Charvel/Fender Custom Bass made for Billy Gibbons 1977 – Transparent Red

Charvel/Fender Custom Bass made for Billy Gibbons

Year made: 1977

Finish: Transparent Red

Operational Condition: Fully-functioning

Cosmetic Condition: Good with some dings, checking in the finish, scratches, etc. The wear is authentic and looks incredible. 8 out of 10 condition

Functional Condition: Fully-functioning although it could really use a re-fret to play properly. If you’re interested in this bass and prefer that we refret it as part of a deal please let us know and we can accommodate.

Case: Comes with later-era Fender hard case

Description:

What we have here is…well, we’re not exactly sure what we have here. It’s a 1968 Fender Telecaster Bass neck on a “Dusty Hill” Boogie Bodies (Charvel) body with a neck plate that reads “Custom Built for Billy Gibbons 8-9-77″. Boogie Bodies, if you’re not familiar” was an early custom builder that built guitar bodies for celebrity musicians in conjunction with Wayne Charvel for a short few years (from about ’76 until ’79). The pickup, an early Seymour Duncan from the 1970s makes sense as Duncan was among the early custom builders of this era along with Boogie Bodies and Charvel.

So, did Billy send the ’68 Tele neck to Charvel/BB to have them build a custom bass around it? Did he add it later? Did someone else? Dusty Hill can be seen playing a Charvel-necked version of this bass only a few years later so perhaps this was the prototype of sorts with this Fender neck and after that Charvel started building them for Dusty with the matching Charvel neck. We just don’t know. We do know that it is an impossibly cool

We love Dusty Hill and ZZ Top so when this one came across our bench we could not only not believe it we also were absolutely smitten. This is an incredible instrument and an incredible piece of Charvel/Boogie Bodies and ZZ Top history.