This Bigsby vibrato was mounted on the Butterball Paige guitar (Bigsby number 3, late 1948/early 1949 construction) when I got it, but it was not original to the guitar, put on the instrument around the time of the Bigsby vibrato’s invention in 1952. When I had the Butterball Paige guitar expertly restored by Guy Valic, we went with the original wooden “violin” tailpiece, but I had to keep this very special Bigsby vibrato, and I’ll tell you why…
This is one of the very first batch of Bigsby vibratos, probably the first twenty-five or the first fifty units ever made. Many of you know that Bigsby vibratos were made with “fixed” arms from 1952 to 1956, when the first cast “swingaway” arm (also known as the Duane Eddy arm) debuted. Early fixed-arm Bigsby vibratos are very rare. Between 1952 and 1955, the Bigsby vibrato was an expensive accessory and was not popular with many players. Best guess is there might have been one or two hundred Bigsby vibratos made between 1952 and 1955.
What makes this one even more special, and from the very first batch of Bigsby vibratos made in 1952, is the original casting that says “BIGSBY—PATENT PENDG.”
The first photos showing a Bigsby vibrato on a guitar are from July 1952, when Merle Travis played his new Bigsby-equipped Super 400 guitar at the Riverside Rancho in Los Angeles alongside Joe Maphis, in a series of photographs taken by my old friend Henry Van Wormer (he recalled the date with precision). Paul Bigsby applied for a patent for his new “tailpiece vibrato for stringed instrument” on November 15, 1952, and by March 31, 1953, he received his patent approval.
Between July 1952 and March 1953, Bigsby made a small batch of castings for his vibrato that said “BIGSBY—PATENT PENDG.” But when his patent was approved, Bigsby began grinding out the “PENDG” on his castings. By the time the second batch of Bigsby vibratos were cast in 1953 sometime, Bigsby altered his casting with a stamped (not raised) patent number. There are hundreds of these mid-1950s Bigsby castings done this way. The “BIGSBY” and “PATENT” are raised, cast letters in the casting, the patent number is recessed, made by a modification to the casting with a stamped patent number. Later in the 1950s, when production really ramped up, Bigsby made a new casting that showed the Bigsby patent number all in raised, cast letters and numbers.
So how many of the “PATENT PENDG” vibratos are out there? I’ve seen four or five of them, mostly installed as factory equipment on Bigsby electric guitars made in the 1952–53 era. But boy, they are rare. I’ve also never seen another Bigsby vibrato with this hammertone finish, which appears original. Maybe it was a finish Bigsby was experimenting with, before deciding on the machinist-looking hand-polished aluminum with black paint that became the de facto look for Bigsby vibratos?
Who knows. So much of this is guesswork, since Bigsby died in 1968 and all of his records were trashed. But when you’ve see as many guitars and Bigsby vibratos as I (and a half-dozen of my obsessed friends) have, and you compare notes, you get a pretty accurate idea of an item’s rarity. And these early, fixed-arm “PATENT PENDG” Bigsby vibratos are as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth. I find this stuff fascinating.
