Ibanez MC 5000 Holy Grail Limited edition Garcia/Weir Japan 1980

A rare, perhaps unique, opportunity to acquire one of the rarest and most masterfully crafted guitars by master Japanese luthiers from the golden age. The Ibanez MC 5000 is already legendary; the stories that it was made for Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir are still a matter of debate among experts. The only thing that is certain is that a very limited number of these were produced, each with slightly different features. This particular example is completely original except for one knob and the OBEL input jack. It will be sold with a courier-proof aluminum flight case (the original case is no longer available). I am available for any clarification, video call, or any other proof of its value.

Here's a short story from an online article:

If with the Artist 5000 series we are faced with models released in low number editions, with the Musician 5000 we even enter the mysterious field of unique historical models, built in very few copies, each different from the other. In the specific case of this Musician 5000, 3 are known but a how many are the existing MC 5000 in the world?

As often happened in the Japanese production, there were multiple versions of a specific model and the top-ends were usually particularly elaborate, built with selected exotic woods of rare beauty and rich in extremely complex inlays.

On the keyboards there were trees of life and on some bodies there were leaves, inflorescences and various ornaments, as well as on the richly adorned headstocks.

With the MC 5000 we are probably in front of the highest peaks of Japanese art: a palette literally covered with mother-of-pearl leaves, a triple nut in wood/bone/brass and a very special tree of life that runs along a mahogany board set in the center of the ebony fretboard. Inside the strip are placed the dot markers and in the 21st key was placed a further inlay, a plate with the inscription “Limited Edition” in italics. The bodies are made of sublime woods, among them Koa and Zebra Wood and the vertiginous neck-thru is the quintessence of perfection.

The story goes that the MC 5000 was designed specifically for Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead but that he did not like it because it was too heavy to be played live. At the time Bob Weir, the other guitarist of the band, owned an autograph instrument of Ibanez production and Hoshino Gakki, in collaboration with Weir himself and Jeff Hasselberger, decided to create a particular model of Musician with a special electronic part to give to Garcia.

The famous three guitars were made, which were presented at the NAMM in Atlanta in 1978 and following the refusal of Garcia the three took different paths... but this is only the “Myth”, in truth it is not known the exact number of copies been made.