The chance to win fabulous prizes is just ONE reason for buying MUSIC U.K. There are always really valuable instruments to be won in our free entry competitions, but this month we've definitely excelled ourselves by offering what is undoubtedly the most revolutionary guitar to emerge in years, the GIBSON CHET ATKINS. Why have we opted for this remarkable instrument? It's because we on MUSIC U.K. reckon it's unique — a guitar to grow with, regardless of what style you play. Read on for the story of how the CHET ATKINS came about.

The Gibson Chet Atkins

Born in Luttrell, Tennessee on June 20th 1924, Chet Atkins has become probably the guitar player in the Country music world — although his musical skills extend far beyond any single style.

In his time, Chet has made over 50 records and the list of artists on whose albums he has appeared is astonishing but, more than that, his solo records and live concerts have inspired countless other players from country pickers to guitarists as diverse as George Harrison and Jeff Beck.

For many years, Chet's name was associated with Gretsch guitars and in 1957 he was appointed head of RCA Records in Nashville, a position he still holds. In short, Chet Atkins is a musical phenomenon.

So how did the Gibson Chet Atkins come about? MUSIC U.K. spoke to Gibson's design chief, Bruce Bolen (himself a fine player) to get the background on this unique guitar. But, to begin with, how about the instrument itself? The Gibson Chet Atkins may look like an electric classical guitar, but there's far more to it than that. To start with it.has virtually a solid body with a spruce top mated to a mahogany back. The back is contoured for comfort and there's a cutaway for easy access to the top of the flat rosewood fingerboard. The Chet Atkins features advanced active electronics too, controlled from two wheel-like roller pots on top of the body.

The classical style bridge has six individual saddles and in each there is a separate piezo pickup adjustable via a trim pot. We described the guitar as 'virtually a solid' — that's because the Gibson research team devised a system whereby the Chet Atkins has two acoustic chambers within the body which are partly responsible for this guitar's astonishing tone.

Just a classical/electric? Only for country players? Definitely not! The Chet Atkins is widely used with either nylon or steel strings or both and has enough power in that active circuitry to overdrive an amp. A heavy metal guitar? Yes, we've got heavy sounds out of the Chet Atkins (and overdriven a valve amp with one!) yet, at the same time, you can use it to sound more realistic than any other electric/acoustic. The Chet Atkins will handle just about any role. As to how Gibson came up with it, over to Bruce Bolen.

"I had been trying to establish an association with Chet for a long while. As everyone knows, Chet is a very loyal individual and he was with Gretsch for many, many years. After a long time (seven years in fact) Chet called me at home one night and said, 'Well, why don't we get something together?'

"At that time I really didn't know what sort of guitar Chet might have in mind and I started running through what he might want. I thought maybe something like we had made for him previously, a modified ES350.

"When I went to see him I discovered that there was already an existing prototype of the guitar built by a friend of his, Pascal Hale. It was a rather crude-looking instrument because, although Pascal is a very fine luthier when making acoustics and classics, he didn't even want to make this prototype for Chet because it had a bolt-on neck with a solid body and a transducer pickup on it.

"I sat down in Chet's office and he said, 'You ought to play that.' Immediately all kinds of things started to happen that were so diverse from what I thought Chet would be looking for. I'd anticipated steel strings, a couple of humbucking pickups and a relatively thin-line solid body.

"What was running through my mind then wasn't really a classical orientated instrument, what I was envisaging was an instrument that would lend itself to many forms of music. I heard things that I didn't have at my fingertips at the time. I heard flanging, digital delay, all kinds of things that I couldn't try there in his office when I just had the straight guitar through an amplifier.

"That set me back a step. I thought, 'What a unique instrument.' I'd studied classical guitar years and years ago, but I certainly don't consider myself a classical player. I thought, 'Can a steel-string player get into this instrument?'

"Chet and I then began putting some specifications together (they turned out to be nine pages long). Chet had chosen the twelfth fret joint as opposed to the fourteenth and he prefers the long scale, the 25½" scale and the guitar was evolved from those considerations.

"Chet had in mind, obviously, something that would benefit him musically and help him to accomplish what people would expect to hear from Chet Atkins, but it went around other styles and players too.

"The intention was definitely not to design a solid bodied classical instrument suited for classical players.

"It's an instrument that a Strat player or a Les Paul player can get into because it's still a solid bodied guitar. You have to adapt to the neck and spacing because they're wider, but even rock players, who weren't necessarily into other styles, started picking it up.

"Initially it appealed to players who had a fairly advanced right hand finger-style technique, but then it began to spread to other players on account of its tonality."

One of the many unusual things about the Chet Atkins is the ability it has to take mixed nylon and steel strings — something which has come from Chet's own playing, as Bruce went on to explain.

"Chet does this all the time. I couldn't figure it out, when I was a kid, how he got that tonality — and that's exactly what he was doing, using a combination of steel and nylon strings on a classical guitar. He was using that on many of his earlier recordings back in the '50s and '60s — it produces a very unusual timbre.

"Some people, just looking at it, expect this guitar to be an electric classic. Really, it's everything but that."

The Gibson Chet Atkins, we feel, is a guitar for a player to cherish and grow with — a guitar to last you a lifetime. That's why we're giving one away this month as our competition prize. The GIBSON CHET ATKINS is a player's guitar, a musician's guitar and if you'd like to own one, well, just turn to this month's competition page and find out how it could be yours!