1942 Gibson J-45

IT’S 1942, AND AS THE United States is entering World War II, the Gibson guitar company just releases what would become its most popular acoustic model of all time.

- Dave Hunter

The J-45 from that year will later be considered a “pre-war guitar” by players and collectors, since it arrived before the Kalamazoo company halted guitar production to support the war effort. The four-year production hiatus that followed makes original first-year J-45s rare birds indeed, and to stumble on one in this condition is truly a hen’s teeth type of encounter.

Dubbed “the workhorse” for the versatile way it took to country, bluegrass and blues, and later rock and roll, the J-45 was released alongside the Southerner Jumbo (later shortened to Southern Jumbo) of the same year, and was the upgraded sibling of the previously released J-35. The two represented an expansion of Gibson’s round-shouldered (aka slope-shouldered) dreadnought lineup, which had opened the bidding in 1934 with the release of the Jumbo, not to be confused with the rounder and altogether larger-bodied Super Jumbo, the SJ-200, of a few years later.