This was a real nice pawn shop find. My friend Pat saw it one day and suggested I have a look at what he described as a B.B. King style guitar.
The Headstock tells a different story. This is an ultra rare Washburn J9VG Washington.
I really wish I had taken a before picture. This poor baby was in desperate need of a cleaning and a good setup. This picture shows the results of about 4 hours of cleaning and polishing to bring the lustre back into the paint and the gold trim pieces. The bridge was installed backwards, which doesn't usually matter except that this one is asymetrical, making it nearly impossible to get the intonation right. I flipped the bridge, reversed the saddles filed them to match the neck radius and voila the intonation is bang on! The Bigsby Tremolo was disassembled, cleaned and lubricated. This baby stays in tune!!