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I took pictures of this but I guess they're too big to upload. I have a J 50 with a lifted bridge in for re-gluing. I know that the Martin and Gibson styles of building dreads differed slightly but this seems egregious. It's a J 50 and if I had to guess I'd say late 60s. My dad has a J-45 that's very similar. It has that weird bridge with the Rosewood saddle and the height adjustment screws. On to the question...

I took a look in the box as I always do just to verify that regluing the bridge is all we're doing today. I made an interesting discovery concerning the bridge plate. It's not touching the XBrace. And as far as I can tell it looks to be about 3/16 thick. Normally my bridge plates are half of that thickness. It is touching the first tone bar similar to some small Martins. I've worked on. It's not attached very well. I can stick feeler gauges under there. It looks to me like somebody repaired it and didn't know what they were doing. They probably figured that the bushings for the height adjustment screws were there to keep the bridge plate intact and then maybe put a little glue in there for good measure.

I am not familiar with the differences between the two bracing schemes as I said earlier but I'm pretty sure that the bridge plate should be butted nicely into the X Brace, am I correct? It would explain why this guitar doesn't have much of a response but I see other reasons for that as well. For instance, that terrible bridge design.

Thanks!
-Aaron

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"I'm not going to say that perfection has never been achieved. However, if it has, it probably went unnoticed due to it's lack of character."

You are correct in assuming that the bridge plate should be butted to the x braces, but that may not be the case in every guitar that G*bson built at the time this guitar was manufactured. The bulk of American guitar factories had some very real quality control issues starting in the late 60's into the early 70's. I have seen lots of this vintage of G*bson guitars with plywood bridge plates that were barely glued to the top. I guess it was up to the nuts and bolts of the adjustable saddle to hold everything together.
If you want to do your customer a favor convince him to replace the bridge, saddle and plate, the guitar will come to life......really. If he wants to keep it original tell him to keep the parts and hardware as a keepsake.
This bridge conversion is very common on these guitars and should not affect the guitars value as long as the job is well done.
Good luck,
Cal

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Remember, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers!

I managed to remove the bridge plate. It was .2" thick. Basically… It was worse than I thought. The plan is to put a proper bridge plate both in fit and mass and replace the bridge with a Martin style, bone saddle, etc.

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"I'm not going to say that perfection has never been achieved. However, if it has, it probably went unnoticed due to it's lack of character."