The guitar was a signature model for the popular Jazz musician Barney Kessel.

[1] The guitar had a spruce top, maple sides and back, two Humbucker pickups, a mahogany neck and a Brazilian rosewood fretboard with double-parallelogram inlays on the regular version and bowtie inlays on the Custom model.

[2] The custom was considered to be the deluxe version and it had more elaborate inlays and gold plated metal parts.

[3] Both the regular and custom models featured a wooden badge fitted in the trapeze tailpiece which had Barney Kessel's name engraved on it.

At times Barney Kessel played the model with a piece of tape covering the Gibson logo on the headstock.