Beautiful Franken-Gibson A-3
Restoration/Conversion
Rebuilt of c. 1909 Gibson
Model A2 and/or A3 original parts
This is a wonderfully, vintage woody sounding Gibson A model mandolin from around 1910. It's all original. Well. Original Gibson parts. Well. Mostly.

Let's try this again.

This is not what it looks like. It's not an early Gibson A-3 blackface mandolin with pearl inlaid pickguard and headstock, and vintage nickle Gibson tailpiece with cover and inlaid Handel tuners.

It just looks like it. And sounds like it.

It really is a Gibson or more actually pieces of a pair or more of them. It's really an A-3 or A-2 that is now an A-3 only because in it's original condition it couldn't properly be made into an A-2 any longer even if it started out life that way. It may have been an A-3 when it started out. If so it lost it's A-3 ness when a back was removed and or replaced, and the original headstock and fretboard was removed in a mystery accident that some well intentioned butcher tried to repair.

And if the splined on alternative, correct vintage possibly, headstock and upper neck had been put on straight it might have even been playable (if a proper bridge and some other parts could be found). But it wasn't and it was coming apart at the seams as well. The back, if it was even original which I doubt, was ill fitting. The finish was both not original and oversprayed. The headstock came off some other early Gibson mandolin made anywhere from 1908 or so to 1921 or later. The fretboard wasn't original

But we had pieces and some wood and knew what it should have been and decided to see if it could be saved. We think we did a pretty good job. It may not be a pristine Gibson A-3 mandolin from 1909 or thereabouts but few would ever know if you didn't tell em. Some real Gibson pros could pick out something questionable about it now, but any serious mandolin player wanting that great woody vintage sound won't care a bit. It may be one of the best and prettiest and most playable "not a vintage Gibson A-3" mandolins in existence.
Handel made German Silver tuning machines with elegant inlaid tuner buttons.

Replica bridge in classic Gibson shape & with Gibson design compensated saddle. This design has been modified to accomodate Red Henry's innovative bridge enhancements to increast the sound with violin style openings. It works!
Above you can see the Order number 189. That represents a lot number and the lots represented a batch of 20 instruments. So this would have been made in the first decade of manufacture, within the first 4000 instruments.

Finish is today on top a hand rubbed, French polished black lacquer. The back and sides has a deep cherry French polished lacquer.

The neck was broken, remember. It's not broken any more as the photos below show, butif you want to see how we pulled off the repair the entire process is shown at our website. It would take too much space and bandwidth to show the full restoration in the ad. This link will take you to the restoration page where the work on this is shown in a new window on your desktop.
There are some who will sneer at this Frankenstein monster of a Gibson. It's not original.

Right. It's not. It's better. By all the rules of vintage collecting this had been stripped of all of it's value. It was a totally worthless, unplayable, refinished, broken, bent and twisted, patched and cobbled together, silent piece of junk. And even then it wasn't cheap because it has a coveted logo, and deservedly so (if it was functional which it wasn't).

So I thought I'd tick off a few purists and Frankenmando it back to life and some hot mandolist can rip up the streets with it.

It's still not cheap but cheaper than a "real" A-3 vintage mandolin would be. And probably plays and sounds better than most of em as well. And it isn't falling apart any time soon or maybe during the next century.

And it's every bit as ugly as any of the unrefinished several times ones.

Here's the deal. It costs a lot to do what we do. And this is a wonderful instrument, in spite of being less than 100% original - significantly less. I didn't set the prices that makes original ones expensive. But I can set the price for our work which if you looked at the site was extensive. The cost of our labor and materials on this instrument is $1250 so that's the START PRICE and there is NO RESERVE.

It's a high start price but still dirt cheap for this mandolin had you had one and needed half as much work done on it.

There's also a BUY IT NOW . BUT ONLY FOR A SHORT WHILE UNTIL SOMEONE RECOGNIZES THAT $1250 is a bargain and places the first bid. Then the BUY IT NOW of $1775 which is also a great price for any vintage Gibson that sounds and plays this well and well below what an original condition A-3 or even A-2 in equal condition would cost.

That seems fair for all concerned. We can only do this work if the market makes it worth it to undertake the careful and meticulous work of restoring these.

Everyone wants a bargain, and that's great. Here's a great one. It used to be some Gibsons.
   another Gibson mandolin