Brand: Gibson
Instrument Categories: Archtop, Electric, Guitars
Here we’re looking at a Gibson L-4CES (CES for Cutaway Electric Spanish) in Natural lacquer finish, dating to January 11 1989 and built at Nashville. This example is in overall very good, clean and original condition with light wear to the back finish and very light fret wear. The gold plating on the pickups shows typical wear to the bass edge, but the bridge, tailpiece and tuner plating has very little wear.
The original Gibson USA branded hard shell case, brown with plush pink lining, is included and has one broken latch (the lock).
The Gibson L-4CES is intended as a serious archtop electric jazz guitar and is physically similar to the ES-175. However, it features a solid, carved Spruce top in place of the 175’s Maple Laminates. At its special-order introduction in 1958 and again in 1969, the sides and back were Maple, but from its reintroduction in 1986 to 1993, Mahogany laminates were used for those elements. The neck is Mahogany with a bound Indian Rosewood fingerboard and Mother of Pearl double-parallelogram position markers. The floating bridge base is Ebony and has small Mother of Pearl inlays at each end.
Hardware for the Gibson L-4CES is gold plated including the Kluson-style tuners with plastic keystone buttons, a wired ABR style bridge on Ebony base, and the classic L-4 tailpiece. The pickguard is bound faux-tortoise. For electronics, a pair of humbucking pickups are installed to the top and lead to Gibson’s standard wiring of individual volume and tone controls, pickup selector and side-mounted output jack. The pickup selector is mounted on a thicker rubber grommet, intended to suppress an audible acoustic ‘thump’ when the switch is operated.
- Model: L-4CES
- Year: 1989
- Finish Natural
- Class: Used
- Serial Number: 80119528, dated to January 11 1989 at Nashville TN
- Country of Origin: USA
- Condition: Very Good
- Date Posted: 24/04/2024
- Consignment Item
- Including original Hard case
- Instrument Weight: 7.216lbs 3.28kg
- Scale Length: 24.6in 625mm
- Nut Width: 1.700in 43.2mm
