’65 Epiphone FT 79 Texan

From an unknown classic to a known classic, the Texan is famous for being the guitar on which Paul McCartney composed ‘yesterday’ and still often performs it on to this day.

One of my heroes from my teens was Al Stewart, and he played one for most of his earlier albums (I think he plays a Taylor now), so I always dreamt of finding one but the dealers always seemed to be pricing them just beyond my preparedness to pay them. Then I found this one, and that was it.

The neck on these changed for the worse by becoming much slimmer across the later sixties from a nice wide 42.5mm to a narrow 40mm, and their playability suffers.  This example from ’65 is a 42.1mm transition width so as late as I would want to go, but it’s great and pretty clean too.

It has a matching grey snakeskin-pattern cardboard case with blue felt lining (the Epiphone case colours). When it was born, it couldn’t know about the much later arrival of Elixir coated strings, but this particular guitar seems to like them a lot. Plays great, very resonant.  The stuff you read on the web about the adjustable ceramic bridge sucking the tone of these guitars is, in my experience of this one, bollocks.

3 Responses to ’65 Epiphone FT 79 Texan

  1. Matt Lutton says:

    Is your Texan for sale?

  2. Rockbeare says:

    Sorry, no. Took me years to find a good one and it’s in frequent use. Good luck finding yours, though.

  3. Nethan Paul says:

    This is a great post. I love to play guitar. I have started with an old Gibson guitar of my dad. After repairing the guitar tuner button. I am not able to do the previous tune set-up. I am really glad to about Epiphone guitar. really Loved the Model Shared by you. I am a begginer in Guitar Learning. I hope I will make a bright carrier as a guitarist

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