The Gibson ES-335

When is a PAF not a PAF? When it doesn’t have a sticker. Stickers rarely fall off. In fact I’ve hardly ever seen it over my 20 years in this business. So why am I seeing so many in recent weeks? Yes, the one on the left has slotted screws and it shouldn’t.

I’m seeing something that I really don’t like. I’ve been selling PAF equipped guitars for decades now and I’m seeing a trend that is, at best, annoying and at worst, criminal. I’ve owned about 700 Gibson guitars over the years and at least half of them have had PAFs. That’s somewhere around 700 PAFs, give or take a few since some guitars have only one of them (and some have three). I check every guitar I get very carefully and that includes taking out the pickups and looking at the backs. I look for the sticker, of course, and the tooling marks on the feet and I make sure the bobbin screws are correct and I inspect the solder to make sure the pickups haven’t been opened and if they have, I’ll open them again to make sure they haven’t been rewound or repaired. Out of those 700 or so PAFs I’ve seen, less than 10 of them were missing their sticker. I will note that early patent numbers have often been missing their sticker especially in 64 335’s possibly because they were transitioning from the PAF sticker to the patent number or maybe they just fell off. I suspect the former. In which case, the unstickered pickup in that 62 or 63 that’s being called a PAF by the seller probably isn’t one. PAFs in 64 335’s are not common at all so if someone tells you the pickup without the sticker in a 64 is a PAF, you can be pretty certain that it isn’t.

So, why am I suddenly seeing so many guitars with one PAF and one pickup that is missing its sticker? Did they recently start falling off the pickups in the last year or so? I see 10 PAFs with no sticker in 20 years and, oddly, I can find at least ten of them for sale in the past month or two. Of course, the missing sticker must be a PAF because the other pickup with a sticker is a PAF. The boldface italic denotes sarcasm in case you missed it. This should be considered in light of the fact that plenty of 62 and 63 Gibsons had one of each. I have written more than one post about the “$1000 sticker”. It says, essentially, that a PAF without a sticker is a patent number because they are the same pickup but for the sticker and if the only difference is the sticker and it isn’t there, then it must not be a PAF. You still with me? Good. PAFs have gotten really expensive. So have patent numbers but the differential is still around $1000. So, the unscrupulous seller has, say, a 63 ES-335 with one of each-a PAF and a patent number. Same pickups-different sticker. So, if I scrape off the patent sticker, then I can say that both of them are PAFs, right? After all, if the one with the sticker is a PAF, why wouldn’t the one without the sticker be a PAF as well? That’s the screwy logic behind this annoying trend. It gets worse. A really unscrupulous seller might take the stickered PAF out of a 58-61 and drop in a patent number with no sticker. Then it’s “oh, it must be a PAF because there weren’t any patent number pickups in 61”. I’m seeing this more and more as well.

I’m seeing this phenomenon among individual sellers and “hobby” dealers on Ebay and Reverb. I’m not seeing it among the big dealers so much. And, I will add, that there are PAFs with missing stickers out there but, as I said up top, it is really uncommon. Buyers, in general, aren’t stupid. The guitar buying public knows a lot about vintage guitars and they know what questions to ask. So, if you have removed a patent sticker in the hopes of making a couple of extra bucks on your sale, you are hurting someone down the line and you aren’t helping a business that already fights a bit of a shady reputation. So, if someone tells you the guitar is equipped with PAFs and, oh yeah, the sticker fell off one of them, you can expect the price to reflect that missing sticker to the tune of about $1000. If you’re going to sell me a PAF for $2500 or an early patent for $1500, then the sticker is worth $1000 and if it isn’t there, you don’t get the $1000. And, by the way, I know, it’s a decal and not a sticker.

No sign of a sticker on this pickup. The only time to accept a no sticker pickup as a PAF is if you can show that it has never been out of the guitar and the guitar is a 61 or earlier. And it still should get you a lower price than you would pay if the sticker was there.

Time was when you could pick up a 59 ES-345 for about half what you would pay for the same year 335. Goodbye to that. Early 59’s (“first rack”) like this one are headed toward $30K.

I figured this would happen eventually. They were just too reasonably priced compared to same year 335’s. Lots of us knew it all along and kept buying them and selling them and enjoying them. But now, with apologies to John Gillespie MaGee Jr, the 345 has “slipped the surly bonds of Earth”. They are not the incredible bargain they once were. They have become objects of great desire. They are not cheap. They are still, however, absolutely great guitars.

The very first PAF equipped guitar I ever bought was a Bigsby equipped ES-345 from 1960. At $6000 (with the GA-79 stereo amp), it was the cheapest PAF guitar I could find and was a wonderful instrument. Now, about 600 ES guitars later, I still keep a 345 in my personal stash and probably always will. The rule of thumb for pricing had been, loosely, that a 345 was worth about half of what a comparable year 335 was worth. So, with 59 dot necks ranging from $30,000 to $40,000, you could score a good 59 345 for $15,000-$20,000. A good stop tail 64 ES-335 can still be found for around $20K (although folks are getting greedy and the asking prices have gone off the rails a bit). Good luck finding a stop tail 64 ES-345 for $10,000. You won’t.

Once you get past 64, the dynamics change a bit-345’s after 65 seem to bring prices even closer to the same year 335. But the 50% rule for 345’s from 59 to 69 is over. At least for now. If I could predict where prices will go after this pandemic ends, I could probably retire, not that I want to. So, why would a guitar that is in the middle of the semi hollow lineup cost so much less than the one at the bottom? You can learn all about that from an earlier post you can find here.

So now what? Has the market value simply caught up with reality or is this a 345 bubble? It’s the former. ES-345’s have been a true bargain for a very long time. The stereo circuit and not very popular Varitone has kept the 345 in its place as a second string 335 for years, maybe decades. There has always been a lot of internet chatter about the “tone sucking Varitone” often from folks who have never owned one. I’m not going to get deeply into this issue. I will only say that Varitone capacitors can drift and cause the bypass mode to sound honky. It is, in that case, a tone sucker. But early Varitones (up to 62) don’t tend to drift and I’ve had plenty of them that sound every bit as good as a great 335 with the Varitone. That said, it’s a pretty easy operation to convert a 345 to a 335 circuit. I suggest you do that by putting in a 335 harness and leaving the original stereo harness intact for the next owner.

The days of buying a 59 345 for $15,000 are over. The vaunted “first rack” 59’s are now selling for $25K and up. If you want to learn about just what a first rack 345 is, you can find that here. Later 59’s are generally in the low to middle $20K range and, as always, condition and originality dictates where in that range it falls. Bigsby versions will still be 15% less. Big neck 345’s will always be more expensive than small necked ones and most of the 59’s you see will have the smaller “transitional” neck. That’s part of what makes the first racks more expensive. Early 60’s have the same neck as late 59’s so looking for those will save you a few dollars. They are every bit as good as a 59-they are, in fact, identical. 61’s still have the really slim neck and the short guard but are every bit as good as their 335 counterparts. That goes for 62-68 as well. Sometimes even better. How can that be? Certain changes that occurred in 335’s-particularly changing the pickups to poly wire-didn’t happen as early in 345’s. It is possible to find an early patent as late as 68 in a 345. They were gone from 335’s by 65. PAFs have been found in 345’s as late as 67.

There are a lot of small details about 345’s that can make them even more desirable-red 59’s are crazy rare, “watermelon” 60’s are worth a premium, long guard 61’s grab an extra few bucks and so on. Do your homework before you buy and give the Varitone a try before you yank it out. It can be useful especially to Fender guys who are used to single coils and honky tones. I recently sold my blonde 59 player. It was my main guitar for four years which, for me, is an eternity. I go through guitars like most folks go through socks.

This was my number one guitar for the past four years or so. It was a 59 ES-345 converted to 335 spec and had a few filled holes and a new neck but was a wonderful player. Now I’m playing a project 59 ES-335 but I will buy another 345 for myself when the right one comes along.