Turns out you get more stuff done in the middle of the night sometimes, a lot quieter and the phone doesn't ring, heaven...
Brings back memories doing Fototime links, was going to dump it as useless, might have to reconsider.
Here goes, as well as more observations as I spent the evening with it, trying to figure it out, and I did figure some stuff out.
I think the guitar was hit, and repaired, on top next to the nearly even to the body pickguard. There's glue all around the area, incredibly sloppy actually with the drips witnessed. Quite possibly the weird "bleed" from the pickguard is just a sunburst match gone wrong, or at the very least done a long long time ago and faded at a different rate from the original sunburst, which is actually fairly divine. Many of the Gibson sunbursts from this era are pretty garish, this one is really pretty.
It's possible that the guitar was damaged at some point, turned into a Guild store, maybe even at Westerly (he said "it was given to her by someone who worked at Guild"), fixed up by somebody at a shop who was sweet on a gal from the area, and given it to her as a present?
The seller didn't indicate when it was received, but I should have asked.
He also claims it never suffered any damage under his mom's care, so it's unlikely she would have had it repaired.
I got the feeling by looking at it that it got all shrunk up like that in its case in a closet or under under a bed for decades, it shrunk up, like a mummy... and the trip here in the cold probably sucked that much more moisture out it.
Tonite, after about 24hrs of crude hydration with sponges, the top seems to be filling out, the neck angle actually improved a little, I tuned it to pitch again, strings are pretty high... I think it may have had a neck reset at some point, the neck joint areas look like it, and it looks like a new nut (glued, bummer), maybe not even bone ( a reason to use my nut files ;-), at any rate, the string height at the 1st fret is ridiculously high, so there is a lot of room for improvement there.
I tightened the truss rod a touch after slacking the strings last night, and that went well, with care. It responded really well and even up to pitch the relief was as low as you would like.
I realized that 12's are just too damn heavy, I can't bend the G string up by the nut, so I tuned down one step, and wow, it was miraculous, sounds awesome and easy and fun to play, dropped D, even better, double dropped D, too weird ;-)
I think I realized why all the great players capo a couple frets up, stick with big strings for good tone, drop down, then capo up.
It's kind of turning into a tone monster, and since it's tuned way down, I can leave it tuned during the rehydration process. I'll know it's there when the frets stop sticking out.
The guitar lived on Stamford Ave, in Stamford, less than two hours down the coast from Westerly.
There were holes punched into the box, missed the case thx to a greatly oversized box, seeing light poking through the box before you've even gotten the case out is scary.
Looks like a birthday cake ;-)
The Guild logo case, coming out of the protective bags I requested.
A leather hinge!
Unreal packing.
With its original Guild polishing cloth.
The Mummy... camera doesn't do justice to how dished sides of the soundhole were.