1958 Gibson EDS-1275 – The ULTIMATE Double Neck Guitar?!

Transcription:

This might be the rarest guitar we may have here for a long time.

I mean, it's visually just stunning. I mean, you look, you see it, you think, "What is that?" It's really beautiful. It's a work of art. I love these. They're—um, I mean, gosh—the craftsmanship that went into them. It's just so cool that they made so few of these. I guess what I'm trying to say is companies make things in larger quantities to make money, right? To sell many of them. But they made in the teens of this. In fact, in 1958, I think they shipped 16 or something like that. So, clearly, yes, of course, they're trying to make money, and they were not cheap guitars, um, but that wasn't, I think, the main thing. The main thing is they just wanted to make something beautiful. I mean, just the checking on it, the whole finish, the hollow body—even acoustically, yeah. I love these guitars acoustically. They're so beautiful because they are uh mostly hollow inside, but they have a very thick spruce top. I mean, it's a very thick top, and it's a carved spruce top, but it's not thin. So it has kind of—especially plugged in—it has some of the hollow body qualities to the sound, the harmonics, but it doesn't feed back that easily like a thin-top guitar. And uh it has kind of that throaty mid-range that only guitars like this that are constructed like this have.

All PAFs. I mean, it's got so much going for it. Let's consult the trusty Gibson shipping totals book here. In fact, I'm glad I have this here because I want to talk about a couple other things related to this. Look at that. Obviously, we're talking about the double neck era. That was a thick body, hollow body, right? With a spruce top. Later on, it adopted the SG shape that we all know, you know, Jimmy Page. I mean, obviously, it, but this is where it stemmed from. It's the same model as the EDS-1275, and in 1958, they shipped 17 EDS-1275s. In '59, 15. From '58 to '67, they only made 110, but in this shape, 38 total from 1958 to 1960. And in '58, which this is a '58, they made 17. Seventeen. And then in Sunburst, it's going to be even less. In Sunburst, who knows? And that have survived, who knows? We used to own one here that was six-string um guitar and four-string bass on top, right? Uh, somebody walked in one day and uh had [one] for sale. I couldn't believe it when I was seeing it. Wow! The front was stripped. They didn't like the finish, so they stripped it. Yeah, um, and it was completely disassembled. All of the parts were in baggies. And in fact, they, they had the harness out of the guitar, and the potentiometers because that top is so thick. Those are not normal potentiometers that you find in other guitars. The actual the shaft is like this long to get through the whole thick top. Yeah, so it's very, very strange to look at. Some of these parts are very odd. Some of them are normal. Uh, the rest of the guitar is pretty standard. I mean, these are just PAF pickups. Amazing sounding PAFs in this one, by the way.

How—

Now, price-wise, back then, what would it have been? That's a great question. I happen to have right here a $495, which is a lot of money back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Times 10, roughly. $5,500. Wow! Yeah, so $5,500 bucks, which, of course, by today's standards, that's inexpensive. If you wanted to try to buy something like this brand new, it would cost you significantly more than that. Yeah, what would you call it? Jesus, it'd be so amazing if Gibson reissued this, but it's just, it's, it's impractical. It's not really, but I can do it. Come on, Gibson, just sign it. I'll take one. I'll borrow one. It needs two more necks. Speaking of signature models, one of my favorites of these—and I hope you can cut to it in the video—so one of these was was special ordered by an incredible musician named Joanie, and period, inlaid on the necks is her name. No, yeah, Joanie Marshall. Joanie Marshall. You got to look this up. It's incredible, incredible instrument. But get this: hers was a banjo. So, literally, five string with a tuner coming out of here, and a six-string guitar on a similar body shape, exact body shape. Also Sunburst, more cherry sunburst, um, also a Bigsby, almost exactly like that one. Well, there she is with her double neck. It's that is crazy. Yeah, same body shape. Banjo, six string, but yeah. So they were special order situations, and uh I believe in her case, she had somebody else inlay her her name on it, but I think you could ask Gibson to do that too. You've played one. In fact, you should cut to that video at some point. I mean, you played Uncle Rick's, um, the one, the Mando, yeah, the Mando, yeah, the black one. Yeah, that's, that's very cool. Also extremely rare in in Black. Very cool. Uh, so this guitar is actually sold. FKS. It was never going to last long, really, was it? I mean, something as rare and unique and as just as cool as this? Uh, so it's time to say goodbye to this, unfortunately. Fortunately, it's staying in the family, right? And uh very close friends of the store, so we can always borrow it. Yeah, um, right. You are going to let us borrow it, guys. Come on, come on. And uh you know, and the search continues. There's other cool guitars out there. So, of course, uh, and on that note, we'll leave it there, folks. Thanks for watching. Like and subscribe, and we're going to get more cool guitars like this in the future. See you later.