The right-handed Epiphone Casino ES-230TD (serial number 84075) that McCartney purchased at the end of ’64 has a rare early-style Gibson-design headstock rather than Epiphone’s later hourglass-shaped headstock. “I showed him my hollow body guitar that I’d bought when I was in the army in Japan in 1955. I was turned on after that, and bought the Epiphone Casino.” Mayall recalls the late-night record sessions. King, Eric Clapton… he was sort of showing me where all of Eric’s stuff was from. Paul McCartney is was the first to get a Casino and John and George followed.Īfter being influenced to purchase it by his friend, blues musician John Mayall, McCartney said, “You’d go back to his place and he’d sit you down, give you a drink, and say, ‘Just check this out.’ He’d go over to his tape deck, and for hours blast you with B.B. The Epiphone Casino was a very important guitar to the Beatles. Each owned one and used it for countless recordings and performances. Of all the guitars made famous by the Beatles, the only one that John, Paul, and George had in common was the Epiphone Casino. John Lennon with his Casino Left and Right – This is actually the same guitar in both pictures John removed the pickguard and sanded the guitar down to allow it to breath from under the thick poly coat allowing it to sound better. Gibson added the center block to reduce feedback as players were cranking it up on stage. Gibson 330 is quite similar to the Casino, but for some reason was not as popular. The Epiphone Casino is a full hollow body guitar that has no center block of wood inside like the Gibson 335 has.

The pickups sound amazing with all of the bite and snarl that you would expect from P90’s. I even added a black grommet under the 3-way switch like John had on his. This guitar looks and feels GREAT, resonates better (it just doesn’t look like it was dipped in plastic anymore). I removed the ugly white pickguard and put it way. Also the obnoxiously thick factory coat of Poly has been finely sanded down to a satin/matte finish (except on the headstock).

Modifications to the guitar that made it a better player (just like John Lennon did) was to change to Gold Grover tuners and now stays in tune better. The Peerless Casinos have gained the reputation of being the better Casinos. Very cool John Lennon inspired Epiphone Natural Casino MIK in 2002 by Peerless.