Epiphone Vintage 1996 Casino Rare Ebony Pre-Elitist w/ Fret End Binding & HSC
You are looking at an all-original Japanese Terada-built Epiphone Casino in very rare Ebony finish from 1996. Very few were built at Terada is this all-black finish. We find maybe 1 per year. This scarce model also includes fret-end binding specification which we don’t often see on the Japanese Casinos. Built in Japan at the Terada factory this is the guitar made famous by The Beatles, especially loved by John Lennon, even into his solo career. It’s one of the essential rock & roll hollowbodies. These are the guitars that precede the modern Elitist line. Japanese Epiphone Casinos are consistently superb in our opinion, we have never had one we didn't love. The build quality is exceptional and to us, the Terada models feel like no other casinos. The modern Chinese guitars can't touch them. It’s nice and light at 2.8kg with a very comfortable fast neck on the slightly thinner side. The electronics are all untouched, with original nickel pickup covers on the P-90s. The nickel ABR-1 bridge has the correct "Made in Japan" text on the underside, and the orange oval label visible through the F hole has the correct five-digit serial for Terada factory production (6 for the year, 5 for the Casino model, and three digits for the production number). This one is ageing very gracefully with a real vintage vibe, with uniform dull surface grey patina on the pickup covers, bridge, and trapeze tailpiece. You get all the gentle good-looking ageing with none of the ugly stuff. There is playwear visible over the body, mainly scratches and scuffs, and a little ding near the headstock. There have been no breaks or repairs. It’s all original with no modifications save for some black witch hat knobs, which look pretty cool this old machine. Neck is dead straight truss rod checked and functioning fine, plenty of life left in the frets. It’s also a very smooth player and those original dog ear P90s sound immense. Comes with Epiphone Hard Shell Case, all latches working fine. It will be packaged very securely in a purpose designed padded hard shipping box, rest assured absolutely no harm will come to it. I’ll let the pics tell the rest of the story, this is a beautiful old Casino and like all these old Japanese Terada models; a superb investment.
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We carefully hand-select all our guitars and refuse a lot more than we accept, if they don’t blow us away on all fronts, we just don’t put them in our shop; if it’s for sale by Gas Station Guitars, you know it’d gonna be pretty special. All pictures are of actual guitar, we do not use stock photos. NOT FOR TRADE or part exchange, thanks. We ship to the E.U, Europe, U.S, Canada, Australia, NZ and of course the UK.