| The year 1958 was a pivotal
point in the evolution of the electric guitar for the Gibson company.
Old models were changed and many innovative designs were introduced at
the end of the this decade and the beginning of the next. The avante
garde Flying V and Explorer were shaking off Gibson's reputation as a conservative
and traditional builder of instruments. Coincidentally the very first
V's were shipped on the same day as the first production run of the new
ES-335T models.
Gibson was often just ahead
of the competition in design changes, but they were truly inventing a new
kind of instrument with the introduction of their double cutaway thinline
electrics. The double cutaway design was almost immediately copied
by the Fred Gretsch Company (redesigned Chet Atkins) as well as by Guild
Guitars (Starfire series). The most important design innovation
by far however was the semi-solid construction. The solid block of
wood inside the hollow body gave both the sustain of a solidbody with the
appearance and feel of a hollowbody. Up until 1958, Gibson
guitar necks joined at the 14th fret. This new thinline series with
it's double cutaway had a 19 fret neck joint that gave unprecedented ease
of access to the upper registers.
The new ES-335T was an
instant success and spawned a line of similar instruments with slightly
different features. The first of these was the ES-355 which was essentially
a 335 with the aesthetics of a Les Paul Custom i.e.. multi-ply trim, an
ebony fingerboard with block pearl markers, gold plated hardware
and 5 piece split diamond peghead motif.
The next incarnation of
the thinline introduced by Gibson brought back the concept of a stereo
guitar that Gretsch had experimented with in the late 40's (Project-O-Sonic).
Rather than splitting the treble and bass strings into a stereo image like
Gretsch, Gibson took the simpler solution of splitting the neck pickup
from the bridge pickup with the use of a special "Y" cable into a newly
designed Gibson GA-88S stereo amplifier. The new stereo guitar was
also outfitted with a Vari-Tone circuit which provided 6 preset tones.
The new stereo guitar also sported gold plated hardware and split parallelogram
fingerboard inlays. This new instrument was introduced in the April
1959 issue of the Gazette and dubbed the ES-345 (sold for $345.00 in sunburst
finish).
The rare 1959 ES-345 pictured
above is one of only 50 original issue instruments ever made with a natural
finish (32 made in 1959 and 18 shipped in 1960). By 1960 the Gibson
Vibrola tailpiece was offered as an option, but the earliest versions had
a Bigsby tremolo tailpiece. The first production examples of the
345 were registered on the 11th of February 1959 with serial numbers A29131
through A29134.
| Thanks to A.R. Duchossoir for his invaluable documentation
of Gibson guitars in the book "Gibson, The Classic Years" |
|
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