Eric's "Yardbirds" and "Cream" Guitar

Maple body, mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. A nice meaty nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches. Individual Kluson Deluxe tuners with double-ring Keystone plastic buttons. Inlaid pearl "Gibson" headstock logo with pearl crown inlay. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Two super hot patent # humbucking pickups with outputs of 7.52k and 7.68k. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch. Black plastic bell-shaped knobs with metal tops. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge and factory stop-tail piece. The only very minor issues on this incredible example are a small amount of belt buckle wear (with loss of finish) on the back at the lower bout, and also some very minor belt buckle scratching, some very minor finish checking, a few tiny and insignificant marks on the top. Also the ABR-1 Tune-0-Matic retainer bridge has been repositioned by approximately one-eighth of an inch (as is so often the case) in order to perfect the intonation of this guitar. This is without doubt the best playing and best sounding ES-335 of this era we have ever seen. An excellent, all original, and totally unfaded example with all 'nickel' parts, almost identical to the guitar that Eric Clapton used in his "Yardbirds" and early "Cream" days. That particular guitar (serial # 67473) fetched a huge $847,500 at the recent auction of his guitars at Christie's New York (lot # 41). Housed in its original Gibson black hardshell case with red plush lining. This is one of 892 'Cherry' ES-335's made in 1964 out of a total of 2,750 guitars shipped between 1960 and 1964.