Doubleneck Duo

It's double trouble this month as we examine a pair of twin-necked 60s Gibsons

- David Davidson's

The Polaris White one is a 1961 EMS-1235 with a regular six-string neck and an octave six-string neck, and its most interesting and unusual feature is the Bigsby on the octave side. Gibson made these with Venetian and Florentine cutaways, but this one is Venetian. It is a hollow-bodied guitar with a carved spruce top and a flat back, and all three pickups are [Patent Applied For units]. There’s a single layer of white celluloid binding on the back and white/black/white around the top.

Both necks are mahogany with Brazilian rosewood fretboards and parallelogram inlays, but they feel very different. The regular neck is really fat and it feels very good to play. The octave neck is tiny and the string spacing is so tight that it’s quite tricky to play with big hands. But if you’re used to playing mandolins and octave guitars, it would feel fine because Gibson installed mandolin-style frets.

The heel starts at the 12th fret so although you can play up the neck, it’s not really designed for you to go much above the 15th fret and it does start to get a bit cumbersome.