coincidence, it turned out that the owner of the LP/​SG had also bought his guitar from Charlie Gelber. When the vintage expert checked out the LP/​SG, he quickly pointed out a small crack where the neck of the guitar joins the body. He explained that it is an extremely common crack for that particular Gibson model/​year, due to its design. I asked the SG’s owner if Charlie had disclosed the crack to him and he said that Gelber had not disclosed it. Either Charlie Gelber had missed the crack (which seems rather unlikely given his self-​proclaimed expertise) or, more likely, he knew about it and hoped the buyer didn’t see it. So – two buyers and two serious issues that Charlie Gelber failed to disclose.
The story has a happy ending though. We traded guitars and the new owner of the 335 – to whom I disclosed the 335 headstock repair right from the first– couldn’t be happier. The LP/​SG is a killer guitar too.