The Gibson ES-335

Up until this week, this was the prettiest girl on the block. I swore I’d never sell it but I had a rule that was designed to keep me from having too many guitars. This 59 Sheraton was my favorite until I sold it.

I haven’t been a guitar dealer for very long. I started buying and selling ES model guitars (and some others) as a hobby in the early days of Ebay. That was probably 1998. The first vintage guitar I bought off Ebay wasn’t even a Gibson-it was a 62 Epiphone Crestwood-cost me $550. I sold it a few months later for $1000 and decided that this might be a fun way to supplement my income as a film editor and director. For the next ten years or so, I bought and sold a few guitars every year-no more than 7 or 8 a year and started concentrating on my favorites-the ES thinlines. The problem was, I was accumulating a lot of really nice guitars. Problem, you say? Well, yeah. If you’re trying to make a few bucks, keeping the guitars you love is a bad business model and that’s what I was doing. When I decided to take the guitar dealer thing seriously (and wind down my editing business), I had to make some rules.  Otherwise, I would end up with 100 guitars (and no money). So I made a rule.

Rule number one-and I don’t have a lot of rules-is DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH A GUITAR. That was me saying it very loud. And it applies to every guitar I get. And it’s not easy. There have been no less than a dozen guitars that I would love to have back but rules are rules. The blonde 59 Sheraton, the first red 59 ES-345, the red 59 Bigsby 335, the stop tail 59 355, the blonde 63 335, the 53 J-200 and at least one SG and a 69 gold top that sounded like no other guitar I’ve ever owned. Now there’s another in the house and it breaks my heart to think it’s going to go out the door. But, as I mentioned, rules are rules (keep telling yourself that). What does one do to cope with all the beauties that want to stay forever? Well, there are other vintage dealers who don’t have huge collections, but there are also plenty of dealers who do. I have no keepers. Not a one.

It’s pretty simple. I have loads of guitars in my collection and I play them all. The difference between my collection and most collections is that mine are all for sale. But I can play any guitar I want whenever I want.  I always have a dot neck or two, a 64 and usually a few 345’s if I’m in the stereo mood. And there are Strats and Teles and the occasional Jazzmaster, early Epis, SGs and Les Pauls. So, I can play just about whatever I want just like the guy with the great collection. The difference is that mine keeps changing.

So, what is this guitar that’s messing up rule number one? It’s a 335 that checks off all the boxes for Charlie’s perfect guitar. Big, but no too big, neck. Blonde, of course. Nice figure that doesn’t scream too loudly (no sluts here). Thin top and shallow neck angle (I believe the shallow angle necks sound better). Well balanced PAFs and stop tail. It is simply the prettiest girl on the block…no the prettiest girl in town…no more like a super model you don’t have a prayer of dating. And not just a pretty face-a killer player with spectacular tone. Please don’t buy this guitar.

They don’t get better than this. Stunning, near mint very late 58 335TDN. Birdseye and blister figuring everywhere. All original. This is probably the cleanest, prettiest blonde 335 on the planet and I want to keep it. But I won’t.

This came with my 64 Princeton amp that my Dad bought for me along with a 64 Fender DuoSonic. The amp is gone but the owners manual lives on.

This has nothing to do with 335’s but everything to do with our shared guitar mentality.

When I was 13, I loved to play really loud. The louder the better. My amp back then was a 64 Princeton which, when cranked to 10 was fairly loud-loud enough to drive my father up the wall but not so great trying to cut through the rest of the band. Then I went and visited my friend Lex and he had just gotten a Vox Mark VI guitar and a Deluxe reverb. This was probably 1965. His Deluxe Reverb was loud and it was only on 3. “Can we crank it up to 10?” I asked. “No, I don’t want to blow the speaker and plus my Mom will kill me.”  So, I never heard Lex’s amp turned all the way up but I knew, to the core of my pimply faced adolescent being, that loud was good. Loud was closer to god. Loud was hot and loud was cool.

When I got the Princeton, the instruction manual showed all kinds of amps on the cover and so I knew that they made amps even bigger than the Deluxe Reverb and I couldn’t imagine how much louder an amp could be than Lex’s Deluxe but I sure wanted one. The instruction manual, which I still have, was titled “How to Enjoy Your New Fender Custom-Engineered Amplifier.” On the cover was a Deluxe Reverb, a Pro, a Twin Reverb and a blonde Dual Showman with a blonde reverb unit. There was also what was probably a Bandmaster or a Tremolux, also in blonde. They were all bigger than the Deluxe and, presumably, louder. I wanted the Dual Showman but not in blonde-the black, to a 13 year old was way more cool. And how loud was it? Fender didn’t publish their power ratings back then but it had to be really loud.

I would find out just how loud when I bought a used Showman 15 for $300 in 1967. It had a single JBL D-130F and I could blow the roof off the Scotia-Glenville High School gym with the volume set on “4”. But it went to “10”. In the rare instance when nobody was home (I had 8 brothers, 2 parents and 2 dogs), I would open ‘er up and see just how loud it was. 85 glorious watts of electric wonder audible across Collins Lake and probably all the way to the GE plant across the Mohawk River. If we wanted distortion, we tapped the fuzztone. We didn’t totally get the idea of driving the amp into saturation-probably because they were so powerful, we couldn’t get there without driving our audience out the door(which we often did and not just by being loud)

I owned a fair number of amps over the years but the visceral rush from that Showman, an amp so loud it scared you, never really went away.It was just sleeping, I guess. I’ve had plenty of 50 watters in the house-mostly tweed bassmans and the occasional Marshall but they never awoke the beast. Until this week. A guy walked in wanting to sell his deceased friend’s near mint, factory JBL 1965 Twin Reverb. “People don’t use these anymore,” I told him. “They use little amps and run them through the PA.” But I bought it anyway, it was, after all, nearly a museum piece. It hadn’t been turned on in 30 years, so I pulled out the Variac and brought it slowly up to full voltage. It popped and crackled and hissed but nothing caught fire or smelled, so I thought we were OK.  And there it was. That little voice in the back of your head that says “go ahead…crank it up…let’s see how loud this thing really is.”

And, for a few minutes, I was 13 again. And then the neighbor yelled …”turn that f..ing thing down.” Grownups.

They don’t look loud. They look like a nice, tame 22 watter. Don’t let appearances fool you. A Twin with those ultra efficient JBL’s will hold its own against a Marshall 100 watt full stack.

How do I know that this is a 65 and not a 66,67, 68. Lots of ways leaving zero doubt even without seeing the serial number. Read on.

Apparently I missed that day in class when everybody else learned that if you have a Gibson ES model built between 1965 and 1969 and the serial number on it is used over and over again, the guitar is always from the earliest possible year. If the guidebook shows a number was used in 65, 67 and 69, then the guitar is automatically a 65. It doesn’t matter that it has witch hat knobs (started in late 66) or big f-holes (68) or the more rounded cutaway horns (also 68). Dammit, it’s a 65 ‘cuz it’s this serial number and it says 65 right here in the official blue book. And it’s official-says it right there in the title. Really. That’s what I hear if I try to correct anyone (so I don’t). How about “were you there at the factory to see that no low inlay 335’s left Gibson in 65?”  I’m surprised no one has said “vas you dere, Charlie?” OK, not even I’m old enough to remember radio comedian Jack Pearl’s Baron Munchausen character but you get my point. I wasn’t there but when you see a few hundred 65-68’s and they all show certain characteristics, it becomes pretty easy to tell them apart. I don’t expect every seller to be an expert but I do expect that if you don’t know with any certainty what year the guitar you’re selling was made, then say what it says in the book. It’s either a 65, 66 , 68 or whatever. I know, the value of a 65 is higher but insisting it’s a 65 when perhaps it isn’t makes you dishonest. I’ve had more than a few trade offers and sale offers presented to me as an earlier year and when I tell the seller/trader that his 65 is really a 69 (sorry, where’s the neck tenon?), they always say the same thing…”the guy (or dealer) I bought it from said…”

You really only need to know a few things. Inlay position-high in 65 and most of 66. Low in late 66 and later. Pick guard-wide bevel 65-66. Narrow 67 and later. F-holes-little 65-67. Big 68 and later. Knobs-Reflectors 65-late 66. Witch hats late 66 until 81. Pointy cutaways-late 63 until 67. We could talk about the pickups but if they are sealed, you can’t tell much. OK, let’s talk about them anyway.

The conventional wisdom is that T-tops started showing up in 1965, so everybody (so it seems) with a patent stickers T-top says its a 65. I’ve uncovered about a zillion pickups in 335’s and I’ve never (and I mean never) seen a T-top in a 65. In fact the last few 68’s I’ve gotten that have had open covers have had pre T-tops. I’ve seen t-tops in late 66 and later 335’s but, in general, they don’t become all that common until 68. The general assumption is that if the bobbin screws are slotted, it’s a t-top but that’s pretty accurate, although not 100%. It’s the other side of that theory that causes trouble-the idea that if the screws are Phillips, then it’s a pre t-top. Not true. Plenty of t-tops have Phillips screws. It’s simple, really. Unless you don’t know the year of the guitar the pickup came out of, don’t designate a year. I defy anyone to tell a 68 t-top from a later (stickered) one.

PAF’s aren’t immune from “date creep” either. Every covered PAF seems to have come from a 59. When uncovered, every long magnet PAF seems to have come from a 59. At least the value of  a 60-61 PAF is the same as a 59 to most buyers. Again, unless you know what guitar it came out of, you don’t know for sure what year it is. Off center sticker? Conventional wisdom says short magnet. Not true. I’ve seen them in 59’s.

Tuners? Again, why it that all (or most all) double line Klusons get designated as 64’s? Yes, there are 64 335’s with double lines but they are pretty rare and very late in the year. Same syndrome, I think. A 64 tuner must be worth more than a 65, right? So, it’s a 64. Except it probably isn’t and it doesn’t make any difference in the value. By the way, I’ve never seen double line Klusons on a 64 345. So, don’t list your gold double lines as 64’s any more. Call them 65’s. No one will care and you’ll be more accurate.

OK, end of rant. I feel so much better now.

And this isn’t a 65. Knobs and guard can be changed but the size of the f-holes can’t be. Big f-holes, low inlay, rounded ears says 68. Could be a real early 69 but it can’t be a 65-66 or 67.

No red 335’s shipped in 59 according to Gibson and yet, here’s one right here. Bought this from a guy in Joisy sold it to a guy in Virginia.

Gibson history can be a little sketchy. There’s a lot of speculation, extrapolation and simply filling in the blanks. Their record keeping back in the Golden Era (1957-1964-more or less) was less than stellar and the current administration’s knowledge of what went on back then is sketchy as well. I don’t blame the current owners, certainly. They’ve taken enough heat on other issues (like self tuning guitars, reverse Flying Vees, two piece fingerboards and the fact that they still can’t get the pickup covers right). One of my favorite pastimes (I bore easily) is finding guitars that Gibson never made.

They didn’t make any block neck 335’s in blonde. Except this 63 and a lefty 64. There could be others but they’re still under a bed somewhere and yet to surface.

There are always rumors around the guitar community about guitars that aren’t supposed to exist. The ever elusive stop tail 355’s, red 58-59 dot necks, blonde block necks, blonde 355’s and red 59 345’s. Now that I’ve actually owned one of each of these, perhaps it’s time to look for another favorite pastime. In the early days of the internet, when guitar forums were new and we all wanted to be part of these new communities, most of us gave more than a little consideration to what we were going to call ourselves. The possibilities were endless-ES-335Lover? Mr 335?, Dr 335? Professor 335? I chose Red59Dot which I still use on a few sites. The reason I chose it was because I had heard that red 59 dots exist but I had never seen one and didn’t know anybody else who had seen one and had documented it. So, in 1998 or so, that became my screen name and my holy grail.

I found my red dot neck in 2011-a guy from Jersey called me and asked me to meet him with a bag of cash near the waterfront in Jersey City. Sounds like the opening scene in an HBO mob drama. But I did just that and a 59 red dot neck was mine. I sold it a month later. Before that, in 2010, I saw an ad on Craigslist for a 1960 ES-345 in red. It was way overpriced but was a one owner guitar and wasn’t too far away in Utica NY. Again, a bag of cash was a requirement but Utica isn’t much of a location for a crime drama so I was a little less apprehensive (and it was a little less money). I got there and it was a very pretty 345 and as I inspected it more closely realized it was a 59. Overpriced no more, I paid the man and drove away a happy camper. No, I didn’t drive away in a happy camper. I was a happy camper and I drove away in a Prius.

Here’s the problem. It’s really easy to fall in love with a guitar-whether it’s because it’s rare or a great player or just too pretty for words. And I have a rule. Don’t fall in love with the merchandise. If I kept every guitar I felt a strong attachment to, I’d have 100 guitars and no business. I think the 345 was the hardest to sell. I was just starting out in this second career of mine and was really nervous about having that much money tied up in one guitar. But it looked so cool and played so great and had zebra PAFs and it was the very first red one and I had to keep it. I just had to. But I didn’t. A month later I sold it and flew the guitar, in person, to the buyer in Denver. Spent 20 minutes with him at the airport, collected a big pile of cash (or maybe it was a bank check) and flew back to New York. I hated to see it go but rules is rules.

Why am I telling you all this. because yesterday, I got an email from that buyer asking if I wanted to buy it back. He was “thinning the herd” and wanted to know if I was interested. In what might have been the fasted deal ever made, I will have the guitar in my hands in less than 12 hours. You probably think the end of the story is I keep the guitar and never let it out of my sight again. Nope. Rules is rules and it will be out the door in a week. But I get to play it again. And look at it and almost love it. Almost. You know the rule.

Nope, none of these either. This is the 59 red 345 that’s on its way back to me. Like reconnecting with an old girlfriend that you can’t figure out why you left in the first place (probably because she left you)