1974 Ibanez Model 2455 ES-175 Copy
I bought this in 1982 for $395 from Venue Music in Sydney Australia. Apart from the photo of me, all the other photos on this page were sourced from the internet.
The one pictured on the right was advertised on ebay by a shop in Melbourne for AU$4200 in 2008! That one was advertised as a "model L5CESN" (which is actually a Gibson model that has a different body shape) and it seems to be identical to mine. Both seem to have the Gibson style "open book" headstock. By 1976 Ibanez was using their own headstock shapes almost exclusively so most likely mine would have been made prior to that. There is a web page with old Ibanez catalogues and the closest I can find to my one is the 1974 Model 2455 (note the pickup switch is on the pointed horn, unlike an ES-175). The only other possibility is the 1975 Model 2464 but I think the former is the most likely.
This is me playing my Ibanez in late 1982 at Kinsela's night club, Darlinghurst Sydney Australia
I bought mine because I was joining a band for the first time in a few years and I needed an electric guitar. I hadn't played electric guitar since I sold my Les Paul a couple of years earlier, and by that time I felt more comfortable with a bigger body like my acoustic Guild. It was a very nice guitar but wasn't really suited to the kind of music that I ended up doing over the next few years (note that I had stuffed mine with cotton wool to help prevent feedback), so I started using solid bodies and eventually a Gibson 335. I sold it for the same price a year or two after I bought it.
Note the attention to detail in the photo above. Ivoroid bound f-holes, really nice switch surround, gold plating, and the inside binding detail on the fingerboard. A very high quality guitar.
