This isn’t a guitar I would normally choose for an article, but I think it demonstrates just how extreme Gibson’s custom division was prepared to get in order to make a customer happy back in the day.
Although T-Bone Walker and Sister Rosetta Tharpe played these guitars, the Barney Kessel has never been a particularly popular model, but this one is custom-made in every single way. The body shape was initially designed for Tal Farlow, but he clearly didn’t like it because his signature model eventually became a far more traditional single-cutaway.
