The
Gibson ES-335 is the world's first commercial
semi-hollowbodyA semi-acoustic guitar or hollow-body electric is a type of electric guitar with both a sound box and one or more electric pickups. This is not the same as an electric acoustic guitar, which is an acoustic guitar with the addition of pickups or other means of amplification, either added by the...
electric guitarAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker. The signal that comes from the guitar is sometimes electronically altered with guitar effects such as...
. Released by the
Gibson Guitar CorporationThe Gibson Guitar Corporation, of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, is a manufacturer of acoustic and electric guitars. Gibson also owns and makes guitars under such brands as Epiphone, Kramer, Valley Arts, Tobias, Steinberger, and Kalamazoo. In addition to guitars, the company makes pianos through its...
as part of its
ES (Electric Spanish)The Gibson ES series of semi-solid or hollow body electric guitar are manufactured by the Gibson Guitar Corporation. The letters ES stand for Electric Spanish, to distinguish them from Hawaiian-style guitars which were played flat on the lap....
Series
in 1958-Events:*January 28 - Little Richard begins attending classes at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama*January 29 - Bo Diddley records "Say Man", a #3 R&B hit when it is released in the Fall of 1959....
, it is neither hollow nor solid; instead, a solid wood block runs through the center of its body, the side "wings" are hollow, and the top sports two
violinThe violin is a bowed string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello....
-style f-holes over the hollow chambers.
Origins
Before 1952 Gibson produced only hollow body guitars, which are prone to feedback when amplified loudly. That year saw the introduction of their first solid body, the
Gibson Les PaulThe Gibson Les Paul is a solid body electric guitar originally developed in the early 1950s. The Les Paul was designed by Ted McCarty in collaboration with popular guitarist Les Paul, whom Gibson enlisted to endorse the new model.- Origins :...
, based on
Les PaulLester William Polsfuss — known as Les Paul — was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible"...
's experiment, "The Log," which was merely a fence post with a neck, hardware, and pickup attached. By 1958 Gibson was making a few solid body models which had much lower feedback and better sustain, but lacked the darker, warmer tone and unamplified volume of hollow bodies. The ES-335 is an attempt to find a middle ground: a warmer tone than a solid body with almost as little feedback. Though semi-hollow bodies like the ES-335 are essentially a compromise of earlier designs, for the same reason they are extremely flexible as evidenced by the ES-335's popularity in a wide range of music, including
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
,
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
, and
rockRock and roll is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States after World War II in the late 1940s, from a combination of the rhythms of the blues, from the African American culture, and from America's country music and gospel music scenes...
.
Models and variations
The 335 was an important landmark in electric instrument technology. Its innovative body design was complemented by a slim, comfortable neck with excellent access to the upper frets. At a basic price of $267.50 it quickly became a best-seller, and has been in continuous production since 1958.
Some models feature a
coil tapA coil tap is a wiring feature found on some electrical transformers, inductors and coil pickups, all of which are sets of wire coils. The coil tap are points in a wire coil where a conductive patch has been exposed .When the coil taps are disconnected, the coil operates as normal...
switch, which allows the humbuckers to produce a "single-coil" sound. The ES-335 Pro, ES 335 td CRS and CRR models were equipped with Gibson "Dirty Fingers" humbuckers, which had a significantly higher output than the standard pickups.
The CS-336 is a scaled down, sleeker body type variant of the ES-335 that has become quite popular. It has a smaller body and is not quite as neck heavy, while maintaining most of the essential features of the ES-335.
Trini Lopez Standard
The
Trini LopezTrini Lopez is a Chicano singer and guitarist.-Career:Lopez made his name on the club circuit of the Southwestern United States before being 'discovered' in 1962 playing at the club PJ's in Hollywood, California, by record producer Don Costa...
Standard, manufactured 1964-1970, was based on the ES-335. It had narrow diamond-shaped soundholes replacing the f-holes, a firebird style headstock with all the tuners on one side, and slashed-diamond inlays reminiscent of the "slash cuts" used by
RickenbackerRickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker ), is an electric guitar manufacturer, notable for putting the world's first electric guitars into general production in 1932...
on its American semi-hollowbody models. Players of the Trini Lopez model include
Noel GallagherNoel Thomas David Gallagher is an English musician, best known as the former principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and occasional vocalist of British rock band Oasis...
and
Dave GrohlDavid Eric Grohl is an American rock musician, singer and songwriter. Grohl began his music career in the 1980s as the drummer for several Washington, D.C., area bands, including the hardcore punk band Scream. In 1990 he became the drummer for grunge group Nirvana...
, circa
In Your HonorIn Your Honor is the fifth studio album by Foo Fighters, released on June 14, 2005 on BMG. It is the band's second best selling album in the U.S. behind 1997's The Colour and the Shape. It consists of two discs...
.
A variant of the Trini Lopez model has recently been reintroduced by Gibson as part of the inspired by series, now called the DG-335, inspired by Dave Grohl.
http://www.gibsoncustom.com/inspiredby/Grohl.html
Also, at Winter NAMM '08/09 a limited run of Trini Lopez reissues were announced with just 250 in cherry red only being made available worldwide. These varied from the original Trini Lopez Standard in that the reissues diamond f-holes are not bound, and the trapeze tailpiece (Stoptail was also offered as an option) does not contain the original ebony block and plaque like on that of the original.
Tom DeLonge Signature
The
Gibson Tom DeLonge Signature ES-333 is the signature guitar of
Tom DeLongeThomas Matthew "Tom" DeLonge, Jr. is an American rock musician. He is the guitarist and one of the two lead vocalists for the pop punk band blink-182 as well as the guitarist and lead vocalist for the alternative rock band Angels & Airwaves...
with a Gibson Dirty Fingers
humbuckerA conventional humbucker is a type of electric guitar pickup, first patented by Seth Lover and the Gibson company, that uses two coils, both generating string signal. Humbuckers have high output since both coils are in series and the magnetic circuit is low loss...
in the bridge pickup position. This is used to create the distorted signature sound of DeLonge's bands
Blink-182Blink-182 is an American punk rock band from Poway, California that predominantly plays pop punk music. The band was formed in 1992 as "Blink" with members Tom DeLonge , Mark Hoppus and Scott Raynor . In 1998, midway through a U.S. tour, drummer Travis Barker replaced Raynor...
and
Angels & AirwavesAngels & Airwaves is an alternative rock band fronted by Blink-182 and Box Car Racer guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge...
.
DeLonge has also been seen with other versions of this guitar. All have black stripes (except for the brown version) and the colors include white, cream, black, and of course his brown with cream stripes.
ES-355
The ES-355TD (Thin Line, Dual Pick-up) was at the top of Gibson's range of thin line semi-acoustic guitars. It was manufactured from 1958 until 1982.
http://www.gibson.com/Files/downloads/bluebook/GibsonElectrics.pdf, fitted with (SV).
The headstock had a split diamond block inlay rather than the smaller inlay on the 335, in addition to a binding. The fingerboard inlay are blocks, inlaid on the first position of the fretboard. Binding was applied to the headstock, the fretboard and both the front and the back of the body.
The ES-355 was available with a Vibrola
tremolo unitA tremolo arm, tremolo bar or whammy bar is a lever attached to the bridge and/or the tailpiece of an electric guitar or archtop guitar to enable the player to quickly vary the tension and sometimes the length of the strings temporarily, changing the pitch to create a vibrato, portamento or pitch...
or a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. It had also been offered with stereo output and
Varitone tone filter circuitry. When fitted with the optional stereo wiring and Varitone, the model was known as the ES-355TD-SV. The stereo wiring provided both stereo and mono connections, with two output jacks on the lower bout. The Varitone circuitry featured a six-position switch that adds capacitors of different value to the circuit. The capacitors act as a
notch filterIn signal processing, a band-stop filter or band-rejection filter is a filter that passes most frequencies unaltered, but attenuates those in a specific range to very low levels. It is the opposite of a band-pass filter. A notch filter is a band-stop filter with a narrow stopband...
, such that each position on the switch shifts the center of the notch from higher to lower frequencies.
The ES-355 was widely used by
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
musician
B. B. KingRiley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter acclaimed for his expressive singing and guitar playing....
, who has been featured in Gibson publicity for the model from the 1960s onwards.
Chuck BerryCharles Edward "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter.Chuck Berry is one of the pioneers of rock and roll music...
used one in the 1960s and 1970's, replacing his earlier Gibson ES-345. Many other guitarists have also used the model.
Lucille
B. B. KingRiley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter acclaimed for his expressive singing and guitar playing....
was one of the first well-known guitarists to make the ES-355 his main guitar, having done so shortly after the model was introduced. His endorsement with Gibson began in 1980. In 1981, Gibson launched the
B. B. King Lucille, a B. B. King signature model based on the ES-345TD-SV.
http://www.gibsoncustom.com/flash/products/signature/lucille/lucille.html It has the optional stereo wiring and Varitone circuitry as standard.
http://www.gibson.com/magazines/amplifier/1999/1/Ax.html It differs from the ES-345 as follows:
- The wood used to make the Lucille's neck is maple instead of mahogany. The maple neck makes for a somewhat brighter attack.
- The "split-diamond" custom headstock inlay on the ES-355 is replaced on the Lucille by the word "Lucille" in script.
- The Lucille has no F-hole
A sound hole is an opening in the upper sounding board of a stringed musical instrument.The sound holes can have different shapes: round in flat-top guitars, f-holes in instruments from the violin or viol families and in arched-top guitars, rosettes in lutes. Mandolins may have round or oval holes....
s on its top.
The Lucille effectively replaced the ES-345, which was discontinued a year after the Lucille was launched. Today the ES-345 is available as a reissue, as is its counterpart the ES-355 (these two are often confused). The difference between the two is however very noticeable. The 345 has a Varitone switch (a parametric equalizer with 5 presets) - an ES-345 was given by Gibson, among other guitars, as a gift to
Jimi HendrixJames Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter...
shortly before his death in 1970.
CS Series
Another recent variation of the original design is the CS-336, a smaller version of the ES-335. The back and sides of this guitar are constructed from a single piece of carved mahogany and the reduced size is closer to that of a
Gibson Les PaulThe Gibson Les Paul is a solid body electric guitar originally developed in the early 1950s. The Les Paul was designed by Ted McCarty in collaboration with popular guitarist Les Paul, whom Gibson enlisted to endorse the new model.- Origins :...
. The Gibson Custom Shop produced a variant of the CS-336, the KS-336, which was a signature model produced in consultation with actor
Kiefer SutherlandKiefer William Fredrick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland is a British-born Canadian actor, best known for his portrayal of Jack Bauer on the Fox thriller drama series 24. He is an Emmy Award- and Golden Globe award-winner...
. Also available is the CS-356, with gold-plated hardware and multiple binding on the body, neck and headstock. These models are highly praised but the high prices led many people to call for a regular production model. These calls were answered in 2007 with the introduction of the ES-339; a guitar the size of a CS-336 but with the laminate construction of the ES-335. The CS Series is one of the highest rated guitars ever made by Gibson, based on customer surveys and other market research.
Other
Other models based on the 335 include the
ES-333The Gibson ES-333 is a semi hollow body electric guitar made by Gibson Guitar Corporation.The ES-333 is quite similar to the Gibson ES-335, but varies from the ES-335 in the following ways:...
(equipped with a 490R/498T pickup combination, rear access panel for electronics, and is sans a pickguard), ES-340 (the toggle switch has settings of pickups in-phase, pickups out-of-phase, and standby), ES-345 (wired for stereo capabilities), the ES-347 (includes a coil tap, block markers on an ebony fretboard, fine tuning tailpiece and, on earlier models, a brass nut), and the EB-2
electric bassThe electric bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a plectrum....
. Although the
ES-330The Gibson ES-330 is a thinline hollowbody electric guitar model produced by the Gibson Guitar Corporation.Though similar in appearance to the popular Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow guitar, the ES-330 was a fairly different guitar in construction and sound...
resembles the 335, it is actually fully hollow (as opposed to semi-hollow) and features two P-90 pickups (as opposed to 2 humbucking pickups).
The Gibson Custom Shop has offered many variations of the ES-335. Recent years have seen period-accurate reissues of both dot and block-inlaid 335's, as well as a limited run of 250 replicas of the guitar
Eric ClaptonEric Patrick Clapton, CBE is an English blues-rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Clapton has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Yardbirds, of Cream, and as a solo performer, being the only person ever to be inducted three times...
used while playing with the band
CreamCream were a 1960s British blues-rock band and supergroup consisting of bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker. Their sound was characterised by a hybrid of blues, hard rock and psychedelic rock...
. These were commissioned by the
Guitar CenterGuitar Center is the largest chain of musical instrument retailers in the world with 214 locations throughout the United States. Its headquarters is in Westlake Village, California....
company after buying the guitar for $847,500 at a charity auction in June 2004. Other signature models include the heavily customized
Alvin LeeAlvin Lee is an English rock guitarist and singer. He began playing guitar at the age of 13, and with Leo Lyons formed the core of the band Ten Years After in 1960...
"Big Red" 335.
Gibson also markets a much less expensive version of the ES-335 under its
EpiphoneThe Epiphone Company is a musical instrument manufacturer founded in 1873 by Anastasios Stathopoulos. Epiphone was bought by Chicago Music Company in 1957 who also had owned Gibson Guitar Corporation. Epiphone was Gibson's main rival in the archtop market...
brand, called the
DotThe Epiphone Dot is an archtop electric guitar manufactured by Epiphone since 1958. It is a copy of the Gibson ES-335. In addition to the standard Dot, other models have been available such as the Dot Studio and Dot Deluxe that feature a variety of hardware and finishes.-Construction and...
(referring to its dot-style
inlayInlay on guitars or similar fretted instruments are decorative materials set into the wooden surface of the instrument using standard inlay techniques. Although inlay can be done on any part of a guitar, it is most commonly found on the fretboard, headstock —typically the manufacturer's logo— and...
). Other Epiphone semi-hollowbody-style models include the
SheratonThe Epiphone Sheraton is a thinline semi-hollow body electric guitar. Though the Sheraton and all its variations were introduced under the ownership of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, Epiphone is the exclusive manufacturer.- History :...
, the
RivieraThe Nick Valensi Riviera P-94 is a mass-produced model of Nick Valensi's signature Epiphone Riviera, which has been customized to include P-94 pickups, instead of the usual humbuckers.-Specifications:...
and the Dot Studio, though some of those are modeled after other guitars in the ES series.
External links