S/N 334222 Kalamazoo

Avalaible: 1961 – 1968

Finish: Original sunburst finish, nitrocellulose type

Materials: Solid Honduras mahogany neck; maple top back, and sides; solid Brazilian rosewood fingerboard with pearl parallelogram inlay.

Hardware includes original P-90 pickup with original nickel cover, original nickel trapeze tailpiece, original nickel ABR-1 Tuneamatic bridge with retaining wire; original beveled w/b/w pickguard with nickel support bracket; original nickel-plated Kluson Deluxe tuners; original truss rod cover; original gold reflector cap volume and tone knobs

Notes: John Lennon played one. A true child of the ’60’s, the Epiphone Casino (E230T) debuted in 1961, and came to an early end in 1970. Three decades later, the Casino remains one of Gibson/Epiphone’s most popular reissue guitars, with original examples highly prized by players and collectors alike. The most famous Casino users were Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles, who were given a pair of Casinos in 1965. Both had a sunburst finish, Georges had a Bigsby vibrato, whilst John’s had a stop tailpiece. It was Lennons of course that had the most use; he was widely pictured with it, and used it extensively live and in the studio. He also had it stripped down in 1968. Epiphone make two John Lennon signature Epiphone Casinos – one based on the unstripped 1965 model, and one, the ‘Revolution’ Casino based on the stripped instrument. Epiphone engineers studied the original guitar to get these signature instruments as exact as possible

With its fat P-90 pickup and featherweight slimline body, the Casino has surpassed its 60’s counterpart, the Gibson ES-330, in ongoing favor with vintage enthusiasts. The all-hollow thinline profile and absence of superfluous hardware resulted in one of the most lightweight electric guitars ever produced, as well as producing a distictively warm and woody tone. Combined with it’s super fast sixties neck profile, and excellent original jumbo frets, this guitar is incomparably comfortable to hold and just plain fun to play.

Setup: The frets have been precision leveled, recrowned and polished; trussrod tension and neck relief adjusted; bridge height adjusted; bridge compensation set; string slots at nut and bridge inspected and recut as necessary; bridge foot contour inspected and fit to top as necessary; bridge radius inspected and recurved as necessary; bridge wheels and tuners lubricated; fingerboard and bridge oiled; body and neck cleaned and hand polished.