I Can’t Afford a “No Issue” 335 Part 1
I’ve gotten more emails about this than any other 335 related subject. While thousands of dollars can be saved on vintage 335s/345s and 355s if you stay away from the mint condition, no issue museum piece examples, if you’re an investor or a serious collector, these are the ones that will always hold their value best. Other than a tanking market, you cannot go wrong with a prime example. They lose less value when the market drops and they gain more value when the market rises. The trouble is you can’t do much with them because they are too valuable. So, let’s say you want an affordable player and you’re OK with a few issues. Which issues do you eliminate and which do you accept? It’s a personal thing, I guess (issues always are, aren’t they?). There are so many different issues that it’s hard to describe all of them, so I’ll generalize a bit. Let’s assume you’re a player who wants to be able to take the guitar to gigs or jams and you want an early 60’s ES 335. If you don’t mind a Bigsby, then that’ll knock 25% off the price. I look for guitars with issues that can be fixed by finding the parts that are missing. Things like tuners being wrong (with extra holes) don’t bother me but they don’t take more than maybe 10% off the value. Wiring and pickups that have been messed with is usually OK with me as long as the correct pickups are back on or the price reflects the fact that they are missing. Easy to fix-buy a set of correct pickups and install them. Wrong bridge, wrong tailpiece, wrong pickguard are all fixable issues that the price should reflect. Do your research as to what these things cost and how available they are and make sure the price you pay reflects this. Now, the big stuff. Refinished guitars. Broken headstocks and neck joins. Extra switches or knobs. I have no general rules other than to look closely at whats been done. In the case of a refin, if it’s a pro job and the guitar is around 50% of it’s original finish value, then I might consider it-especially as a player. The finish, if it’s nitro and not too thick will not change the tone one bit. I would make certain the guitar wasn’t oversanded because it’s incredibly easy to go through the top ply in the wood. If the guitar has extra switches or knobs, I usually stay away. Ditto if it has filled routs from kahler whammys or other pointy headstock era foolishness like coil taps or phase switches. These can’t be easily made to go away. The price for the kind of work required to make these issues disappear is quite high and the guitar will not recover any value for all of your effort. Tomorrow or maybe the day after, I’ll discuss the big stuff-structural, headstock and neck repairs and how they affect the price and desirability of your potential “player” 335.
Extra holes on my ES 345. It now has the correct tuners but the holes are there forever. You know what? I don't care. This issue probably saved me $700-$1000
ES 345. How Many Issues Can you Spot? Would You pay $10,000 for this 59 ES 345 (those are real double white PAFs)
OK, I’ll start. It has the wrong pickguard-should be long style.
Ok here are some guesses (key word: guesses):
No covers for the pups.
The reflector guitar knobs don’t look original.
The black varitone doesn’t look original with the rest of the gold hardware.
Finish seems to have been stripped.
Also, are the inlays supposed to be gold?
Waiting to be corrected… 🙂
No covers is an issue
Knobs are not an issue they are correct
A black or gold Varitone ring are both correct for 59.
The finish (top only) was stripped.
Not sure what you mean about gold inlays
Notice the input jack is in the wrong place and that there are 3 patches
in that area.
Something you couldn’t really see is that I went through the first layer of plywood in the treble horn when I stripped the poorly refinished top. The plies are very thin in the raised areas. I was planning to have the top refinished in the original sunburst but never got around to it.
I did pay $10,000 for this 345 mostly due to the pickups. It was a terrific player and I owned it for nearly 2 years. I sold it in 2008 for a nice profit.