1967 Epiphone Al Caiola Sunburst

An early addition to the collection. My second "real" guitar, I bought this in 1977 from a guy in my dorm (shout-out to Jeff Amato!). These guitars are incredibly underrated - no f-holes cut down on feedback, this is essentially a Casino without the Beatles cachet.

The one funky thing about it is the tone selection switches. Based on the Gibson Varitone circuit, the filters are selected with individual, quite small slider switches rather than a rotary knob. It makes them difficult to switch in real time, and I've found that there are a few settings I like vastly more than others so it's more of a "set and forget" thing.

Now for the sad part. Before the days of vintage I hacked at this thing, adding really hot humbucking pickups, and installing a Starz 20 position rotary switch plus two coil tap toggles, one in the pickguard and one in the body. I even sliced a piece out of the control pickguard to make way for the Starz umbilical cord. Well I got rid of the rotary knob (who can remember what 20 positions are without a label!) but the damage was done. Pickup cavities routed out (using a drill press no less!) for the larger humbuckers, holes in the pickguards remain. But I will say it still plays great, and best of all:

If you play this thing in Bb it feeds back in key!