Objects of Desire - Epiphone 'Blak & Blu' Gary Clark Jr Signature

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The guitar of kings that Gary Clark Jr beats blak & blu…

He might play around with a Gibson SG on occasion but Gary Clark Jr’s first love is the Epiphone Casino, a guitar made famous by The Beatles and Paul Weller.

“Getting my first Casino changed my life,” said Clark, and now Epiphone have made his dream come true with their new ‘Blak & Blu’ Signature guitar. First unveiled in 1961, the Epiphone Casino (model designation E230TD) was the brand’s version of parent company Gibson’s ES-330 slimline hollow body. The Gibson original was overshadowed forever more when Beatle Paul McCartney bought a ’61 Casino in 1965, using it for his guitar solos on Drive My Car and Taxman. John Lennon and George Harrison soon followed Macca’s lead and ditched their Rickenbacker and Gretsch guitars for ’65 Casinos. Anything associated with The Beatles pulls in the big numbers and a Lennon-spec 60s Casino will leave a £4,000-shaped hole in your savings. Gary Clark Jr’s Epiphone signature model delivers a lot of that cool for a lot less money.

The list price for the Blak & Blu is £649 (with Bigsby vibrato) or £619 (with trapeze tailpiece). See bit.ly/epiphone-casino for details.

Ed Mitchell
Ed Mitchell
Writer

Ed Mitchell was the Editor of The Blues Magazine from 2012-16, and a contributor to Classic Rock and Louder. He died in October 2022, aged 52. A one-time Reviews Editor on Total Guitar magazine from 2003, his guitar-modding column, Ed’s Shed, appeared in print on both sides of the Atlantic (in both Total Guitar and Guitar World magazines), and he wrote stories for Classic Rock and Guitarist. Between them, the websites Louder, MusicRadar and Guitar World host over 400 of his articles – among them interviews with Billy Gibbons, Paul Weller, Brian Setzer, profiles on Roy Buchanan, Duane Allman and Peter Green, a joint interview with Jimmy Page and Jack White, and dozens of guitar reviews – and that’s just the ones that made it online.