Tom Holmes built guitars for Bo Diddley, Lenny Breau, Billy Gibbons, Albert King and many others. For the last twenty years he has become a legend for jewel-like PAF-style humbucking pickups, which he builds in his shop in Joelton, TN.
This is a beauty he made for Nashville guitar store owner and picker Richard Cotten. The shape was Cotten’s design, which he took to Holmes as a cardboard cutout. The guitar was built around 1981 and is quite heavy (11.5 lbs.), as was the fashion of the day. It has a flame maple top on a mahogany body, with mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard. The pickups currently on the guitar are Holmes humbuckers with aged covers. The guitar appears on the cover of the LP Pickin’ Cotten by Lenny Breau and Richard Cotten.