David Davidson's Vintage Icons

’57 Gibson EDS-1275 Double 12 Prototype

- ’57 Gibson EDS-1275 Double 12 Prototype

"This is a pretty neat guitar. I stumbled across it almost by accident, but it has an amazing story. This is a prototype from ’57, with no serial number. It’s an EDS-1275 hollowbody with a spruce top. It has a Polaris White finish and features a six-string neck and a 12-string neck. It has four PAF humbucking pickups and switchable necks. It’s not so much that it’s different from the regular production guitars – more that this is likely the one pictured at the 1957 Chicago NAMM Show.

“The original owner (I bought it from her son) was Jeanette Dixie Lee Fogel, and she was in a band called Dixie Lee and the Rhythm Ramblers. She got to play this double-necked Gibson after her husband backed over her Kay guitar and amplifier with his station wagon. He destroyed the instrument completely, so he went running out looking for a new guitar. This is all documented in letters from two of her sons.