A Little Knowledge is Dangerous?
This is the 59 in question. It's a beauty all right. The flowerpot inlay is lower than we're all used to seeing on a dot neck but it is correct for the period-just unusual. The shape of the ears is sharper and narrower than the usual "MIckey Mouse" ears of 59-63. This is also correct for the era. Compare it to the one at the bottom of this post.
I also could call this post “Ignorance is Bliss” because sometimes the more you know, the less you like it. Fortunately for one reader, this wasn’t the case. I frequently receive emails from readers who have a 335/345/355 and believe that it is from a particular year. Then they read one of my posts dealing with dating an ES and they get freaked out that their guitar isn’t what they were told it was (or what Grandpa said it was). One reader had bought a very expensive vintage ES 335 dot neck from a well known dealer and became concerned that what he had wasn’t what he was sold. The gentleman had bought one of the ES “Holy Grails”-a 59 dot neck (with double white PAFs, to boot). That is an very expensive guitar and I don’t blame the gentleman for getting a little freaked about its authenticity. It is important to point out that Gibson didn’t make changes on January 1 of a given year. It wasn’t like the cutaways were Mickey Mouse ears on Dec. 31 1963 and pointy on January 1, 1964. Changes could occur at any time and. more often than not, occurred as a slow transition as they used up the “old” part and phased in the new one. The changes that took place between the very first 335’s made in 1958 to the second year entry of 59 were few and sometimes subtle changes. The most obvious occurred very early in the run. That was the addition of the neck binding. There are 58’s without it and 58’s with it. It was completed before 1959 however. The earliest 335’s had a slightly different cutaway shape-not quite the full “Mickey” but slightly shorter and slightly more pointy. This shape seems to creep into 59, although most 59’s are the big, round Mickey Mouse type. The headstock inlay moved at some point as well. The “high” position “flowerpot” inlay is typical of 335’s and 345’s from 1959 to some time in 1966. However, in 1958, the position was slightly lower-not as low as it was in 67 but maybe a few millimeters lower than the 59. Well, it seems that our gentleman purchaser has a 59 serial number but some 58 specs and he was concerned that perhaps he had been taken. When he mentioned the FON (factory order number) began with a “T”, it began to make more sense. Clearly he had one of the earliest 59s (or perhaps one of the last 58’s). I’ll usually go with the later of the possibilities for the simple reason that nothing ever gets back dated-so if a guitar has a 58 FON and a 59 serial, you can bet it was completed in 59. I asked him about the neck angle and he said it wasn’t one of the very shallow early ones where you have to crank the ABR-1 all the way down and even shave it to get the action low enough. The very shallow neck angle is associated with the 58. 59’s are pretty shallow too but not generally as extreme as the 58’s. I also asked him about the plies in the top. Some 58’s have 3 rather than 4 and I know of at least one that has only 2 plies in the plywood top. If the guitar had turned out to be a 58, it really wouldn’t have mattered very much. A 58 with no neck issues would have roughly the same value as a 59. I also noted that if the pickups are double white, the guitar would have had to have been put together in 1959. It is my understanding that double whites didn’t exist until 1959. Small cosmetic changes don’t really have much affect on a collectible ES. If I had a choice between a 66 with a low inlay and a 66 with a high one, I’d take the guitar that played and sounded better. same with a 63 with Mickey Mouse ears or pointy ears. But, if I had my choice between a stop tail 65 and a trapeze 65, I’d take the stop in a heartbeat. Why? Because that isn’t merely cosmetic-it changes the tone and feel of the guitar (not to mention the value).
The Full "Mickey". Note how vertical the inside edge of the ear is.
This is the inlay position you would expect on a '59-'66. 58-59's were sometimes slightly lower and in late '66 they went lower still.
