Serial number: 88617

Year shipped: 1932

FON: 258

Headstock: Horizontal ‘The Gibson’ logo

Neck/fingerboard: 20 fret fingerboard with pointed end and wide pearloid block inlays from the third fret

Body: Maple back and side. It has solid shaped tone bars

Hardware: See Notes

Notes: Replacement tuners, bridge, tailpiece and pickguard. Has several repaired cracks on the top, back and sides. The entire guitar has been refinished and its neck has been reset (it may have been re-fretted as well.) At some point a pickup was mounted to the side of the fingerboard and a ¼-inch jack input hole was drilled in the lower bass-side bout, which has since been filled. Has its original tweed case with cover

This guitar came with an old photo that showed the guitar’s original owner with the rest of the band, which includes a young Lawrence Welk playing the accordion (see below).

Joe Spann tells us: “This guitar was built in early April 1932, shipped in late April 1932 and returned to the Gibson factory for repairs in 1939 and 1949. It had major repairs carried out and a refinish in about 1986. We suspect that is when all the original hardware was removed.”

“The original owner had it until he died in 1989,” current owner Bruce tells us. “I am the third owner. The guitar is now happily back in Michigan, not far from its Kalamazoo birthplace!

“Other than the block inlays, it probably has features more akin to a late Type two. It is a monster guitar, so alive! It’s an equal in its own way to my 1939 D’Angelico, though the D’Angelico wins in the tone category.”

Images Courtesy of Guitar Works, Ltd.