The Harrison GB Custom has become a very successful instrument for jazz guitarists, and was developed with the late Gary Benson, a prominent Toronto player and teacher. This Harrison GB Custom features a Quilted Maple cap on a chambered Mahogany body and a Mahogany neck with a Maple-bound Ebony fingerboard fitted with Stainless Steel frets. The custom built tailpiece is also Ebony.
Douglas Harrison
This Epiphone Zephyr Deluxe was built around 1947 based on the middle-position pickup type and location, control layout and the serial number. The serial is ‘75194’ with the 75 being a prefix for this model and the ‘194’ its production rank; this serial scheme was used from 1944 to 1950. The top is Laminate Spruce, the back and sides Laminate Maple and the neck a five piece layup of Maple and Walnut.
Built from 1974 to 1979, the Travis Bean TB1000S was the ‘Standard’ version of these innovative instruments, also available as the TB1000A or ‘Artist’ with carved top. 1,422 were built before the company folded and this example is number 1214. Travis Bean had a varied career, including stints as a machinist, luthier, motorcycle racer, movie set builder and rock drummer among other pursuits. Born in 1947, Bean died in 2011. At the launch of Travis Bean Guitars, his partners included Marc McElwee and Gary Kramer – Kramer went on to form Kramer Guitars in 1975.
This instrument has sold
MORE →Here’s an excellent brand new Douglas Harrison CJ 16 custom archtop guitar, in Spruce and Red Maple with a Lollar Gold Foil pickup! The Harrison CJ 16 is a single-cutaway, 16 inch wide archtop with hand-carved top and back plates, as suggested by the ‘CJ’ for ‘Classic Jazz’ name. Top quality Spruce and Red Maple are used for the body, and a three-piece Maple neck carries a Macassar Ebony fingerboard. The body, neck, headstock and pickguard are bound with Roasted Maple, and the bridge and tailpiece are Macassar Ebony.
Here is a lovely Harrison GB Custom Redwood Burl top thinline archtop, built in Toronto during 2017 and based on a design for the late jazz artist Gary Benson. Douglas Harrison has been building arched top guitars for some years now and his GB Custom has been very popular, with most I have seen being true custom models, with varying tops and hardware configurations.