About this model guitar the Gibson web site states that the Gibson L-4 archtop became jazz’s greatest rhythm instrument in the hands of six-string innovators like the virtuoso Eddie Lang in the 1920s and assured the company’s dominance of the guitar market even before the outbreak of World War I. But the L-4’s story - how it evolved from an acoustic guitar to the dynamic L-4 CES Mahogany Archtop of today - is perhaps the best illustration of Gibson’s historic dedication to endlessly refining and improving instruments that are already world class.” We present to you the still current version of the Florentine (sharp) cutaway electric archtop having been made of solid mahogany sides and back – in fact the mahogany is actually rather swirly and with a great deal of complexity and beauty to the grain pattern. It has a carved spruce top, twin gold-plated ’57 Classic humbucking pickups and gold-plated hardware.
Its condition is better than what most call excellent, however a person with better than 20-20 vision might note that there could be just a few wholly insignificant and intensely small signs of prior playing time – quite frankly, almost not worth discussing. The instrument’s creature features include that solid carved spruce top with the twin open f-holes; carved mahogany back and sides, and they are, happily, solid wood as well; it has a single-piece mahogany neck, an ebony fingerboard with parallelograms inlaid in mother of pearl, multi-ply top binding and single-ply back and neck binding; an ABR-1 tune-o-matic ebony-base pearl inlaid bridge with a gold-plated brass tailpiece. One source speaks of this instrument having a rich, deep, silky and sonorous voice. He adds that individual volume and tone knobs allow for a smooth sound with enhanced bass, midrange and treble variation – making the guitar more versatile than one might think. Most of the stores that are currently offering this model seem to want $4599 for it. We, on the other hand, have far lower expectations – not of the guitar – the guitar is superb – but as to the price.