“Some might be thankful they only made one because Gibson didn’t waste any more wood”: Meet the obscure ’60s Gibsons that prove double-necks were a thing before Stairway to Heaven

The Polaris White one is a 1961 EMS-1235 with a regular six-string neck and an octave six-string neck, and its most interesting and unusual feature is the Bigsby on the octave side.

Gibson made these with Venetian and Florentine cutaways, but this one is Venetian. It is a hollow-bodied guitar with a carved spruce top and a flat back, and all three pickups are [Patent Applied For units]. There’s a single layer of white celluloid binding on the back and white/black/white around the top.

Both necks are mahogany with Brazilian rosewood fretboards and parallelogram inlays, but they feel very different. The regular neck is really fat and it feels very good to play.

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The octave neck is tiny and the string spacing is so tight that it’s quite tricky to play with big hands. But if you’re used to playing mandolins and octave guitars, it would feel fine because Gibson installed mandolin-style frets.

The heel starts at the 12th fret so although you can play up the neck, it’s not really designed for you to go much above the 15th fret and it does start to get a bit cumbersome. This clean guitar shows some fretwear and small fretboard divots. The regular neck has bigger ’burst-gauge wire and it was obviously played the most.

I was playing this through a Dumble amplifier and as I opened up the volume controls it got nice and snotty with the octave neck adding sympathetic overtones. You can do that because the three-way neck switch allows the sides to be active individually or simultaneously. The second switch is a three-way pickup selector for the regular neck.

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Because of the Bigsby, Gibson deviated from the usual volume control positioning where the controls would be grouped together. The regular six-string side just has master volume and tone controls.

The Bigsby itself is the ‘horseshoe’ type so Gibson installed a solid centre block under the top to support it – along with the pickups and the bridge. It’s the same on the regular side, as well, and Gibson also installed braces.

This 1966 EMS-1235 couldn’t be more different. It has a full-scale four-string tenor neck that is so skinny, along with an eight-string mandolin neck. Gibson actually installed full-sized humbuckers, but they omitted the outside slugs and screws and used pearl dots to blank off the holes in the covers.

Another cool feature is having the neck switcher on a plate towards the lower bout and the tenor’s pickup switch by the cutaway, which is a totally custom design. It also has gold hardware, which looks very striking on any cherry guitar and it still looks almost brand-new.

The condition shows this guitar was rarely played, but the finish has some beautifully fine and uniform east-west lacquer checking. This time the fretboards are made from ebony with mother-of-pearl blocks. Doubleneck headstocks always have ‘custom’ truss rod covers, but here we also have L-5-style ‘flowerpot’ inlays and binding.

Although it’s a one-piece solidbody, at just over 9lb it’s only slightly heavier than the white one. There’s also the two cut-down ABR-1 bridges with four, rather than six, saddles.

Gibson used two thumbwheels at each end, with the lower one setting the height, as usual, and the other screwing down on top of the bridges to secure them in position. Maybe they did this because there was insufficient string pressure to hold them down and it prevented them from rattling.

I would probably say this is one of one because I have never seen or even heard of another one. Some readers might be thankful they only made one because Gibson didn’t waste any more wood.

It might seem like the kind of instrument someone ordered and then regretted later, but consider the times – it was the folk and psychedelic era, and this guitar probably resides on some obscure master tape and nobody could ever identify what instrument was used to create that sound.

Believe it or not there is an audience for these types of guitars, particularly down south on the country music scene where it’s regarded as a cool thing to go out on stage with something nobody has seen before. It generates a lot of interest and, let’s face it, these players are performers and they enjoy the attention instruments like these attract.

• Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York / info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.