1964 Gibson Byrdland Hollowbody Electric Guitar
Overview: What else can you say? It's a florentine-cutaway Byrdland and completely stock and original. It oozes cool. The top and back are carved and solid in a jazz-guitar-style build. It has a lighter-weight, thinline body shape. The scale is short enough to play all sorts of fancy licks and chord shapes up and down the neck. The neck itself is on the rarer side for this model because while it's slimmer and C-shaped on the rear, it has a 1 11/16" nut width and slightly-steeper (~9") radius fretboard. It plays great.
The next best bits? It's essentially a one-owner guitar. I bought this from the son-in-law of the original owner, whose wife (daughter of the original owner) had it tucked-away and stored since said original owner stopped playing it. The original owner (Mr. Bove) played in country bands in the '60s, hence the excellent tooled leather strap that comes with this guitar... and for those not in the know... Byrdlands are named for country pickers Billy Byrd and Hank Garland who spec'd out the model for Gibson. Full circle goodness!
The next best bits? It has a genuine PAF humbucker at the neck and an early patent-sticker humbucker at the bridge. It plays and sounds like a dang dream. I didn't want to put it down after I finished work on it! I've taken a ton of photos and way at the bottom of the post you can find a couple "before" shots to show the odd Oldsmobile medallion that was glued to the pickguard when it arrived. There are also a couple of "under the hood" shots of the pickups which have never been touched. Thankee gods...
Repairs included: I gave this a level/dress of the frets, sprayed-out the pots with cleaner, and set it up. It's playing bang-on and ready to go.
- Weight: 6 lbs 13 oz
- Scale length: 23 1/2"
- Nut width: 1 11/16"
- Neck shape: slim C
- Board radius: ~9" (a little tighter than 10")
- Depth at first fret: 13/16"
- Depth at seventh fret: 59/64"
- Body width: 16 3/4"
- Body depth: 2 1/4"
- Body wood: solid carved spruce top, solid maple carved back, solid maple sides
- Bridge: ABR w/plastic saddles
- Fretboard: ebony
- Neck wood: maple
- Pickups: 2x humbuckers -- PAF at neck, early patent decal bridge
- Action height at 12th fret: 1/16” overall (fast, spot-on)
- String gauges: 49w-11 with wound G
- Truss rod: adjustable
- Neck relief: straight
- Fret style: wide/medium-lower
Condition notes: It's completely original throughout. The pickguard is a bit warped and has some adhesive leavings on it that are not obvious at a glance or from any distance, but will be obvious to the player or within a few feet. There are no cracks. The finish has weather-checking (light) throughout and the hardware shows age throughout. The fretboard binding nibs were worn down a bit purely from it being played by the original owner. The frets themselves work just fine but are the lower/wider Gibson stuff from the time and leveled and dressed up dandy but aren't as nice as newer "jumbo" wire. You know the stuff if you're into these old guys. There's a bit of buckle rash on the back. There are light scratches here and there throughout. There's some finish wear to the back of the neck.
It comes with: It has its original hard case (in good shape) and it comes with case candy -- a period (and used throughout this guitar's life) tooled-leather guitar strap which is awesome, some old Gretsch flatwound string packs, and other old string packs and whatnot in the case pocket.
Consignor tag: JW
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