I’ve been trying to find a builder to make a copy of my 1935 Gibson Jumbo for quite awhile now and a few months ago I found the man for the job. I’d talked about it with Todd Cambio of Fraulini guitars, but he’s just so busy making Stella-style twelve strings (check out Paul Geremia playing one of those bad boys!) that he simply didn’t have the time. However, I got a call from him one day because he’d met a Connecticut builder by the name of Dale Johnson and was very impressed with his work and his interest in the old Gibsons.

My Jumbo and I took a trip out to Hartford and spent a couple days with Dale and his wonderful family taking measurements and designing the look of the new Jumbo. Well, it got here yesterday and it exceeds my wildest expectations. I can’t imagine that my Gibson sounded any better when it was new and the guitar is wonderful to look at. I expect I’ll be using it a lot. Dale is also hard at work on a copy of Paul Geremia’s J-35 so I expect you’ll have a chance to see that one, too, before very long. I’ll be putting some more pictures of my guitar up before too long but in the meantime if you need something like this check out Dale’s website at Fairbanksguitars.com. This really is a second golden age for guitars!