Froggy Bottom Model S14 (SJ) Steel String Acoustic 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.”