Searchlight Pictures' collaboration with Gibson made the film actually watchable for vintage gear nuts like me
Guitar geeks: have you seen A Complete Unknown yet? If you're holding out for fear of enduring painful hours of glaring inaccuracies (Buddy Holly playing a '70s Telecaster, anyone?), I understand. My own desire to see the film stemmed not only from curiosity about Chalamet’s performance as Bob, but also my innate urge to conduct an amateur-rock-historian fact-checking mission—namely: did they get the gear right?
And you know what? Even with my snob goggles firmly in place, I walked away from the film pretty impressed with both. What’s more, I’m not alone—across my circle of fellow music history and gear sticklers, the film has been winning favorable reviews for the accuracy of both the live performances and the equipment used therein.
It turns out that’s no coincidence. That’s because Searchlight Pictures teamed up with none other than Gibson Guitars to recreate the iconic guitars depicted in the film, including Bob Dylan’s 1947 J-50 and Johnny Cash’s custom SJ-200. In their collaborative role, Gibson “(strove) for pinpoint historical accuracy when it came to instruments, sonics, and recording signal chains.” And for that, we thank them—I think I speak for all of us gearheads when I say that attention to detail can really make or break a musician biopic.
Robi Johns, Sr. Product Development Manager at Gibson Acoustic Guitars, outlines why Gibson’s involvement was so important to the success of the film: “As many Gibson acoustic guitars played a timely role in American music history our supportive mission was to carefully select the Gibson acoustics that Bob Dylan chose to play during his powerful presence in the 1960s. To achieve this with historical accuracy, we also recreated a few of Bob’s acoustic guitars for the timeframe depicted in the movie.”
Furthermore, Executive Music Producer Nick Baxter (kudos to you, sir) elaborates on the specific models chosen for the film: "There were two custom Gibson J-50s built for the movie to match Dylan’s original guitar, a 1947 model […] A little less than halfway through the film, we switched to a Nick Lucas Special, which Gibson provided as well. It’s a very different guitar to the J-50™, a much smaller body, almost parlor-style […] The last Gibson guitar we had was an SJ-200, which we used on a lot of the Johnny Cash songs. Johnny [Boyd Holbrook] gives Bob his guitar at the end of the movie for a final song, and that’s another performance that’s Timmy live on set, really singing and really playing that guitar.”
Okay, drooling… And get this—not only can you see (and hear) these gorgeous guitars on the silver screen in all their glory—you can own them yourself. Gibson has released the full “A Complete Unknown” collection for purchase. Shop the collection here.
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