This very special Bill Lewis Guitar is a part of Boutique Guitar History. Built in Vancover in at Bill Lewis's Music Store on 3645 West Broadway and popularized by famous players like David Gilmour, Eric Clapton and Jimmy page.
From Gilmourish.com
"On October 7. 1970, while on tour with Pink Floyd in Canada during the American leg of the Atom Heart Mother tour, David Gilmour visited guitar luthier Bill Lewis’ shop and tried one of his guitars. David must have been impressed, and later that same month, Bill’s wife met David at the airport in San Fransisco where he got the guitar... The Bill Lewis was perhaps most famously used for the latter part of the Money solo. The 24 frets and two full octaves allowed David to reach higher notes than he would have with a conventional Stratocaster."
This guitar featured several interesting innovations for the time which include a neck through design that incorporated two parallel rectangular steel bars, 2 vaccum sealed resin humbuckers that split to single coil, and most importantly, 24 frets.
There is no adjustable truss rod on this instrument. Here are the measurements as taken by our technician:
- With a straight edge between the first fret and the 24th, the half way point is the 9th fret, and the relief measured at that point is .029".
- Action at the 12th fret is .090/.070", for the low and high 'E' strings
Check out our Video on this guitar!