Gibson Chet Atkins Country Gentleman 1996 Wine Red

Used, excellent condition

This gorgeous semi-hollowbody features a laminated maple body, chromyte center block, and 3-piece maple neck. Also includes dual humbuckers; two volume, master tone, master volume controls and pickup selector; special Chet Atkins slim taper neck; body binding; tune-o-matic bridge; special-design Bigsby tailpiece; a 21-fret ebony fretboard with half-moon inlays; and gold hardware. Twin alnico humbucking pickups which include an alnico 492R humbucker on the neck and an alnico 490T on the bridge. These pickups are slightly hotter than Gretsch Super-Trons.

Three volume controls. The master volume is on the cutaway and there is one volume knob for each pickup.

The Gibson Country Gentleman features a 17” wide body. This shape is wider than an ES 335 and similar width to that found on a Gibson L-5 CES or Tal Farlow guitar. The body is quite narrow and is 1.75” thick, which is the standard depth for most Gibson thinline models. The guitar's three-ply laminated top features Curly Maple/Poplar/Maple, as does the instruments back. The rim between the guitars front and back is made of Maple wood. The guitar is surprisingly light. In fact it is lighter than an ES 335. Perhaps this can be attributed to the internal block in the center of the body being made of a combination of Balsa and Mahogany.
The binding around the body is white on the top and back sides. The bottom lower bout features a tortoise shell Pearse style arm rest. The arm rest and pick guard have white/black bindings.

The neck is designed of three-ply Maple capped with an Ebony fret board. There are thumb print style faux MOP fret markers on the bottom edge of the fret board. The guitar has 21 frets and a scale of 25.5”, which is slightly longer than most Gibson thinline models. The width of the neck is 1.75” at the nut and tapers out to 2.102” at the 12th fret. The headstock is black and capped with a crown inlay. The Gibson logo is inlaid at the top of the headstock.

The truss rod cover has Chet’s name engraved and features a surrounding white binding.
All hardware on the Country Gentleman is gold-plated, including the Schaller tuners, the tune-o-matic bridge, the Bigsby vibrato (some did not come with a vibrato), the ring-nut on the pickup selector switch and the strap buttons. The tune-o-matic bridge is seated on top of a beautiful ebony saddle with white MOP inlays on each side.

An interesting note about the Schaller tuners is they come with built in string winders for super fast string changes. A small clip flips out of the ends of the machine heads which allows the user to use them like a string winder.

Comes with the original hard case.

Video features Chet Atkins playing his Gibson Country Gentleman