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Chet Atkins Country Gentleman
After airlines nearly lost the Chet Atkins prototype given to Scotty by his good and longtime friend (the late) Chet Atkins he had one custom built to his specifications by Gibson master craftsman Jim Hutchins. This has now been his primary guitar and in 2002, based on his modifications, Gibson introduced a Chet Atkins without a Bigsby, essentially a "Scotty Moore modeled Country Gentleman".
In May of 2004 Scotty had Don Dean install a Hipshot Extender (Drop Tuner) on this guitar. Don has been working on Scotty's guitars for some time now and actually reused the Gibson button on the Schaller machine. The extender allows him to accurately detune the 'E' string on his guitar to a 'D' quickly during a performance to facilitate the playing of certain songs, such as the intro to "Don't Be Cruel". He never quite liked it so had Don remove it in November.
The Chet Atkins Country Gentleman features a single round cutaway semi hollow bound maple body, bound f-holes, raised bound tortoise pickguard, bound arm rest on bottom bass bout, 3 piece maple neck, 22 fret ebony fingerboard with offset red block inlay (modified with block inlaid mother of pearl fretmarkers), ABR-1 tune-a-matic bridge/Bigsby vibrato tailpiece (Scotty's has a tune-a-matic bridge with pearl inlaid ebony bridge base/ fingered tailpiece), blackface peghead with pearl plant/logo inlay, 3 per side tuners, gold hardware, 2 covered humbucker pickups (Scotty's has custom made Ray Butts pickups ), master volume on upper treble bout, 2 volume/1 tone controls, 3 position switch. Available in Country Gentleman Brown (Scotty's), Ebony, Sunrise Orange, and Wine Red finishes. Mfd. 1987 to 2005*. *Commencing with the exhaustion of current stock sometime this year Gibson will no longer be manufacturing this model, at least not with the Chet Atkins name. page added 2003 This guitar was given back to Gibson by Scotty on August 3, 2013
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