Rebel Rouser!

This "Duane Eddy DE-500 Rock 'n Roll Guitar" weighs just 7.00 lbs. and has a nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches, a nice medium neck profile and a scale length of 24 1/2 inches. Seventeen inch wide (1 7/8 inch thick) body with curly maple back and sides, laminated spruce top with single-bound f-holes, three-piece maple/walnut/maple neck with four-ply (black/white/black/white) binding, and double-bound ebony fretboard with 20 frets and inlaid pearl block position markers with abalone "V" inserts. The top and back edges have five-ply (white/black/white/black/white) binding. "Lip top" headstock with inlaid pearl "Guild" logo and pearl "G-shield" inlay. Individual Grover RotoMatic tuners with half-moon metal buttons. Metal truss rod cover with Guild shield outlined in silver. Two first-style Guild small humbucker pickups ("Anti-Hum Pickups") with outputs of 6.92k and 6.62k. Transparent acrylic (or Lucite) stairstep pickguard painted black from the back after a gold silk-screened "Star" and "Guild" logo have been applied. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus master volume control on cutaway (treble) bout and three-way pickup selector switch on upper bass bout. Guild black plastic knobs with G-logo on a gold disc. Gold-plated bridge with pre-set compensating saddle and Bigsby "Guild" Vibrato tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. With the original second variant Guild white oval label inside the bass f-hole, with the model "Duane Eddy 500BL" and the serial number "EH-287" written in black ink. Minimal surface wear to the varnish on the back of the neck and a few tiny marks on the top of the body are the only minor blemishes to this 9.00 exceptionally fine condition rarity. Housed in it's original Guild black hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.00).

"Duane Eddy's 'twangy' guitar sound, which he got from a Gretsch Chet Atkins Hollow Body, made him the most popular solo guitarist of the late 1950s. In 1961 he sought his own endorsement deal, and Guild was the first company to show interest. The Duane Eddy model was based on Guild's T-500, a limited-run thinbody version of the Stuart 500 archtop. Eddy specified two features from his Gretsch: Bigsby vibrato and master volume control on the cutaway bout. Examples from 1962 and 1963 have single-coil DeArmond pickups; mini-humbucking pickups appeared in 1964. The DE-500 was last made in 1969 but was reissued in 1983" (George Gruhn and Walter Carter, Electric Guitars and Basses: A Photographic History, p. 235).

"During 1965 Guild introduced a new and different serial number system, that would be in use into 1970...The numbers of this new series start with a 2-letter prefix, exclusive to a specific model, followed by 3 or 4 digits" (Hans Moust, The Guild Guitar Book, p. 46). The two-letter serial number prefix used for DE-400s was "EH" and the prefix for DE-500s was "EI." According to official Guild records (see Moust, p. 47), the last serial number used for DE-400s in 1967 was "EH-275," and the last serial number in 1968 was "EH-301." The last serial number used for DE-500s in 1967 was "EI-136," and no DE-500s were produced in 1968. Although the serial number on this guitar is "EH-287," it is a DE-500, and the handwritten model number on the label inside this guitar has been changed from "Duane Eddy 400-Bl" to "Duane Eddy 500-Bl" (the "4" has been changed to a "5").