"One Of The Great Aristocrats Of The Guitar World…"

This eighteen inch-wide, full-depth archtop weighs just 7.80 lbs. and has a comfortable nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Two-piece carved spruce top, two-piece carved curly maple back, and maple sides. A wonderful medium profile curly maple neck. Ebony fretboard with 20 original medium jumbo frets. Two original single-coil Alnico-V pickups with nicely balanced outputs of 8.61k and 8.48k. Later ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge with metal saddles on two-footed rosewood base, standard postwar Super 400 brass tailpiece with 'Varitone' control at the end. All hardware gold-plated. Although the ABR-1 bridge is of a later type, it was most likely fitted to replace a 'preset' rosewood bridge which was often still used on this model through 1956. Apart from a few miniscule surface marks, this exceptionally rare guitar is in near mint condition. Housed in the original Gibson brown hardshell case (8.75).