Bennett prototype, something different!

Thanks! Yup....it's a keeper. 

At the time I knew someone who was head of purchasing at a musical instrument company.
She was shown it at a guitar factory she was considering for a subcontract manufacturer.
She was told it wasn't going into production, she thought of me and inquired if it was for sale, was told it wasn't. 
Lo and behold when she was ready to leave after the tour they presented it to her. I paid her to ship it to me.

It's not very heavy, exactly 9 Lbs. I'm unsure of the exact main body wood, some sort of "mahogany" &
the neck wood appears to have been sourced from the same hunk of wood as the grain & look is identical to the body.

The no name case is an exceptionally heavy hardshell perfectly fit to the guitar.

One thing I'm unsure of is what Duncan's those buckers really are. 
They have fairly low output, and only have 1 conductor/shield for wire. 
That may give a clue, a "59" or "Seth" sort of model?  AFAIK they have few buckers with 1 conductor/shield.

Clean they are very mellow, jazzy, laid back sounding, but they take quite well to my vintage Boss OD-1 stomp box
which makes the guitar really sing and sustain. It's super comfortable. I've played it out many times. 

It DID go into production, for several years & with several model line variations, as well as limited edition releases.
Those all came with a larger, but very similar headstock & truss rod cover shape, both with logo.
But all the production Avion's, even top of the line model AV7 were nowhere near as good with the build this has.

They used veneer maple, even foto flame for the "figured" tops, short tenons, cheaper "Duncan Designed" pickups,
cheaper hardware, lesser fingerboard wood, lesser quality frets/fretwork.

Perhaps that's why it wasn't at first to go into production, the cost point was too high as is, likely a revisit whittled costs
down with all the compromises getting it to the price point needed. 

One thing I really like is the small but useful dip of the body shape at the neck opposite the cutaway at the 17th fret.
It really makes the upper frets more accessible and looks kinda cool.

For comparison, Here's the production, top of the Avion line AV7: (I do have one of these, it's ok).

reverb.com/item/5325589-samick-greg-bennett-design-avion-series-av7-electric-guitar-pearl-white

They did try to offer many variations on their basic redo of the classic LP design with their Avion model,
but I think in the end the line's failure was due to the dumbing down of the quality to meet a price point near or below similar Epiphone lines.

That, and not very good marketing killed em IMO.

They might have had more success with the release of something more akin to this proto,
an update of the LP design and a Tokai best LP match if not a killer.

I've played the best of the best from Tokai LP's and they have nothing on this thing.

Too bad.