PAUL
VERNON CHESTER
Manouche Maestro
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Manouche Maestro |
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Wes Montgomery's Gibson L-CES
The Guitar was discovered in 1995 when an antique dealer came in to the store
with the guitar in a tattered fibreboard case, asking what repairs would cost.
This gentleman had purchased the entire contents of an inner city home from an
estate. We do not know whose estate the guitar was a part of. It had been
exposed to very intense heat while in the case, such that the knobs had melted
and the lacquer had liquefied. The heat had not damaged the guitar itself. While
examining the guitar, we noticed the outline of a heart in the top adjacent to
the pick-guard. After searching the case we discovered the mother-of-pearl heart
with "Wes Montgomery" inscribed vertically through it. It was then that we
realised just how important a piece this guitar was. Based on the serial number
Gibson was able to confirm that they had indeed custom made this guitar at the
request of Wes Montgomery in 1963.
Gibson saved and used the original frets, tuners, humbucking pickup, bridge,
potentiometers, L-bracket which supports the now replaced pick guard, truss rod
cover and some of the binding, especially the f-hole bindings. They made a
period-style pick guard which is 4-ply bordered with the outer white. The two
gold high hat knobs were replaced. On the side you can see repaired cracks on
either side of the jack, typical of a working person’s instrument, and, under
the new finish, dark lines parallel to the binding, which were likely caused by
either heat or perspiration.
Wes, who died in 1968, tended to wear the finish on his guitars above the pick
guard, and so he had had inlaid, at the upper treble bout below the cutaway, a
large (2" tall) mother-of-pearl heart inlaid in the upper treble bout below the
cutaway, on which the artist’s name is vertically engraved. This inlaid ornament
survived, and though it had fallen out of the top the component was glued back
and remains in excellent condition.
This instrument was born an L-5C, an acoustic, tone-bar braced jazz axe, and, as
indicated by the two tiny holes remaining in the bottom bass side of the end of
the fingerboard we surmise that it was originally equipped with a Johnny Smith
pickup, now long gone. We do not know in which year Mr. Montgomery had this
converted to its present configuration of a built-in single hum-bucking pickup
located just under the carat at the end of the fingerboard.
The back and sides of the instrument are comprised of nicely flamed and book
matched curly maple and the neck is five-ply and flame maple in all three of its
wide sections. The instrument is set up perfectly and plays effortlessly. It has
superb acoustic sound, as well as electric tone so melodious it nearly makes one
weep.......
It is indicated that the original bridge was used and it now sports a Rosewood
bridge whereas the video and photographic evidence showing Wes actually using
this instrument shows that he always used a "Gibson Tune-O-Matic" bridge on this
particular guitar. I can confirm that this was the case on the occasion that I
was able to view it at close range at Ronnie Scott's club. He also, at some
stage, reversed the pickups (seen Here) on both of the Custom Built Guitars so that the pole-pieces were further away from the end of the neck. The combination of these
factors together with the unorthodox bracing for an L5 with pickups would
certainly bring about dramatic changes in tone. Wes on L5c - The Girl Next Door
The suggestion that the guitar may have started life as an acoustic L5c with
fitted "Johnny Smith" style pickup raises the question whether Gibson took
stock L5's and retrofitted the pickups or someone else fitted the pickups
after delivery. Did the same person install the mother of pearl heart? Close
inspection of photographs and the video evidence shows that that the
decorative ‘serif point’ on the end of the finger board appears to have been
removed (flattened), possibly to facilitate the fitting of the JS Pickup.
Wes on L5c - Yesterdays “To me, all guitar players can play, because I know they're getting to where they're at. It's a very hard instrument to accept, because it takes years to start working with it, that's first, and it looks like everybody else is moving on the instrument but you. Then when you find a cat that's really playing, you always find that he's been playing a long time, you can't get around it.” “It's impossible for me to feel like there's only one way to do a thing. There's nothing wrong with having one way of doing it, but I think it's a bad habit. I believe in range. Like, there's a lot of tunes that I play all the time-sometimes I hear 'em in a different register. And if you don't have complete freedom, or you won't let yourself get away from that one straight line, oh, my goodness, that's too horrible to even think about.” “I don't know that many chords. I'd be loaded if I knew that many. But that's not my aim. My aim is to move from one vein to the other without any trouble. The biggest thing to me is keeping a feeling, regardless what you play. So many cats lose their feeling at various times, not through the whole tune, but at various times, and it causes them to have to build up and drop down, and you can feel it.” – Wes Montgomery |
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"When the guitar came in it had extensive damage, both from a fire that the
guitar had been through and from a highly caustic furniture stripper that the
antique dealer [who found it in the estate] had used (because of the
fire-damaged finish). 
