1950s Carvin Prototype Guitar? | 6 NEW VINTAGE Guitar ARRIVALS!

Transcription Summary:

To kick off this episode of "This Just In" without Nathaniel, who's off on a world tour. First up, a 1961 Gibson C1 classical guitar an affordable and great sounding vintage acoustic guitar. We got it at the Dallas International guitar Festival. Gibson wasn't exactly known for classical guitars back then. There was this whole folk music boom driving nylon string guitar sales. Next, we show a 1955 Harmony Stratotone. It's a slab of wood with rubber binding, dual stacked knobs, and a neck pickup. The action is surprisingly low. It's bright sounding. These are often used for slide, but this one's playable "Spanish style." Then there's a 1960 Hofner bass, a 500/5 or "President Bass." It has a typical Hofner setup with floating pickups and standard controls. Then we have a Martin D-28. This one had a neck reset and refret done by our head tech, Alec. It has Brazilian rosewood back and sides! The pickup is an add-on from a Japanese guitar, but it sounds good, so we kept it. After that, a 1950s Carvin with three pickups is featured. It's a bolt-on neck with simple construction but cool floating pickups. It’s on consignment, and supposedly, it might be a prototype as no other like it has been found. It's got a flamy maple top and a chunky neck. Finally, a 1963 Jazzmaster returns on consignment. It has a Mastery bridge and changed pots, but the original parts are in the case. It's in great shape, and we really like the neck. They wrap up by talking about their "pick of the day," with the Martin D28 and the Jazzmaster being the favorites. Chicago Music Exchange buys and consigns Vintage guitars, basses and amps. From single pieces to whole collections. 

Full Transcription:
Welcome to another episode of This Just In! No, this just in. Oh, right! Yeah, welcome to another episode of This Just In! Yeah, well done, first try. Nathaniel is not here because he's touring the world, deservedly so, because he's amazing. If you have a world tour coming up and you need a great guitarist, we love to lend him out. You can't have him forever, but you can definitely borrow him for a little while. But yeah, let's do This Just In. Nathaniel, hope you're having a great time. We miss you. He's in IA right now where clothing is optional and music is beautiful. I don't know if that's true, but cut that out. To you, but my cousin did get married in, and I can tell you that at his wedding, the clothing was optional. I'll show you the pictures later. We have a bunch of really cool stuff that just came in. But since you are the person that usually first handles them, you should talk about them. Yeah. Um, I really like... I wanted to show this one off. This is a 1961 Gibson C1 model. It's a classical guitar. What I really like about these are great sounding vintage, but also does not break—very affordable, very affordable instrument, great sounding. And you just can't beat the price for one of these. So for what you're getting, I bought that at the Dallas guitar show from a good friend of mine who's a fellow dealer. Shout out to Drew, you know who you are. Not that Drew, another Drew. Anyway, he had two of these side by side, both very clean, both same year, and this one was just great. And the other one was good. It wasn't like it was bad, but it was just one of those perfect examples of how you can have two guitars that are so similar and have one just be so much better. This one really—yeah, this one's really great. One of these days, I'm going to scoop one of these up, but I'm never fast enough, so they go quick. So it's from an interesting era of Gibson when Gibson is not a household name in, you know, classical guitar circles. But you got to remember, there was an era where folk music was becoming pop music. Like, it was, like, the pop music, right? And so, the demand for nylon string guitars, not necessarily classical, but nylon string folk guitars, was rising. And that's kind of where these things came out of. And Gibson had a whole line of nylon string instruments. They were all started with the letter C: C1, C2, C3. I think it went up to C4, but I'm not really sure. It's kind of like Jurassic Park. Like, I'm not really sure how many Jurassic Parks there are, right? There's at least two, we know that. I know, I know, there's two. Yeah. Um, or Fast and Furious. Like, how many Fast and Furiouses are there? I don't know, nine now? No one knows. Yeah, literally no one knows. You can't even look that up. That information does not exist. The nicest one of these was Brazilian rosewood back and sides, beautiful marquetry, and it was the Richard Pic version. Have you ever heard of Richard Pick? Sounds very familiar. You should look this up right now. Okay, find out who this—I'll hold on. [Music] This guy right here? No, it's a mugshot. Sorry, this guy right—yeah, everyone, there's music of Richard Pic, but there's no videos of this guy. So yeah, this is great. [Laughter] So yeah, these are really cool. Here you go. Awesome. Let's hear how it sounds. Oh. [__] Oh god, hold on. On the spot again. I'm sweating now already. So hold on, let me just warm up here a second. Oh, just warming up. No big deal. His warm-up is better than anything I've ever played. Woo! It's a nice guitar. Beautiful, very, very nice. Thanks for playing it for us. Let me put this one away. We don't have to put Nathaniel out of business. My back hurts because of the crusher weight of the responsibility of Nathaniel being gone and I got to play guitar. All right, Nick, what else do we have? Uh, this 1955 Harmony Strato-Tone. Ooh! Oh, more yellow than your bananas.

Yeah, look at that. What is that? These got a couple more days till they're ready. Yeah, it's true. But the Stratos, which I'm pretty mad about, but that is right. Yeah, this thing is—this thing is awesome. Uh, it's literally just like a one piece slab of wood right there. Uh, it's got this rubber—rubber bumper—um, binding. It literally looks like something you could buy—something like that you could buy at a boat store. Like, it looks like the side of your boat from the 70s. I also like this. Uh, it's got the dual knob here, dual stacked, got your tone and your volume on the outside right there. I'm always a fan of that. And then, uh, neck pickup, of course. What else? Uh, what else do you need? Nothing. These things usually have very high action because they're not really adjustable in most ways. And this one has really nice low action. Pretty unbelievable. A ripper. It's a shredder. And they made a bunch of different Stratotones with, you know, this is all literally just stenciled on there. And, uh, and it—um, there's a new port. There's a couple different versions. But to have one that's in this configuration with such a clean original case, it's pretty rare. It's pretty cool. Can you plug it in? Yeah, let's plug it in. Is that a, uh, probably made in Chicago? I don't know what—what years they did, but almost definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the—the little, like, Jimmy from the Atomic Era, man. Sounds really nice. It's nice. It's nice and bright, even though it's a neck pickup. And then this switch—I don't know what that does. Does something. Does—something darkens it a little bit. Probably puts a capacitor in there. So that's nice. It's really nice. Sounds cool. Played a ton too. Yeah. But no, this thing, like, the neck's in great shape. It is very, very playable. Very playable. So, which again, is not always the case with these. Most of the time they're not. They're for slide. I mean, a lot of people use them for slide. They're awesome for slide. But this you can actually play Spanish. Well, you know that that's a real thing, right? Style, really? Yeah. So, Hawaiian—early, early on, the guitars were Hawaiian, right? Because they were meant to be on your lap and or slide, right? And when they made them Spanish style, they meant like a Spanish guitar upright and played—frettable. What else we got? What is this giant thing? I already know what it is, but I'm pretending like I don't for the sake of this video. But this 1960 Hofner bass. Look at that. I've never seen one of these before. Usually, I see the classic, uh, Beatles, mhm, style base, 500 SL1. This is a 500 SL5, I believe. Is that right? 5005? Yeah. Hofner is one of those companies that has a number model, but then also sometimes accompanied by a, like, a name. I don't know if this is the President Base. I think the 5005 is the President Base. I wish there was some kind of machine that you could type that in and kind of figure out if that's true or not. President? El Presidente? 5005 later known as the Hofner President Base. Yes, later known—later known. So it was sold from '57 to '79. Yeah, because eventually people realized, like, "Ah, it doesn't—5005 doesn't have a ring to it. The President Base." The repper bond base, excuse me. Yeah, there's a couple of names for this base. Uh, typical Hofner kind of floating pickup configuration. Um, the ever-present, you know, control panel that you see in all of their bases pretty much. Um, that turns each pickup on and off and you have master volume, master tone. Very typical, very narrow, but kind of chunky neck. Uh, with always the floating tongue, as you can see in these—these Hofners. And that lack of support there and with such a small dovetail usually ends up meaning that these neck angles get funky and they need neck resets. Uh, this thing has beautiful low straight action all the way through.

I think you may have featured this for like a second and/or maybe we did in a previous video, but uh, when I bought this guitar, this guitar really needed some love. It needed a neck reset badly. Some of the frets were essentially gone. And since then, uh, in like a week, uh, our head tech over here, Alec, just did a fresh neck reset and refret on this thing, and it is glorious! It's awesome! And I'm told that that pickup sounds good too. So, um, I bought it because I just saw the potential in it, even though when I bought it, it didn't play. I knew that it would be a good guitar because, uh, we have great techs in-house that can do that kind of work. But the thing about this guitar is, show them the back and sides. The sides, show them the knobs. That's right. TV, uh, back inside. So, we'll show the back here. Look at that. Beautiful! That just—this is just unreal. Look at that just…

What, uh, what kind of wood is this? Do you know? Brazilian rosewood. Okay. Yeah, this is all Brazilian rosewood back and sides, spruce top, um, and ebony fretboard and bridge. Yeah, that's beautiful. Really beautiful. It plays amazing. That pickup, actually, that pickup is from, um, from a Japanese guitar, like a Japanese acoustic sound hole thing that somebody slapped on there. And because they actually drilled holes in it, we decided to just leave it because it actually sounds kind of cool. You should plug it in. Let's hear it unplugged and plugged in. Okay.

I can't remember the rest of it, but it's nice. It sounds—that pickup's awesome. Sounds so good, man. It was definitely intended to be kind of like a J160 or kind of like one of those amazing, um, D18 or D28E that we've had recently. It's funny that he opened this case and this guitar happened to be tuned to that already. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, it is insane. Thank you. That was really beautiful. Is that it? No, I think there's one more. There's so—there is like, I wish we could keep on going because there's always so many guitars to show. I know! Do you want to show that three-pickup Carvin or the—the walnut, the fat—the fat walnut? I think we only have time for one more. That's—that's up to you. Let's do both very quickly. How's that? I'll move this out of the way. You grab whichever one you're going to grab, and—surprises! This guitar, I thought was very—I was pretty blown away that it existed because the year it is and the brand, I never knew that they were—they were around for this long. Yes, uh, this is a 1950—

1950s. All right. Carvin. Look at that. Isn't that insane?

I'm a big fan of these. Uh, we've had many, many, many here through the years, so I was aware obviously of their existence. But it's interesting because I never really considered this. A lot of people think of Carvin as a much more modern brand, but no, they've been around for a long time, and they've made some really interesting and cool stuff. And it might be hard to see, but if you can get close, the details of this guitar are super interesting because a lot of it is extremely Spartan, very, very simplistic. It's obviously a bolt-on, um, with, you know, a—I mean, extremely simple cuts, um, very crude kind of truss rod. But then, if you look at the pickups, which these were their pickups, um, they're kind of floating in—in this very cool enclosure. It's—they're very cool guitars, for sure. I forget what the pickups are called. A6 or something like that. Um, AP6. AP6. Okay, thank you. I can't confirm this. This is on consignment from, um, from a good friend of ours, uh, who is a fantastic musician and has an incredible studio with every guitar imaginable. And he really likes three-pickup guitars, so he has a collection of three-pickup single-coil guitars. That makes sense. And, um, but we—it's—it's here on consignment. And the thing about it is, he told me, he's like, "You should do the research, but I cannot find another one exactly like this." And I did a ton of research, and I hope somebody looking at this now can maybe find another one. I can't find another one that is exactly like this with three pickups. Um, and he said that the person he bought it from out in LA had it since it was essentially brand new, and he says that it was a prototype. Again, can't confirm or deny that. Actually, it's very easy to deny that, but I certainly can't confirm it. Um, but yeah, it's a super cool guitar, and it's in this case, which does not belong to this—it is right, a 60s Jazzmaster case. But anyway, this has this, you know, BSB-style aluminum bridge, a crazy little wraparound, you know, thing that looks like it was constructed really—which, who knows, maybe, maybe what we're looking at is somebody's personal experiment rather than a prototype. But I don't—I don't know. I like the logo. Logo's super cool. Just a nice little screen-printed, you know, decal. Super cool. You want to plug it in for a sec? Oh, we said we're going to be quick. Let me just do one chord. I'll just do like… Yeah, because those pickups have their own sound, for sure. They're hot. They're—they're like—they're hot. This is not the best amp to do it out of, but still… Oh. [__] Brace yourself.

It's hot. The amp on, like, the same that it was? No, I turned up the gain on it. So, 'cause I played—I tried it earlier. I'm like, "Dude, this thing just like, it just wants to be cranked." Yeah, it just wants to be cranked. I like it. Very cool. Wow! Look at that maple top. It's like flamy! I didn't even notice that before. Oh, yeah, with the lights, flame dancing. What's the neck feel like? Like, shape-wise? It's a—it's a big, chunky neck. It's—it's—it thins out a little about here. It's not—it's not too bad. It's on the chunky side, but the face part is very flat, so it's very much a 50s neck. Yeah, you know what? We—let's do that one. Let's do this.

This is a guitar that we've owned before, and it came back to us on consignment. Very excited to have it back. Very beautiful. That's for West, right there. You like these? Got a Mastery on? Mhm. Yeah, so the person who owned this, um, really knows, um, their stuff, and they did some interesting things to this. They added a Mastery, but they also changed the pots. But the originals—everything that's original to this guitar is in the case, in the original case. Uh, beautiful instrument. Really well taken care of. And, yeah, 63 Jazzmaster, I want to say. Yes, because it's not a slab board, but it's still clay dots, and the neck is just still kind of big. Um, very cool guitar. Have you—have you played this at all? Or, no? Um, probably at some point, since we've—we've owned it twice, we probably, uh—Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's nice. It's a nice neck. Yeah, good. I love that neck. It's a very good guitar. [Music]

This guy can play, man. Cool. That's a pretty good "This Just In"—a bunch of these things that just came in that we just showed. Yeah. And, uh, there's a lot more, but can't make videos that are hours long every time. In fact, people are going to complain about me talking too much no matter how much I talk, so I tried talking as little as I could, but I just—I like to talk. Okay? I'm sorry. Can't help it. I have a lot to say. Nick, what is your pick of the day? My pick of the day? Um, you know what? I'm actually—I was going to say the classical, but since I plugged that Martin in—Yeah, the D28, I'm—I'm sold on that. I want—I want one of those guitar. That guitar is awesome. That guitar is fantastic. My pick of the day is—I mean, I want to pick that one too, but I can't do that, so I'm going to pick this one, 'cause this is a beautiful Jazzmaster. We haven't had one, uh, from this era in a little while, so that's my pick of the day. Great job, you two. You too. Handshake. Handshake. Handshake. All right. Oh, yeah, you son of a—