Tom Holmes built custom hand-made guitars for Bo Diddley, Lenny Breau, Billy Gibbons, Albert King and many others. Even if he started first building guitars, he is today a legend for PAF-style hum-bucking pickups, which he builds in his shop in Joelton, TN. It is agreed that Tom's TH450 PAF repro's are the most authentic anywhere and that they are absolutely the closest thing available to those old 59 Les Paul pickups.
This bass is a another piece of rock 'n' roll history! Not only was it owned, played and "customized" by Bo for over 30 years... it was also custom built and decal-ed "Bo Diddley" on the headstock by it's builder, Tom Holmes! The pots date to late 1976. This guitar has certainly seen a lot of miles... the binding has shrunken and broken and been re-glued numerous times. The decal on the truss rod cover and the "Turbo" plastic logo were Bo's additions too (he did that also with some of his guitars)! This instrument is the 'sister' of the 6-string guitar which is displayed the Hard Rock Cafe.
In the mid 80's a video was made in Memphis with Bo Diddley and some of his band-mates and friends. They all posed and played with the THC guitars in the video. There are two copies of the video. One was owned by Bo Diddley and the other is owned by Tom Holmes which he keeps in a safety deposit box.
Tom Holmes recently issued the video on Youtube; so here is the odd video where Bo Diddley makes the promotion of Tom Holmes guitars and where you can see this bass guitar:
