SOLD! - 1950 Gibson CF-100 Florentine Cutaway Flat Top Acoustic Sunburst

The cf-100 is the first Gibson Flat Top ever produced with a Florentine cutaway and this is no. 25 of only about 325 ever shipped in 1950!!
 
This beauty is a truly amazing, great-sounding example of a fairly uncommon Gibson flat-top with an early 1950 FON number. The CF-100 is an unusual guitar for its time, as a cutaway flat-top guitar was quite a novel concept when it was introduced in 1950. Pretty common today, the use of such a deep cutaway on a flat-top body was radical for the period, making this a guitar very much ahead of its time. This was the beginning of Ted McCarty’s golden era when virtually all of Gibson’s classic electric designs appeared. It was a time of great innovation facilitated by engineers and musicians alike.
 
While the instrument is generally similar to the basic non-cutaway LG-2, it is considerably fancier in appearance and has a rather different feel. The top is triple-bound and the back and fingerboard are single-bound, and the headstock face carries a pearl Gibson logo and crown inlay. 
 
The rosewood fingerboard is inlaid with pearloid trapezoids, a shape that would become much more familiar when used on the Les Paul Standard. Gibson offered this CF-100 model as either a straight acoustic guitar or with an ingenious added magnetic pickup as the CF-100E, an even more ahead-of-its time idea. Both versions were sold in limited numbers throughout the 1950s but are fairly rare today. Today this very attractive, forward-looking guitar makes perfect sense and we can only wonder why the players of the 1950s failed to warm to this excellent design. This one saw quite a bit of play, so at least one guitarist must have found it a very useful tool "back in the day".
 
This guitar shows a decent amount of cosmetic wear but is in great shape structurally, crack and brak free, no repairs and all original. The finish has a decent amount of wear overall, most notably the back of the neck and lower sound hole rim. There are a few small dings and a single line on the top but all is in perfect shape and stable; the bridge and tuners are also original. The mahogany neck is very similar to that of the early 1950's Les Paul Goldtop's. Sweet and easy in the hand, soft "v" and very comfortable yet chunky. The original small frets are in surprisingly good shape and this is an excellent player with a sweet big and warm sound, deeper and richer than most of the competitors from that era!