NGD: 1963 Gibson B25 (Patreon)

I picked up this lovely little acoustic guitar this morning! I’d been after a B25 or an LG2 for quite some time, but they’re pretty hard to come by here in the UK. Finally this one popped up in my eBay feed a few days back, and for a fair price too. So, this morning I made the 45 minute journey to give it a little test drive before making a decision. As soon as I picked it up, I could tell it was a good one. Very light, and the body is extremely resonant.. even just handling the thing sounded musical!

I ran through my usual tone tests; flat picking, fingerpicking, chord melodies etc and was just amazed at how well balanced the tone was. Extremely even across the whole fretboard, with literally perfect intonation. Nice low action, perfect amount of controlled relief in the neck and plenty of life left in the original frets and tuning pegs.

I’d always heard that these guitars are much louder than you’d expect given the size, and that’s definitely true. It lives up to the “mini J45” mantra for sure. Plenty or projection and sparkle. Beautifully warm and woody midrange character too.

You’ll find two photos above, (one featuring Rosie the pup) and a short video attached below this post where you can hear some of what I’m describing.

I still hope to find a nice old J45 some day, but for now, this will more than do!

Any other fans of these old Gibson acoustics out there?.. let me know!

Alex