The name of this guitar may cause some confusion. Why are there four names in the title, and who does this signature guitar really belong to: Nick Lucas or Bob Dylan? The beginning of this guitar takes us to the 1920s.
Nick Lucas was one of the biggest stars in popular music, so in 1923 Gibson decided to approach him to build a guitar designed entirely to his specifications. This 'Nick Lucas' model became the first signature model Gibson ever produced. Resembling the L1 and L3, this guitar had a 13-fret design with a deeper body for more volume and projection.
Bob Dylan's Nick Lucas Special
A jump forward in time takes us to 1963, the year Bob Dylan bought a Nick Lucas Special from Fretted Instruments in New York. When he bought it, it had a Guild bridge and Martin pickguard on it, and the top had received a Natural refinish. Bob used this Nick Lucas a lot during gigs between 1963 and 1966 and the guitar was also used extensively on the sessions for 'Another Side Of' and 'Bringing It All Back Home'.
The story goes that Dylan kept his harmonicas loose in the guitar case and that during a tour in Australia in 1966, this guitar did not survive the flight to Melbourne. Indeed, the harmonicas had badly damaged the top. Since then, nothing was heard of Bob's Nick Lucas Special....
This particular model was only made as a custom order a couple times in the decades after. And that's also how this model was brought back to life with us! In 2019, a customer came to us with the desire to have this guitar custom built with Gibson's Made-2-Measure programme. Both we and Gibson were very excited and when we discovered that this model has never been built in a small quantity, we decided to have 5 made!
What makes the story even more special is that we were later told that two of these guitars found their way to Hollywood and were used for an upcoming film about Bob Dylan! Thus, this idea of a customer not only led to a very limited model, but also to an appearance on the big screen!
Benchtalk #1
This was a very unique event, and a story we would love to share with you. This guitar was therefore also the perfect candidate for our first 'Benchtalk' episode, which you can watch on the right.
Of course, we also took the time to record demos of this M2M Gibson Nick Lucas, and you can listen to them below.