1962 Gibson ES-355 Red Ebony Block

Pay attention...this is not your everyday ES-355. It is from 1962 and is nearly unique in that it has the ebony block tremolo that was mostly limited to 1962 SG Standards and Customs. I believe it had to be special ordered if you wanted it on any other model. I have seen exactly two ES-355's with this tailpiece. The other was also a 62 but finished in blonde and sold a number of years ago for $150,000. This one will not reach that rarefied figure for a few reasons (but one of them isn't rarity). It's red. Red is the stock color for ES-355's. 99% of those shipped were red. Second, it suffered a nasty headstock break and the best course of repair was to re-neck it. But there is an upside to that...I could choose any neck profile I wanted. Luthier Ken McKay took on the challenge of re-necking this guitar. I asked him to use some of his stash of old growth mahogany and to try to use the original fingerboard and frets, the original truss rod and the original headstock overlay. He was able to do all of those things so only the mahogany was replaced. The original neck was very close to the not too popular and very slim "blade" neck. Ken carved this one to be the size of a 1959 at .88" at the first fret and .95" at the 12th. The only other way to get a neck that size on an ES-355 is to find an early 1959 or a 1958. Good luck. The circuit was originally stereo but has been converted to mono with the original harness/Varitone (old style) in the case pocket. The Varitone switch has been replaced with a dummy pot. The bridge pickup was opened to flip the magnet for mono use and the sticker flaked off during that process. Both pickups are PAFS. This is a tricky guitar to price. A properly executed neck replacement would normally diminish the value by 30% or more but the fact that it allowed a larger profile is a plus for many players who aren't interested in a slim neck. The 355 went to the slimmer neck much earlier than the 335's and 345's. By the Spring of 59, the neck was slim. The 64's don't usually have that big neck profile that the 64 335's and 345's have. So, to get a big neck 355, you would normally have to spend $40K or more. But the rarity of the ebony block trem throws the "normal" pricing totally out of whack. Oh, and it's a great player too. Original brown hard case.