Froggy Bottom
SJ Deluxe
Specifications
- $7281
- New
- ID: 1543
- Slope Dreadnaught
- Adirondack Spruce / Mahogany
- Curly Maple Binding
- Nickel Waverlys (Butter Bean) Tuners
- 14 Frets
- 1 3/4 nut width
Maple Leaf Music just got its first Froggy Bottom SJ Deluxe guitar. Adirondack and Mahogany, she features a sunburst top in the tradition of the Gibson Southern Jumbos. Here’s what Michael has to say about his love affair with this model guitar:
“One afternoon in 1968,” as Michael tells it, “I watched a drunken sailor with a pillow case slung over his shoulder stagger into a pawn shop in New London, CT. Since the bag on his shoulder was very guitar-like, as soon as he emerged counting his money, I went into the shop to see what he’d sold. After twenty minutes of bickering, I emerged with a very well worn, twenty year old Gibson SJ.”
Gibson’s Southerner Jumbo was made famous by country music icon Hank Williams Sr. Early models of these short scale, round-shouldered dreadnoughts are sought after and in recent years have become extremely popular, and their value has soared.
Over the years Froggy Bottom has built specially commissioned SJ-style guitars, but in 2008 the SJ was established as one of our formal models. In 2010 the SJ has become our most popular full-sized guitar, matching the H-12 in popularity.
As we built the SJ prototype, we also built a photo blog where you can see this guitar in process from start to finish: Model SJ Blog Revisited.
And what happened to that sailor’s guitar?
“As I already had a guitar I loved, the SJ was only around for a couple of months, but almost as soon as I’d sold it to a friend,” Michael says, “I was sorry.
“Forty years later, my friend still has that guitar, and it is still one of the very best guitars I have ever known.”
