The Super 400CES never set any sales records for Gibson, but the 18-inch archtop electric has remained in production since it’s introduction in 1951 as a symbol of the highest level of the guitarmaker’s art. If a guitarist wanted the best guitar Gibson made – in terms of price – it had to be a Super 400.

Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley’s guitarist, bought his first Super 400, which was equipped with single-coil P-90 pickups, in the mid 1950s during Elvis’s “Hound Dog” era. Gibson upgraded the Super 400 (and all it’s other high-end electrics) with humbucking pickups in 1957, and in 1963 Moore upgraded to the newer version, which had also received a Florentine pointed cutaway.

The Super 400CES may have gotten it’s greatest exposure of the 1960s on Elvis’s 1968 “comeback” TV Special when Elvis took the black-finished guitar from Moore’s hands to accompany himself solo on “One Night With You”. The Super 400 was Moore’s main guitar well into the 1980s and it remains the flagship of Gibson’s high-end electric archtop line today.