Big Jim Sullivan/Jimmy Page's Gibson J-200

In honor of the recently departed 1960s session guitar icon Big Jim Sullivan, today's entry is about the guitar Big Jim lent to his buddy Jimmy Page to record the first two Led Zeppelin albums, a Gibson J-200

This guitar actually didn't belong to Jimmy Page at all, the instrument was a loaner courtesy of his friend and fellow session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan. When it came time to record Led Zeppelin's first album and he needed an acoustic guitar, he asked Big Jim if he could borrow it for a time, to which Big Jim of course agreed. Jimmy was asked about the guitar by Steve Rosen in 1977: "That was a Gibson J-200, which wasn't mine; I borrowed it. It was a beautiful guitar, really great. I've never found a guitar of that quality anywhere since. I could play so easily on it, get a really thick sound; it had heavy gauge strings on it, but it just didn't seem to feel like it."

This particular J-200 was produced in 1963 and was fashioned with a spruce top, with figured maple used for the back and sides. The neck was made out of five laminated pieces of maple, and the fretboard is ebony with crest inlays. All of the hardware is gold plated.

Jimmy used the guitar to record all of the acoustic numbers on "Led Zeppelin I" from "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" to "Black Mountain Side" and "Your Time is Gonna Come". Jimmy later brought it out for a solo appearance on the Julie Felix Show on April 26th, 1970 where he played "White Summer/Black Mountain Side". Shortly thereafter he gave the guitar back to Big Jim and began using a Martin D-28. It has been reported that the guitar has since been stolen and it's whereabouts today are unknown.

Big Jim Sullivan

 Jim Sullivan was very close with Jimmy Page. They worked together quite extensively during their time as session guitarists and would later say of Jimmy,  " We got on well on sessions, sometimes I would play lead and some times Jimmy. I used to do most of the country solos and he the rock ones. We would change over sometimes and I would be the rocker. We also did a lot of folk sessions together. I played a lot of accoustic12 string in those days, I had the first 12 string guitar in the session world and it was used a lot on rhythm. Jimmy was into blues and I was into jazz and country blues. The rhythm section that played on a lot of the 60's group record consisted of Jimmy, myself, John Baldwin or John Paul Jones as he liked to be called, and Bobby Graham on Drums. The amount of recordings we did together was amazing."