1977 Greco EG 600 question

[Slowhand]

Hello everybody,

Do you guys know if there are greco eg 600s with ebony board? Found one from '77. Seller says it's rosewood but it almost looks like ebony.

Its a 3 pickup model. What do you guys think?

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

The EG600PB/PR had ebony fretboards in 1980 (Sigmania translation), the EG600P is listed as rosewood in the 1977 and '78 catalogs. The pics are ambiguous due to insufficient resolution. One looks more like rosewood pores, the other more like ebony with a certain luster and there is this brighter streak of course. Hard to tell from pics as per usual.

 

[Slowhand]

Thanks for the response. Yeah it's difficult to tell from the pics I understand. So it might me just a really dark looking rosewood board.

 

[eborej]

I vote for rosewood. My guitars with ebony fretboards do not have any lighter streaks. They are entirely jet black.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Well I was told that everything is possible with Grecos, and lower grade ebony (it's a 60,000JPY guitar after all) can have streaks. Found the guitar by coincidence BTW, looks like December 78 to me and the 1979 catalog still lists rosewood for the fretboard, so probably not.

 

[Slowhand]

Ok, thank you very much!

 

[Vesenboi]

From everything I have read… only eg1000 has ebony board… I also think that ebony boards comes in different quality… some of the lower quality pieces can have a bit of grain. I had a 1988 mint collection 68-60 which was rosewood but was totally black. Looked really cool

 

[Slowhand]

Thanks for sharing. I once had a burny from the early 80ies without serial, it had a super dark rosewood fretboard but also was probably dyed.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Checking the few 1980s examples of the EG600PB (where the catalog claims "ebony") on Reverb, I think the catalog may have an error there or they gave up on that within the same year:
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3:



Unsurprisingly, the 1981 catalog states rosewood for the EG600PB again.

It doesn't look like they were dyeing fretboards though, that's indeed a known Burny (RLC-60) speciality.

 

[Slowhand]

So this means probably the greco 600s never had ebony?

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Maybe, or maybe there were a few, IIRC I've read somewhere that they also used up surplus necks for higher grade guitars on budget models at times (don't quote me on that). You know, Japanese guitars, whenever you try to chisel something into stone about them there come the outliers and make you look stupid.

 

[Slowhand]

Haha good point