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For many this is the Holy Grail of Akkerman's. This is Rik Emmett's original Akkerman as it looks today. It was his main guitar for many years.
It's been heavily modified through the years and obviously refinished. Personally I rather like the natural honey coat he decided to use.
Rik made a lot of hardware changes to this guitar over the years so it's interesting to see the original tuners somehow survived. With all the string changes this guitar must have gone through, those tuners must have had a workout over the years.
This guitar, like Steve's black one on Factoids Page, is most likely a very early model. Possibly one of a handful of production prototypes.
Both guitars have the larger control cutout for the volume and tone controls. Possibly because they were originally planning to have 4 knobs, the body is also thicker and is a solid piece of wood. Not the sandwich style we have seen on most.
Rumor has it that Chet Atkins twiddled this guitar in the shop before Rik purchased it. Some guitars have all the luck.
If you would like to see more of this guitar and other Rik guitars click here.