1920 Gibson L-4 12-Fret

1920 Gibson L-4 12-fret archtop featuring a carved Spruce top, Maple back/sides, and a Mahogany neck with an Ebony fingerboard. Plays great with a chunky vintage "V" profile and sounds fantastic producing a charming archtop tone with crisp high-end clarity and tight woody low-end. Good playing condition with a century-old patina, a repaired bridge plate, finish checking, dings, and a couple of repaired cracks throughout. An incredible pre-war Gibson! Reach out for more information. Includes chip case.

Check out the feature from our luthier Tyler in the ECG Newsletter:

"It's easy to view these old oval-hole archtops as outdated and antiquated pieces of musical furniture, but the truth is that some of the most important developments of modern guitar were made on instruments like this one. Perhaps the most prominent L-4 player in the model's history was the great Eddie Lang. In the days when the guitar was purely a rhythm instrument, he was the first to pioneer the idea of the single-string solo. This was an idea that would catch on in the decades to come. Eddie Lang walked with an L-4 so Vinnie Vincent could run with a Jackson RR-1 Vinnie Vincent Signature Flying V.

This example remains surprisingly clean and original considering its supercentenarian nature. The few minor repairs necessary over the years have been executed cleanly and will certainly keep the guitar going for another hundred years at the very least. Round-hole archtops are often overlooked in favor of their f-hole-equipped cousins, which is a crying shame in my opinion. They generally fall somewhere tonally between a standard archtop and a flat-top acoustic, oftentimes exhibiting the best of both worlds. For the collector and player alike, this prohibition-era Gibson is something special."