Gibson L-12

1938 – serial number 95678

This is my favorite guitar. I own this L-12 since 29 October 1986 and played it for 20 years almost every week on stage with the JoJo Swingband. I bought this unique guitar from my friend Ad Otte who brought it over from the United States. It came with the (non-original) L-5 tailpiece and Grover Imperial tuners. The original tortoise pickguard was falling apart, so I had it replaced by Hans Moust with a custom built with exactly the same shape and had him fit a Barcus Berry floating pickup. This addition allowed me to combine Freddy Green comping with Charlie Christian soloing. When the JoJo Swingband stopped, I started to play other guitars as well, but when I joined the Dutch Swing College Band in 2020, I took off the pickup and pickguard, made it fully acoustic again with high action and d’Addario Phosphor Bronze 80/20 13-56 strings.

Gibson L-12 accompanying an all star front section with Robert Veen, Frank Roberscheuten, Menno Daams and Dan Barrett
The L-12 with the pickguard and Barcus Berry pickup, DR Zebra strings 12-54
L-12 headstock with parallelogram inlays
showing its age
L-5 tailpiece