Wait Until You See This FANCY BEAST... | 1983 Gibson "Crest" NAMM Show Display Piece | "The Hippo"

welcome back troglodytes to a very special edition of the trogley's guitar show i found a really rare guitar today but before we move into that unboxing and demo i wanted to do a little bit of history on what this guitar was crafted after the gibson crest model a lot of this information comes from george groon in an article that he had within vintage guitar magazine i have always personally been enamored with this gibson crest model right here but before we talk about that one we actually need to talk about this this also shared the name gibson crest however as you can tell you know from this to this they were not very similar guitars at all this particular one was actually a custom order done in 1959 and there were a few also done in the early 60s we're talking less than 10 of these things ever made the reason why i wanted to share these today is i'd never heard of this model before and that's always a new thing for me but it looks like we've got some sort of a veritone switch your pickup selectors with a strange like single coil ask pickup there a humbucker in the neck a really long cutaway with the super 400 inlays and you get a little night guy on the headstock and this is like his crest his shield and it's just such a fascinating guitar i need to find one of these but the one we really need to focus on today before unboxing my rare find is this guy it's kind of like an es355 as far as the neck goes because you have the custom block inlays you get the split diamond on the headstock the fancy clues and waffle back tuners however unlike the other one we don't have any fancy veritone or anything like that it's got the double cutaway body like a 335 or a 355 but it lacks a center block so it's more so like an es330 in that aspect but then we get two mini humbuckers and get this also kind of from certain 330s you have the short neck where it actually joins at the 15th fret instead of all the way down here at the 19th so generally players don't love these guitars because you can't get to the upper frets but it's great if you're just doing jazzy stuff down here and not everybody is a fan of the floating mini humbuckers but what makes the gibson crest so special is that it uses brazilian rosewood veneers and these things were produced from the late 60s into the very early 70s and you could either have them in gold hardware like this from 69 to 71 or all the way up until 72 you could get silver plating but this having brazilian rosewood was a big deal because gibson had discontinued brazilian rosewood because that's when conservationists really started to crack down now there's been limited runs here and there but the crest has always hold a soft spot in my heart because it's one of the rare 70s models that you could find brazilian rosewood on similar to the brazilian rosewood top las paul custom and i've personally always wanted to document one of these but finding one that i particularly liked was kind of difficult and they were always really expensive i mean most dealers are asking ten thousand dollars plus for these things but they're such fantastic magnificent looking guitars so when i found what i found today i knew i had to buy it because it's a crest but on steroids it fixes all of the issues that anybody has ever had on this guitar and i think it is going to be a priceless piece of my collection let's go ahead and check it out i haven't been this excited to open up a guitar in a long time so a little bit more on the backstory of this thing i first saw it listed on reverb like a month a month or two ago and it was listed as 1980 gibson crest and that immediately piqued my attention because as we just learned the crest i mean the very latest you'd find him is 72. so finding a 1980 it's like what what is going on here but looking at all the custom specs that it had it's like okay this had to have been some sort of like a custom order so i saved it in my watch list because this thing was listed at like 15 dollars and it's like oh i want it but at that point in time i could not afford it or i did not want to afford it but this is one of those guitars that you think about it you dwell on it and then you go okay i need this thing that moment happened for me when i was actually filming an episode of guitar hunting i was looking at all those nice expensive guitars and it's like yeah you know what i think i need to buy this thing for the channel cause it is just as nice as that old steve how the les paul but in a different way when i started to become more serious about this thing that's when i actually engaged the seller and asked him some questions because i noticed in his listing it said custom shop and it's like okay custom shop didn't exist in 1980 does this have a custom shop original decal on the back because in the early 80s they'll have custom shop edition and custom shop original addition means it was like a limited run of some sort usually sometimes there's some exceptions original means custom ordered one off and this thing let me tell you it does have one of them but that is just the beginning of the mystery so i'll walk through the whole mystery with you guys again because i needed a lot of photos to be comfortable purchasing this i also asked him how did he get it from a guy named lynn wheelwright and you know he's had exhibits in the smithsonian about guitars and pickups and stuff he's a collector i think from the salt lake city utah area he also does like guitar work and things like that you can check him out on google and i was told that he bought this in the early 80s he kind of forgot which year at the gibson namm show so you guys know it's going to be good if this thing is a namm show piece from the early 80s based off of the gibson crest let's take a look at this thing here it is so the first thing you're going to notice is yeah this does not have that whole short neck situation going on so it's more so like a 335 traditionally and you're going to notice we still have like the brazilian rosewood top veneers the side and the back i mean who knows these might not even be veneers we have to get this thing on the workbench and really take a close look at this but what made me fall in love with this thing the most actually is not just the body it comes down to the head stock wait till you see this does that look familiar to you guys this thing has a lot of the les paul characteristics to it when it comes to the headstock so mixing a crest with the v les paul and like more so 335 esque specs i don't think this one has the center block so i guess it's still more so a 330 in that aspect but check this beautiful thing out and we get the abalone inlay custom logo you get the abalone gibson logo and check out our nut this is just like they used on the the les paul's it's got that scalloping in between it now it does not have the wooden pieces so this is actually the first nut of this kind that i've ever seen but it's got all those fancy abalone inlays on here too and multiply binding we'll take a closer look at this on the workbench it's got a white black and white layer including on the fret nibs i mean this is just such a fancy guitar and don't forget we have rosewood pickup rings just like at the last paul and if we look inside here we even have one of the rosewood switch tips and as far as our crest goes we get a tailpiece down there that just reads gibson and it's an ebony block with a giant abalone inlay on there but here's where things get really strange doesn't this guitar look very 70s in construction so we look over onto the back we get the same thing that the crests kind of have but here's my favorite part of this guitar is if you look right here it's kind of like an eye and an eye right there and then you get two noses i am nicknaming this guitar the hippo for very obvious reasons i mean look at it side by side this is just a hippo within my wood and i love that because i love animal references on my guitars but when we come back here we have a mid 70s serial number with a custom shop edition decal now i'm guessing what the custom shop edition decal means in this particular case is that it was part of the namm show collection i doubt there is another one of these after doing a whole bunch of research there is one more crest that was like an employee put together guitar but besides where the neck joins the body that's where the similarities end it wouldn't have surprised me if it would have said that it was like a custom shop original but maybe that's just how they did all the namcho pieces but all the construction of this really screams mid-70s and that little decal really did not start until like the earliest of 1982 so that kind of threw some shade and mystery onto this thing but after a lot a lot a lot of photos and thinking i believe i have a good enough of an explanation for this it's really resonant sounding that has to be a complete hollow body that's all i've got to say but let's go ahead and throw this thing on the workbench and i'll kind of explain some more there for this very fancy piece all right here's the deep dive on the hippo so this is what made me comfortable buying this guitar despite it having a mid 70s style serial number in construction and everything i mean even looking here we have the old kalamazoo style sticker on the inside i asked him to pull the pickups and when i saw this it's like okay i know exactly what this is it's got a 1980 tim shaw paf but our bridge pickup has a 1983 tim shaw paf now if you remember any of my spotlight special videos occasionally in 1983 you will find split electronics half of the stuff will come from 1980 the other half comes from 1983. now unfortunately the only one photo that he had from the previous owner when he pulled one of the pots dated it to 1980 so i went ahead and i bought an endoscope that way we can see if this actually has the 1980 volume pots in 1983 tone pots kind of like some of the spotlight specials have unfortunately i just can't quite make it out you can just barely see like that 1980 potentially three there but i think i'm just gonna have to pull the pots to be sure maybe we can use a a combination of all this it's definitely a good idea we can like see inside like all the bracing and i can see why some people were saying a an endoscope might be beneficial to me but unfortunately this body is just a little bit too thin here to really make use of this giant endoscope oh well we tried okay that's gonna be a decision where curiosity kills the cat i'm gonna have to spend hours fishing these things back in here but i cannot own this guitar not knowing what the pot goats take to it's okay though cause i think i need to add some washers that way these aren't sticking up so high anyways the first one dates within the 20th week of 1980 the next one dates within the 40th week of 1980 and then we have the other matchings within the 20th and the other one was also within the 20th week some of the numbers were covered up by solder i don't want to mess with that just to get pot code readings we can clearly conclude that they're all from 1980. so huh it is possible i guess you could say that this 83 tim shaw was replaced later on like maybe the guy had some issues with it or it's also possible you know once again as i said in 83 they did like miraculously find a stockpile of 1980 parts that they were using so maybe they decided to use it like that and i contacted mr leonard you know the guy that's actually worked at gibson and i asked him do you have the serial number in your book and unfortunately he did not but he was able to tell me that there were kalamazoo made instruments that did not get completed until later on that's not saying that this is exactly one of those but he's saying that it's potentially possible because he had one that had like a mid 70s serial number that was built in kalamazoo but it wasn't finished until it was moved down to nashville now this one being a namm piece it wouldn't surprise me if it actually was finished in kalamazoo but once again there's not really a good way to know unless this video just happens to meet the person who made this guitar right so that's a little bit of a letdown i was hoping we'd find two 1980s and then two 1983s that way this would make a little bit more sense but hey at least we have 80s electronics and tim shaw pafs yes i'm happy about that but let's take a look at the construction here so it's a short neck tenon you can see how it was constructed right here they've got all the glue securing that to the body and then this is kind of interesting so it almost looks like it might have a center block if you just looked in it right here however once you're looking here you can tell yeah there is no center block but it appears that they might have constructed this kind of similarly to a 335 and the fact that it has a multi-bound layer so you have this thin rosewood veneer and then what looks like a large piece of like poplars because these are usually maple poplar maple but now we just got a rosewood poplar maybe even another rosewood layer right there before they get to whatever this stuff is semi hollows and hollow body guitars they're not what i specialize in but that's kind of a cool little cross section right there but it does not appear to have any type of center block there's there's just like a block right here you can just barely feel with your finger and that just kind of gives it some support for the neck i would assume but we'll take a look at the pickup rings yeah that is exactly what we found on a v-les paul they've even got the finish over top of them we'll see that under the black light here in a minute but this 1980 tim shaw that's very early it might still even have the t-top bobbins if we were to remove the cover which i do not wish to do now the bridge unfortunately for me this is a floating bridge system not normally my favorite but we'll take a quick look under here it doesn't look like there's any special fancy markings hopefully i didn't ruin the intonation too much but it does have this fancy abalone inlay right there looks like it's made out of ebony and then you've just got the gold thumb wheels right here kind of abr one in style to adjust your action up and down so no metal saddles on this one so it's very reminiscent of like the old arch tops you know super fancy stuff but take a look at this tail piece how cool is that it's got the gibson branding right there and then once again an ebony block you know kind of like the ebony block vibrolas from the early 60s this one it's just a block within the tailpiece and kinda looks like a a disfigured face of a woman like there's two eyes and nose and like a mouth and that's her big 80s hair because you know this was made in the 80s but the back side of this it looks like they just kind of glued that to these pieces to these ends and that's what just makes it stay in i guess and it broke my heart the second owner of this one the guy i got it from he installed a bigsby on it it's like no because it was funny he had this listed on reaver but he ended up taking it down and since i was in the market for really special gibson pieces i messaged him i'm like do you still have this guitar and it turned out he did and so i was asking him a couple of questions and he eventually stopped me he's like hey are you actually interested in this or are you just like all the other time wasters that were just sending me a bunch of messages because it was a beautiful guitar wanting to know more that's why he had took the listing down because he was tired of uh entertaining people that weren't actually serious about buying it but he had put a like new old stock 60s bixby on here and thankfully thankfully it's not the kind you drilled the top for so i ultimately decided okay i'm just gonna let that pass here's what it looks like with the tailpiece taken off so it utilizes three screws itself that's one of your strap button holes it looks like maybe it was moved at one point in time so the bigsby that he had on here really the only other new hole was pretty much right there and here's the back side of this like i was really hoping we'd find some signatures like it's a namm show or something on it but unfortunately uh i'm not finding anything like that but the only one that was visible outside of the tailpiece was right here and he was gracious enough to fill that in for me honestly i couldn't even see it until i turned the guitar on its side so i'm glad i didn't let that scare me away from this instrument so that's pretty cool and now these knobs i was really really hoping that this one was going to have my favorite style knobs because around 1983 this is like what they used on the spotlight specials they're slightly more ufo'd in shape they have a distinct skirt to them they come to a point and they've got like a certain glitter gloss within them they're really cool they're my favorite knobs gibson has ever made but unfortunately this one utilized a slightly later prehistoric style knob which i guess in 83 you might start to see these as early as like 84 so maybe this was a pretty late 83. but they do glow under blacklight and they match my other examples that i have down here but honestly i don't feel like those match the guitar i would not be opposed to you know getting somebody to custom commission like a the los paul style knob because i think that's what this should have had i mean it's got the rings it's got the headstock veneer it's even got the switch tip as you can see here the exact same shape that those guys used so maybe i'll have to do that as just a modification for myself because oh man that's kind of cool it looks like a phoenix like it's breathing fire maybe we could call it a dragon you know tie it in with the trogley's guitar show but that's like its wings that's its tail but sadly that kind of gets covered up by the tailpiece so we'll just continue to call this thing the hippo here's a closer look at one of the pickup rings so this is exactly how the les pauls were too they had the finish on the top but not on the inside so it was likely the exact same people that ended up making these as well or it was just left over so let's try to painstakingly put these back in i will say though that it was definitely worth lowering those knobs but moving on from our gorgeous body let's check out this neck finally so this is an ebony fretboard and as i was telling you earlier it's multi-bound so you get a white black and white layer so kind of similar to like what they did with antique natural spotlight specials and that also forms the nib so that's just ultra fancy stuff here and beautiful ebony fretboard with once again the abalone inlays again like at the les paul but honestly i would say these inlays are quite intricate it's like each of them has like its own unique painting on the inside like this one kind of looks like an owl or an eye that one not too sure i'm sure you could find something in some of these it's just you know kind of interesting they used really high-end stuff and that makes sense for this being a nam show display piece they're really trying to show off what they could do here's an up-close look at that nut so it appears to be made of like bone and then maybe a dyed red wooden material but you can see it's scalloped in between meaning they carve it out like that why do they do that i'm not sure if there's actually a real reason other than it looks fancy but it's the headstock veneer that made me fall in love with this it's not just black it's not just a regular holly veneer they went through and did a rosewood veneer here now it's not like the body like the body if you get it at certain angles you can see kind of like what looks like finish checking all that is is the finish has absorbed into the wood grain it's not cracks or anything crazy like that now sometimes it can be but this particular one that's just the lacquer kind of absorbing into the body but they must have put more lacquer over top of this one because you don't get that same effect but you can still see you know the beautiful wood grain underneath and the abalone there you know this is the abalone that looks great sometimes abalone can be a little bit too much but i think this is the versions that i like and of course who doesn't like the grover imperial style you know ace fraley type stuff here that's pretty cool stock from the factory and our truss rod is looking to be in good shape however it does appear that they uh made a boo-boo at the factory somebody filled in a little hole there i was curious like maybe where these things added after the fact so i lined it up that looks okay it it never actually should have went there then i took a regular truss rod cover to see okay maybe is that one bigger but no that one lines up perfectly too so i'm not sure what that's about as far as neck specs one point five six inch nut width so it's got that kind of skinnier nut width that some people might not like and two inches by the twelfth point seven seven is your first fret neck depth by the twelfth it beefs up to one so it starts off rather skinny and thin but then it gets a little bit wider and a little bit chunkier now this neck profile to me it is really rounded so i actually find it pretty comfortable so far it looks like the scale length is 24.5 inches so a little bit shorter than the regular gibson scale but there we go one beautiful guitar this is such a resonant instrument i would use this as like an acoustic and i think that's because it doesn't have that center block running through it let's check out the sides real quick so even the sides are the rosewood now i'm guessing this is probably brazilian just like the other crest instruments my best guess at this point in time is this thing was actually created in the mid 70s and was never finished until later on for the namm show or you gotta remember since that pickup is in 83 it's very possible that this is a 1983 made instrument and you know 84 is when kalamazoo was shutting down so maybe they just happened to find you know old crest parts and like a 355 neck that was already stamped they decided to put these things together and then display it there that's my best guess on this one but there's a good look at the hippo one eye second eye nostrils this is a very clean instrument you can tell is definitely collector-owned not too much wear and tear in general now to me it looks like this top strap button has been replaced but who really knows and here you can see the three-piece mahogany neck on this wouldn't have been cool if it was a rosewood neck on a vintage gibson these are the vintage grover tuners honestly they feel like they're slipping a little bit so they probably should be changed but you know for the sake of originality i think i'll just let it be but there we go this is a strange one two zero two nine six three custom shop edition made in usa as far as the weight goes it weighs six pounds 2.3 ounces let's go ahead and plug it in [Music] okay so first thing i'm noticing about this thing it's a little bit neck heavy i guess the center block could have helped with that but it's got some nice really sweet tones to it i mean listen to this neck [Music] pickup [Music] do the middle position is pretty nice too [Music] then you can also switch over to your bridge position [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so do [Music] very nice mellow tones out of this thing am i gonna lie and say it's my favorite sounding guitar no not necessarily it's definitely more for like a jazzy stuff which is kind of my style but not necessarily what i want to play right now so let's go ahead and try some distortion on this thing usually not having that center block means we're going to have some sort of a feedback [Music] and that's definitely the case so this demo is with my volume knobs turned almost all the way down [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] room [Music] [Music] my [Music] uh [Music] yeah so all in all it's a really nice guitar but i'm not gonna say it's my favorite it was not love that first drum unfortunately it's a beautiful guitar though and i think that's where all the value of this one comes from due to its obscurity and rarity and just beauty in general i mean you don't find many gibson guitars from 1980 that has potentially brazilian rosewood or really any type of rosewood body at all so for that i think the hippo is very fantastic but as far as something that i think somebody should gig yeah probably not i mean it's in such clean shape anyways it should likely be a collector's piece unfortunately but you know it's kind of an interesting version of the crest some other things i'm noticing that are kind of annoying while playing this thing is it has that whole fret edge binding gap where your top e string will get stuck in it it kind of makes doing bends a little bit difficult especially when it gets stuck in there so it's like you don't really want to play this thing too much or you might risk cracking some of the binding off that but has great acoustic presence [Music] this is not something i'll be listing publicly for sale it's kind of one of those things that i'll probably just hold on to unless somebody wants to offer me a whole bunch of money but i definitely wanted to document this piece all right troglodytes thank you for tuning in today don't forget to like comment and subscribe and we will see you tomorrow on the next episode take care [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Trogly's Guitar Show

Views: 156,978

Keywords: the trogly's guitar show, trogly, trogley, gibson, gibson les paul, fender, gibson crest guitar, gibson crest gold, gibson crest silver, Gibson ES-335, Gibson ES-330, Gibson ES-355, Gibson NAMM Show display piece, Gibson NAMM Guitar, 2021 Gibson NAMM, troglys guitars, trogly 335, trogly 330, trogly 355, Best of Trogly

Id: BBo3lh0tVlU

Length: 31min 15sec (1875 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021