This is my quote-unquote 1957 Gibson Moderne reissue — and I’m going to tell you, and you can fight me in the comments, it’s a great guitar. Take everything else away — the hype, the price, even the shape — and it plays great. That’s the thing I don’t think you hear from a lot of other channels. I use this thing all the time. I use it on recordings, I play out loud with it. It inspires me to play, and it’s so different from any other guitar that I just really want to pick it up.

It’s an all-mahogany guitar. In theory it probably should have been Korina, but it’s pretty lightweight for what it is. And it has one gigantic baseball-bat neck that I love. I used to be big on the thin-neck guitars, but once you get one of these Custom Shop really big 1957 reissue necks, you’ve got to try it — because you might never go back. It fills up your hand much like a baseball bat would, but still allows you to play very easily.

It’s pretty fancy when you think about it — the gold hardware, the badge at the top, that crazy string tree, the gold pickups, the true ABR-1 bridge with the posts drilled directly into the body, and these really cool cream-and-gold knobs. I’m not going to tell you it’s going to win beauty pageants — it’s kind of like a half Flying V and half I-don’t-know-what. But it’s got Custom Bucker pickups, the nitro finish, really great fretwork, and a bright resonance — it sounds great plugged in and not plugged in, and louder than it should for a solid-body. The headstock is very impractical, very odd — but kind of hard to look away from.

I fought wanting this for a long time. I told myself I’m never going to get a Moderne — it’s not different enough, it’s ugly looking, all the things. But then when you’ve got 90% of the Gibson ’50s guitars that have ever been made and this is the one that you don’t have, well, you start making exceptions. This one came out in 2025, made out of mahogany, and I kept an eye out for it — usually after about a year the hype dies down and you can buy the dip. I saw this one come up for sale at a really good price, worked out a deal for even less, and it showed up. It’s great. I love it.

Just to be clear, this did not actually come out in 1957. This was just a concept that supposedly they made one of, and it was there at the NAMM show that year, but it’s never really formally been surfaced since. And whether Billy Gibbons ever decides to show off the one that he supposedly has, then maybe that’ll change that story. But this here kind of fits in with the Theodore, in a model that could have existed — this one a little more so than the Theodore. That one never existed at all.

And as someone who’s purchased a lot of Gibson guitars in the last five, six years, I can tell you the quality is really good. People love to hate on it online, but I have not had one where I’m like, “this thing is really poorly made.” I can’t justify that they’re worth the money — but for those who say domestic manufacturing means something to them, this is what it costs to pay craftsmen.

So this fits in great with the rest of my ’50s models, or could-have-been ’50s models. And I sincerely hope they never find additional models that should have come out in the ’50s, because then I’ll just have to buy it. One question for the comments: what do you think about the Futura? I’ve always said I’m never buying it — it’s essentially an Explorer. But does it need to be in the collection at some point? Let me know.

Episode 2 of the 1993 Gibson Dove restoration is all about the headstock — and it starts with a surprise.

First off come the old strings (the auction house hadn’t bothered with a fresh set), and then the tuners. The original tuner tips are that snot-green color, ugly but original, so they stay. The odd one out is a silver replacement tuner, fitted with gold screws and gold washers — and the case held two spares, which is where the detective work starts. The original gold Gibson Deluxe tuner is a double-line, single-ring, “Made in Germany” part, with the Gibson Deluxe lettering sitting centered; the replacement carries PW branding instead, with the lettering running right to the edges. The original had picked up some little dings — Jim’s guess is that’s why it was taken off, though what caused them is anyone’s guess — so it gets sanded down (rougher paper than expected) and polished back with Meguiar’s Ultimate Compound until it squeaks, ready to go back on so the all-gold look returns. It isn’t reinstalled in this episode — that’s for once the headstock and neck are cleaned up.

Then the truss rod cover comes off — two-ply, in good shape with just a slight crack at the top, polished back to white — and underneath is the episode’s mystery: a truss rod nut like nothing I’ve seen, tiny, possibly missing something. The neck itself looks untouched — no sign the fretboard was ever replaced, the headstock finish unchanged, no separation — and there’s plenty of adjustability left, so it’s a puzzle to solve rather than a disaster. The guitar had been tuned up to pitch once just to hear it, and it’s extremely loud and bass-heavy, almost like a 12-string. A little buzzing, and the action may come down a touch, but the bones are good.

With the tuners off, the story of this guitar starts to show. The finish underneath the tuners is a darker red, and the washers had pressed themselves into the nitro over the years. Down the neck there are tiny gold-looking micro-dings — most likely from a ring worn by whoever played this guitar a lot — and the finish is worn through on the side in places. Well loved and well played, and the polish should bring a lot of it back.

On to the body: the bridge pins come off, and underneath there’s a synthetic nut and a Headway undersaddle pickup that almost certainly didn’t come with the guitar. The cracks get mapped out — one in the top where the sides are coming out, one older repair that looks stable, the crack running down the sides. The fix is fish glue and clamps, taped off first so no glue goes where it shouldn’t, with a possible touch-up of red lacquer on the rough spots later. No lacquer work where the finish has simply worn away.

Next up is the fretwork — cleaning the fretboard and polishing the frets (Episode 3) — and then the big one, gluing the top back on (Episode 4). Every repair is a step toward the verdict on whether this Dove stays in the collection.

Episode 1 (unboxing): https://youtu.be/A2Of2qDKPtA