I have my Father’s 1950 ES 125. He bought it new. He passed away in ‘69. My step mother had it for a number of years, stored away. She gave her t to me somewhere when I was maybe 12....14 years old. It appeared to have not been stored in a stable environment. The plastic tuning pegs were pretty crumbly. I did not play guitar, but it had a few books in the old case, so I did what I could to learn a bit here and there. My aunt had some new tuners installed.... not much better than the crumbly ones they removed(this was in the mid-ish 70s).
It spent much of the time in the case, tucked away in closets. I finally began trying to learn to play in earnest in my late 40s. I realized the first few frets of the guitar were worn beyond re dressing. I replaced those terrible tuners but haven’t had the heart to have those frets replaced. And yeah, the old P90 sounds quite nice. The old pots were a bit scratchy after years of non use, but cleaned up pretty nicely with a small bit of electrical contact cleaner and use.... no intention of replacing them. It has some minor structural issues. But the binding is amazingly good, the scratch plate still good, and the finish has a wonderful patina. Despite some finish crazing it still has a lovely gloss to it. Even still has the water slide decal of a 1950s cowgirl wrangling a little calf that he put on the upper bout right after he bought the guitar. Sorry for the long, information-less meanderings. I like mine just fine.
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