Ebay ES of the Week: Call Me Al
Al Caiola Deluxe. The most switches on a guitar until Bernie Rico showed up.
Same number of switches but with P90s. Who swiped the f-holes? This was before they had ergonomics, I guess. Let's see you turn off one Varitone switch, turn on another and change pickups without dropping a beat. Uh, I guess not.
This is a little closer to a 330 but I find these mega cool anyway. I remember when I was in Junior High School back in the mid 60’s (they weren’t called Middle Schools yet) and I was writing to the various guitar companies to get catalogs from them. That was pretty much the only way to get them back then. The guy at Hermie’s Music Store in Schenectady wouldn’t let me take a Fender catalog (he didn’t like long haired hippie weirdos). The guys at Georges Music Store were just as bad with the Gibson Catalog. Only the guys at Westgate Piano and Organ let me have a Vox catalog. When I got them all, I would take them to school with me and drool over the ones I liked. I was a sucker for guitars with lots of switches and none of them had more than the Epiphone Al Caiola. I didn’t know who Al was but I knew he wasn’t a rocker. It didn’t matter, I thought it was the coolest guitar this side of a Mosrite (great shape but only one switch). I’ve never owned one but it’s a fairly close relative and quite a bargain these days. The guitar was launched in 1963 and it came in only one model with mini humbuckers. Later, they added “Standard” and “Deluxe” to the name which denoted P90s or mini hums, respectively . There’s actually one of each on Ebay this week. Both are a bit on the pricey side considering what I’ve seen these sell for in the past. These are not popular guitars. Maybe it’s the bad rap the Varitone gets or maybe no one likes old Al. Basically, it’s an ES 330 with a longer 25 1/2″ scale. It’s a completely hollow body, like a 330 but it has no f-holes. There’s a master volume and a master tone and 5 on off switches. Why five when a Varitone has 6? Simple. You don’t need a bypass position because that would be all of them off. You would think that 5 2 way switches would give you a zillion combinations but you couldn’t engage more than one at a time. Well, you could but it only saw the last one if I’m reading the schematic correctly. There is pickup selector switch as well. They were all either trap tails or Bigsby equipped. As far as I know it was Gibson’s only long scale guitar at the time and the only one with a mono Varitone. They’re pretty rare so they don’t come up all that often. they were expensive in their day, so not too many were sold. You can find the auction for the ’66 Standard here. The humbucker equipped ’66 Al Caiola Deluxe can be found here. I’m kind of partial to the dot necked standard but the block neck Deluxe has its charms as well. Check out the bizarro headstock inlay on the Deluxe. What is that, a headstone? A mushroom growing out of an English policeman’s hat floating upside down in a stream?
What the...what is that thing on the headstock? And, of course, if you hate the 345's Varitone, you're going to hate this one even more.
Charlie I always anxiously await your next installment!
I spoke to you about the 1959 ES345 rebuild project I undertook with my kids…the guitar came out GREAT and while it will never be a collectors item the action, sound and mojo are superb. I will send pictures one of these days. The Sheptone Blue Sky pickups are outstanding.
Anyway, the Al Caiola post was interesting to me in that I think it may have helped me solve a mystery of my childhood related to my first electric guitar. My grandfather was a profesional musician in NYC in the 40’s- through early 70’s….violinist and primarily conductor/musical director on broadway. I was very close with him. He bought me my first real guitar (1964 Goya acoustic) which I still own. Around 1972 when I was a long haired 9’th grader and was jonesing for an electric guitar my grandfather met me at Manny’s in NYC to meet a friend of his who was going to “hook us up” with a major discount on an electric guitar….we met this gentleman, who was clearly something of a celerbrity at Manny’s….and this man took us right to the Epiphones and helped me pick out an inexpensive solid body…similar to a crestwood but much cheaper and made in japan…with plastic pickups that were probably plastic covered mini humbuckers…anyway, I always knew that this guy was a studio musician, that his name was Al, that he was Italian, that he was affiliated with Ephiphone, and that he played guitar on soundtracks for the Godfather movies, and I believe appeared as the guitarist at Connie’s wedding in the Godfather two. Im now thinking that this guy may have been the one and only Al Caiola of Al Caiola Ephiphone “fame.”
The Caoila is a COOL guitar, I want one !
Keep up the great work and thanks for the turn on to Shep, he was great to work with
Thanks for reading. Shep was very helpful in identifying some suspect PAFs. He know his stuff. The Caiola is very much under appreciated. I want one too.