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Lot 70

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Frank Zappa's Les Paul Goldtop Guitar

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Frank Zappa's customised 1952/53 Les Paul Goldtop Guitar, extensively used during the early to mid 1960s in both studio and stage, this gold top was Zappa's main guitar before his famous SG. The guitar is a 1952/53 Gibson Les Paul with a single cutaway mahogany body. It has a maple top and neck and rosewood fingerboard with crown inlays. It has one P.90 single coil pickup, one single coil pickup one humbucking pickup and six rotary controls a toggle switch, a pick up selector switch, a Bigsby tremelo tailpiece. A Mahogany body with maple top. In it's original case. The Mothers of Invention first single 'Freakin Out features this guitar played by Zappa. The guitar was sold by a guitar dealer known to all of the famous bands at that time in the Bay area in San Francisco in late 1969 or possibly early 1970 for approx $300.00. The current owner was friends with Mike Pendegrass & Howie from Big Brother & The Holding Company and the Grateful Dead and allowed him to jam with them occasionally. He recalls "It must have been painful for them. But I had some great times." He has owned the guitar ever since, but when he took up sailing and became a yacht captain, the guitar ended up in an attic gathering dust with some friends for the last thirty years, and then with an auction house over the last few years.

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