Even without the Chet Atkins signature signpost on the pickguard, this Custom Hollow Body is easily identifiable as some sort of an Atkins model.

The horseshoe inlay on the peghead is the same as that on Gretsch’s Chet Atkins Hollow Body (Model 6120), having replaced the steer head in 1956. The body is the same size (15.75 inches wide) and shape as the Chet model. The Bigsby and metal bar bridge are features that Atkins specified on all his models.

This guitar not only has Atkins features, it was made for Atkins himself, its most unusual feature is the addition of pickup polepieces under the bass strings in the upper register of the fingerboard. They were designed to run a signal through an octave effect to enhance the bass tones. The innovative electronics did not take, but the simulated f-holes of inlaid gold-sparkle material were precursors of the f-hole inlays (and the painted f-holes) that would appear in 1961 on the earliest versions of the Chet Atkins Country Gentleman model.