guitars - The ToneQuest Report

Transcription

INSIDE
A celebration of
Gibson 3-series
Thinline guitars
and the mighty
ES-335
Can your guitar
do that?
The ‘67
sparkling burgundy
335
Who played what?
Legendary
thinline players
The ES-Artist
1997
Historic
‘59 ES-335
JT Ribiloff
on the ‘57 Classic
humbuckers
1982
ES-335 DOT
Stripped down
& worthy…
the ES-333
The vintage
ES-330
Custom Shop
CS-356
The Johnny A
Signature
Lee Ritenour
Signature ES-335
50th Anniversary
Custom Shop
‘58 ES-335
Joe Glaser on
Plek
Holmes
Chasing ‘vintage tone’
The other end of the rainbow…
RS Guitarworks Surfmaster
24
Eastwood Tuxedo & MAP
Guitars Revealed
Mountainview Publishing, LLC
the
The Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone
$10.00 US, July-August 2011/VOL.12 NO.9-10
Report
TM
The Mighty 335
“I came up with the idea of putting a solid block of maple in an acoustic model...
it would get some of the same tone as a regular solidbody, plus the instrument’s
hollow wings would vibrate and we’d get a combination of an electric solidbody
and a hollowbody guitar.” – Ted McCarty
When it comes to Gibson guitars, 1958 marked a year of stunning creative
energy and craftsmanship at the old factory on Parson’s Street in Kalamazoo.
Ted McCarty and the wizened workers at Gibson launched the Flying V,
Explorer and Moderne (?) in 1958, only to discover that their radical vision of the future would not be so easily embraced by dealers with enough
credit to tote the note for such extreme designs. Ah, but the buttoned up
fellows at Gibson weren’t betting their future in the electric guitar business solely on the Flying V and Explorer…
In hindsight, the ‘modernistic’ guitars appear to
have been little more than a frivolous experiment
intended to show Leo Fender and the rest of the
world that Gibson was capable of creating the
most far out, innovative designs while adhering
to their superior standards of craftsmanship
and enduring quality. If the korina Explorer
and Flying V had sold well, more would
have been built, but McCarty was no
romantic patron of art for the sake
of art, and he astutely hedged
his bets with far more important and endearing designs
in 1958…
Of course you are aware
that the first sunburst
Les Pauls were introduced in ‘58 as well,
which seems to have become a much more significant event in the minds of
guitarists today than it may
have been at the time… There
is a perfectly good reason why the
bursts barely lasted three years before
being unceremoniously dumped for the devil-
www.tonequest.com
cover story
horned SG… At $265 plus
case, sunburst Les Pauls
were extremely expensive in 1958 dollars, and
until Eric Clapton fronted
his burst on the Beano
album in 1966, they were
commonly perceived as
simply used guitars that
were somewhat rare, but
worth no more than a few
hundred dollars in the
early ‘60s. This turn of
events was probably no
more discomforting to McCarty and company than the flop of
the Flying V and Explorer, however, because just as Fender
constantly struggled to meet orders for its budget Musicmaster
and Duosonic models, Gibson’s top-selling guitars throughout
the ‘50s remained the cheaper ES-125, ES-125T and ES-225T.
Today we can say with certainty that McCarty and his crew in
Kalamazoo drew a perfect hand with the introduction of the
ES-335T. The ‘58 335 was an instant hit with the same Gibson
dealers who had run from the Flying V and Explorer, for as
innovative as the 335 was in construction and tone, the unique
double cutaway design, arched back and top, and flowing
feminine curves appealed to a wide variety of players who
found the ES-335 irresistible at first sight. As the Gibson ad
correctly claimed, “the thin-body guitars feel just right.”
In this edition of the Quest we celebrate the ES-335 and
the 3-series thinline models in all their variations past and
present – but most importantly the more recent past, since it
would be pointless to wank on endlessly about the old ones
for too long. If you possess the motivation and the cash to
buy a vintage ES-330, 335, 345 or 355, you don’t need us to
validate your desires, and if you do, well, just remember that
every guitar is unique, which is to say that if were spending
that kind of money, we’d need to buy a ticket to ride and play
it first. Throwing the dice on a more recent model with a 48
hour approval period or picking one off the wall in a store is
an entirely different proposition. Either way, we invite you to
boldly Quest forth in semi-hollow style and Enjoy…
Strange Days – 1967
There are no ‘experts’ speaking here – the word itself smells
too much of self-promotion and the insecure need to be acknowledged, and we don’t. Most of the true ‘experts’ we know
(and we know a few) would recoil at being called an expert
anything, and the people who present themselves as such often
impress us as charlatans whose mothers weaned them from the
tit too soon. But we will gladly admit to having acquired more
than a little experience
playing a 1967 ES-335 in
venues ranging from an
outdoor stage in front of
10,000 hippies-in-training
at a Guess Who concert
to sweaty frat parties in
Bloomington, Indiana that
provided an accurate template for the ultimate frat
flick, Animal House. We
acquired our ‘67 sparkling
burgundy 335 as a result
of an unfortunate accident
after leaving our first electric – a National Glenwood, sitting
in a stand in the basement practice room of the drummer’s
house, where he accidentally knocked it over, breaking the
neck. Since the band was in a fairly lucrative position for 15
year-olds with a real booking agent, union cards and gigs,
they bought yours truly a new ES-335 provided by a guitar
teacher who had traveled to Kalamazoo and picked out a few
guitars to sell back in Indiana. The sparkling burgundy 335
was a big, red, luscious lollipop, sold as a factory second due
to a trivial little paint flaw the size of an eraser head on the
back. It was a monumental step up from the woofy Glenwood
paired with the ‘66 Deluxe Reverb that Mom had bought
on time with the National in ‘65. Technically a ‘Norlin’ 335
with a trapeze tailpiece and nylon saddles, did anyone really
care that Gibson was now owned by an Ecuadorian brewing
conglomerate? Nope. Gibson was inlaid on the headstock,
the orange label inside said Gibson, and a Gibson it was.
In the orbit of garage bands and the older guys who could
afford matching suits and boots, Gibson was king in ‘67,
while Fender guitars were the exclusive domain of black R&B
bands (white Strats and Jazzmasters) and redneck Telecaster
players on the southside who sprinkled salt in their beer and
worked a day gig at the Allison plant. Yeah, Hendrix came out
of nowhere in ‘67 dry humping a Strat, but no one yet had
the nerve to consider playing “Purple Haze” covers. Fender
guitars simply weren’t that cool in the mid ‘60s, and the 335
was, which must have made Ted McCarty mighty proud.
As the
gigs increased
with
more
frat
parties
every
weekend, high school dances and outdoor ‘festivals’ in municipal parks, the rig expanded to include an Arbiter Fuzz Face
replacing the Maestro Fuzz, a Cry Baby Wah, and a bizarre
modification to the Deluxe… The bass player’s older brother
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.12 N.9-10 July-August 2011
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had been an electrician
in the Navy, lived in
the Haight for a while
after discharge and
returned to Indianapolis, where he worked in
a machine shop. Drove
a primer-gray MG he
called “Smack” and
had the longest hair
of anyone we had ever
seen in town until Alice Cooper’s band blew
in from Detroit. In his
role as part-time roadie
and full-time ballbuster, he suggested we cut the cabinet of the
Deluxe down to a head and build a couple of 4x12 cabinets
loaded with JBLs. Cool! And it was. We could easily hang in
the frat houses with enough punch to keep things movin’ and
groovin’ with a single 4x12 while keeping up with the 100W
Bogen PA and Hammond B3 outdoors with two cabinets
because we were moving more air.
The 335 became the seminal wellspring of teenage life, always
carried to motel rooms, never out of sight, played unplugged
for hours in the back of the van, carried on a Trailways Silver
Eagle 3,800 miles to California and back where we first saw
Canned Heat and Deep Purple slack jawed, habitually picked
up whenever there was time to spare – an essential ruby red
appendage that defined everything that was remotely important in life when nothing else really was.
Musically, the 335 could cover anything – from running
fuzz bass lines just above The Bishop’s EB3 on “Dance to
the Music” and all the Family Stone dance grooves, Steve
Miller’s early trippy stuff, to soaring Santana riffs supported
by infinite fuzz sustain, heavy Cream, the Airplane, the crisp,
growling rhythms on the Rascals’ hits, the Animals, Hendrix’
“Let the Good Times Roll”, and whatever was called for to
properly ape the haunting guitar tracks on Beggar’s Banquet.
The 335 was also featured in a stand front and center during
the requisite strobe lit drum solo in the middle of “Innagoda-
davida”, the jittery kinescope flashing off the metallic top and
chrome hardware like a totem in a ritual pagan dance. And
for a few hours at least, girls and boys who would become
mothers, fathers, and otherwise consumed with earning an
adult living and raising families of their own soon enough
were free to revel in the primal instincts that higher education
was intended to suppress, hearts pounding to a primitive beat
drenched in sweat, sloe gin Fanta punch, and the intoxicating
anticipation of the teasing, tentative, urgent sexual foreplay
that would inevitably come at the end of the night. Was the
‘67 335 a ‘great guitar’? By today’s self-conscious standards
who can say? We weren’t nitpicking over nuanced details or
questing after a set of PAFs to replace the T-Tops in 1969,
and perhaps we should be reminded that the true gravity of
an instrument’s worth is best determined by the music made
with it. If you can agree with that, then yes, the life experiences and music created with the ‘67 were priceless – easily
responsible for having launched a thousand deep kisses. Can
your guitar do that?
Thinline Players
Guitars have
always been best
promoted by the
players that play
them, and the artists that embraced
ES thinline-style
guitars provide a
fascinating study
in contrasts…
“If Chuck Berry had been a white man, he would have been
the King of Rock & Roll.” – Cesar Diaz
Chuck Berry didn’t start out playing an ES-355 because
it hadn’t been built yet, but it became his axe of luv soon
enough, and he undoubtedly sold a lot of guitars for Gibson
throughout the ‘60s. One can only imagine the conversation
that ensued when Keith Richards and Chuck first met…
“Ahhh, Chuck, what a thrill to meet you, man! I mean,
uh, heh, heh… I owe you so much… I don’t think I’d have
picked up the guitar at all if not for you! I’m so excited
I could piss meself, heh, heh.” “Mmm, well thank you,
Keith. Why don’t you stand over here then, just in case.
Yes… I’d say you and your skinny little English friends
do indeed owe me a lot. Without the stuff you, ah… borrowed from me, there wouldn’t be much left. Well, have a
good show now, and try not to get too high on the thrill of
meeting me. I have my heroes, too. Try listening to Louis
Jordan. I need to go find the promoter now, because until he
puts that money in my hand, there will be no Chuck playing
with the band. I don’t play encores, either. Encores cost
extra. Chuck doesn’t play for free.
Yes, Chuck Berry was the king bee by all counts – the most
influential and creative singer, songwriter, guitar player and
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entertainer in rock & roll, and certainly one of the most potent
endorsers of Gibson thinlines.
Another giant (in actual fact) was
Freddie King, who started out
playing a goldtop, but also felt
the tug of the ES-345 and ES355 throughout the ‘60s, when he
routinely knocked out 300 shows
a year with his Gibsons, and in
later years, a mind-numbing
Fender Quad Reverb ‘combo.’
Freddie’s tone was always huge
and searing, and like Chuck
Berry, BB and Albert King, he
possessed a big man’s ability
to wrench huge notes from the thinlines, which sustained for
days when you wanted them to.
And of course there was BB…
Pictures of him exist playing a
Fender Esquire in the ‘50s, as
well as an ES330 and ES-355
before Gibson designed his signature Lucille minus the f-holes.
As far as BB King is concerned,
we’ll backtrack a little and admit
that there is definitely some
signature tone in those big hands,
unmistakable from the first
note, played more often than not
through a Gibson Lab 5 Series ‘Norlin era’ 2x12 amplifier.
You can still find ‘em… cheap.
While we’re into the blues,
the mighty Otis Rush cannot
be overlooked. Otis played a
Stratocaster during his early
years in Chicago, switched
to an Epiphone Riviera for a
while, and then permanently
adopted Gibson Thinlines with
a stop tailpiece and the Varitone
circuit for the remainder of his career. Otis could play and sing
the shit out of the blues, and he did so the longest with the
Gibson Thinline.
And there is the other Otis…
the unheralded and equally unforgettable Shuggie Otis, son
of Johnny, dedicated ES-335
player and one of the greatest
guitar players and songwriters to have ever lurked (and
he didn’t care) beneath the radar of the masses. At the age of
15 Shuggie guested on guitar for Al Kooper’s second Super
Session album in 1969, and his debut solo album featuring
an all-star lineup of veteran L.A. sidemen titled Here Comes
Shuggie Otis followed the same year. He was invited to replace Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones and declined. Didn’t
like crowds… His scant commercial success was limited to
the classic “Strawberry Letter Number 23”, but if you want
to hear exceptional blues guitar played on a 335 like no
other, log on to Youtube and pull up “Slow Goonbash Blues”,
“Purple”, and Shuggies’ Boogie.” While you’re there, don’t
miss “Me and My Woman” and “Sweet Thang.” Shuggie Otis
not only did the 335 proud – he was one of the most visionary
and influential artists of the late ‘60s and ‘early ‘70s. Not to
be missed, all of his recordings are essential.
While the Epiphone Casino doesn’t
technically qualify as
a Gibson, it’s pretty
much a 330 Thinline
in all other respects,
so let’s also give a
nod to John Lennon
and Paul McCartney
for both playing Casinos on later Beatles records and Lennon
during the Beatles’ last roof top performance above Apple
Records in London.
Now what about Eric? His ‘64 ES335 was most prominently featured
during the ‘Farewell Cream’ shows
in America and London, and it can
be heard on “Badge”, and “Hard
Times” from the 1989 Journeyman
album, but for a full 51 minute dose
of Clapton brilliantly playing his
335, log on to youtube and cue up
“Cream Farewell Concert 1968.”
Nothing more need be said about
the unique tone of a 335 rammed
through a Marshall after you’ve experienced that. The ‘64 was
eventually sold to Guitar Center at the first Christie’s Crossroads auction for $847,500. It was also meticulously analyzed
and measured by the Gibson Custom Shop prior to building
250 limited edition replica
‘Crossroads’ 335s in 2005.
Prior to Woodstock, who
knew about Alvin Lee? British rock fans, certainly, but
Lee’s inspired performance of
“I’m Goin’ Home” at Woodstock elevated him to legend-continued-
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ary status in the U.S overnight. Despite all of the guitar deities
that had already emerged from England, few played with the
intensity and speed of Alvin Lee wielding a ‘59 cherry red 335
covered in peace and love stickers. In so many ways, the ‘60s
just rocked, and Alvin Lee was among the best. “Bluest Blues”
is also a classic example of a 335 played through a Marshall.
Elvin Bishop must also be acknowledged as a fine purveyor
of southern fried funk with his
335s. He played two ‘59 Stereo
ES345s – “Brown Dog” and
“Red Dog.” Dog!
Frank Zappa also played a
couple of thinlines in the late
‘70s and early ‘80s, and if you
ever saw Frank live, you know
he was no slouch on guitar. Nor
was John McLaughlin, who played an ES-345 with a scalloped
fingerboard inspired by his love affair with the Indian vina.
also see Warren Haynes playing various Historic 335s.
We shot this picture of Peter
Stroud playing his ‘60s Trini
Lopez 335 during a Don Henley sound check at the Fox
Theater in Atlanta…
The late Atlanta blues prodigy
Sean Costello also played a
couple of different ES-335s
before he finally managed to
buy his vintage ‘56 goldtop. To be honest, we liked his tone
best with a 335. And among today’s contemporary guitar heroes, the North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther Dickinson seems
to enjoy playing just about anything with frets, but you’ll
often see him playing a 335, as he did recently opening for
Robert Plant and the Band of Joy.
Let’s not forget the incomparable Grant Green and his
ES330…
Keith plays a wicked black Custom…
While he has
never been
known as a particularly burning
soloist, Justin
Hayward of the
Moody Blues
has exclusively
played his ‘59 335 throughout his career quite successfully,
thank you very much, and as the entire Moody Blues catalog
reveals, he is an excellent guitar player who possesses a
brilliant ear for composing melodic hooks that support those
Moody melodies.
Of course Robben Ford also played a vintage 335 early in
his career, as did west coast blues legend Hollywood Fats…
Speaking of Robben Ford, let’s not forget “Mr. 335” Larry
Carlton, and Lee Ritenour (we’ll get to his excellent signature
335 in a minute…)
When asked what his
favorite guitar was
of all time, Warren
Haynes said, “Well,
I think my ‘61 335
would be my favorite
over all, even though
I don’t perform with
it, except when I’m in
New York.” You may
And finally, we must mention the late Stephen Bruton,
who passed away in 2010.
Thanks to James Pennebaker
and Danny Flowers we knew
Stephen, and he was not only
a brilliant musician, but an
extraordinarily thoughtful
human being. Listen…
Growin’ up in Ft.
Worth, when you’re
playin’ joints down
there you’re expected
to be able to play
Hank Williams and
country music, western swing, straight
Stephen & Anson Funderburgh
ahead blues, Jimmy
Reed… You were expected to play lots of different styles and
have a pretty good grasp of your instrument. As far as gear
goes, I always dug Gibsons, ‘cause if you had a Gibson, you
had arrived. And as far as amps, there was always nothing but Fender amps. A great guitar player and friend of
mine named Mike O’Neill swapped me a Gibson SG with a
Telecaster pickup and a humbucker in it, but that didn’t suit
me ‘cause the neck moved around too much. Then you start
goin’ through all the instruments. I played a Telecaster for a
long time until it got stolen, then I did the whole thing where
I played everything from Alembics to archtops and 345’s,
Les Pauls... I was making money and trying lots of different
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things. I always played Fender
amps… I’ll tell you the truth,
man – I bought a lot of Fender
amps because they had wheels
on them. I have a bad back,
and when someone would ask
me to try a Marshall stack I’d
say, “What? Are you kidding?”
I like Vibrolux Reverbs. I just
think they are the most efficient
Fender amp, because you can
get a really good clean tone
and a great overdriven sound, and you can play it in clubs and
in sessions. I’ve played a lot of Twins because they’re powerful
and everything, but they have a real generic, one-dimensional
sound for my taste. But that’s cool, too. Then pedals came
along, and the first time I heard a phase shifter I thought that
was it. But eventually you wean yourself off of all that stuff.
You get a few assorted pedals that work for you over the years.
TQR:
Did you ever settle on one guitar?
I wound up getting another Telecaster, which I played for a
long time, but when I started playing with Bonnie, she wanted
me to play a Stratocaster. I really like Strats, but I’m not all
that comfortable with them. Because Fenders have such a
super high and wide sonic spectrum, they just seemed a little
thin, and it was kind of hurtin’ my ears. I always dug that
humbucker sound, and I have an old 335 that I really like, and
I got into PRS guitars in the late ‘80s. It’s all about what your
personal preference is. I had a 345 that, for me, was completely unusable, but it was exactly what they guy I traded with
wanted, and his 335 was perfect for me. We both got what we
wanted. I judge electric guitars sometimes by whether I can
feel the notes resonating in my left hand. When that happens,
you know that it’s transferring down the neck and not being
stopped somewhere.
Black Juju
Somewhere along the line inbetween college, working on the
ditch crew for the Indianapolis Water Company and realizing
that nothing much was ever going to happen musically in the
Hoosier state, we traded the 335 for a new ‘72 Les Paul Black
Beauty and moved to Atlanta. Was that a great guitar? In hindsight, no. The frets were ‘fretless wonders’ but we thought we
needed a Les Paul, and before long we were paying our dues
with it three sets a night, five nights a week in Underground
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Atlanta in the house band at Sargent Peppers. Aside from popping the gold pickup covers off, we played that guitar for years
alternately through an Ampeg V4 rig, blackface Pro Reverb
and a silverface Twin Reverb running up and down the club
circuit in the southeast. Never thought of weighing it, but the
‘improved’ pancake body wasn’t a featherweight by any means,
not that we would have noticed or cared. One night in Virginia
Beach at the Jolly Roger, one of the nastiest, stinking shitholes
you can imagine, the Black Beauty popped out of the strap, hit
the wooden stage and bounced to a concrete floor three feet
below with nothing but a hairline superficial crack along the
binding at the nut to show for it. Tough guitar. Our fearless
leader, guitarist John Avera, was fond of writing songs in open
C tuning, which he would play on his vintage cherry red 355
with Bigsby. The sound of that guitar C-tuned always made the
Les Paul sound timid and weak by comparison, and when John
would rake a big mongrel minor chord out of C tuning and lean
into the Bigsby pushing the wound strings ever lower, the entire
room seemed to drop into Middle Earth, leaving an eternal echo
reverberating in your head, and we can still hear it to this day.
Open C (CGCGCE…) Mine it.
‘80s ES-Artist
Our next adventure with a
Gibson ES model occurred in
the early ‘80s when, during a
moment of weakness buoyed
with trade bait, cash and a
Miami cocaine connection
we were gob smacked by a
new ES Artist sunburst hanging on the wall at Rhythm
City in Atlanta. Beautifully,
tastefully flamey with a gorgeous ‘fireburst’ finish, semihollow with no f-holes, TP6
tailpiece, ebony fingerboard, 5-piece maple neck, humbucking
pickups and the now infamous Moog active electronics, the
Artist’s striking beauty effectively disguised the failed science
experiment lurking within. Rather than sounding like a big,
juicy Gibson, the Artist more closely rendered the searing
tone of the ‘72 Fender Thinline Tele we played during the
‘New Wave’ era when the Kinks’ Ray Davies actually made
the cover of Time magazine. The Artist was an emotionally
charged error in judgment that provided a valuable lesson we
would never forget… There are no mistakes. Here’s what Tim
Shaw had to say about the ES-Artist…
“Steve Howe used to say that you were a flick of a switch
away from complete and utter disaster. That was a really
dangerous guitar, man. If you hit the compression switch with
the volume turned down, you were done. You couldn’t upgrade
anything on that guitar, like the pickups, and we worked with
the Moog people on that circuit. The compressor design was
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an early digital circuit that they were feeding into an analog
configuration, and the signal wasn’t very happy about it. It
was a fad that pretty well died, with the exception of some of
the active electronics for bass.”
‘65 Sparkling Burgundy ES-335
Fast way forward to 1999, and just prior to launching TQR
we made our first ‘vintage’ gear purchases since the early
‘80s – a 1966 Vibrolux Reverb with original Jensen 10s, and a
‘65 Bigsby-equipped sparkling burgundy ES-335. As a point
of reference, we paid $1200 for the amp and $3,000 for the
Gibson. In hindsight, we can refer to the ‘90s as the age of
sanity on a host of different levels. Well, the amp was truly
bitchin’ as you can imagine, and it was our review posted on
Harmony Central that led to the creation of the ToneQuest Report. Within a few days of having written up the Vibrolux, we
began to receive e-mails from
players in the U.S., Europe and
Australia asking more questions
about the amp. We were shocked
by the response, but having just
left the real world after 13 years
in publishing, it seemed that we
were being given a clue to a new
career choice. The wisdom of
launching a publication dedicated to the guitar without the
benefit of advertising revenue
remains debatable, but since our
background was in subscribersupported subscription publications and we lacked the funds to
launch a real ad-based magazine
anyway, we did what we could
given our experience and the
funds available.
The sparkling burgundy 335 represented an obvious attempt
to revisit the past, and it did not disappoint. We will always
remember meeting James Pennebaker for the first time in
Atlanta when he was backing up Lee Roy Parnell with his
Gretsch Country Gentleman and Vox AC30. We brought the
335 with us and James played it on stage, uncorking some
wicked Freddie King riffs that filled us with a surge of envy
and admiration that remain to this day. James is one of the
most talented, versatile and tasteful guitarists we have ever
heard. When he was finished playing the 335 he simply said,
“Why can’t they make pickups that sound like this anymore?”
providing us with still another incentive to do what we do
in these pages. We held on to the 335 for quite a while and
enjoyed it immensely before finally turning it loose, reasoning
that we really didn’t need to have that much money under the
bed when we were obligated to replenish our gear stash with
new and interesting pieces for TQR.
‘97 Blonde Historic ES-335
Our first meaningful experience with a Custom Shop ES335 occurred in 2004 at Midtown Music, where a ‘97 blonde
Historic ‘59 335 was hanging on the wall sporting a sobering
price tag of $3250. You know
how this goes… You stand
there staring at it. Looking the
guitar up and down hanging on the wall, you flip the
hang tag over and stare at the
price thinking, “Can’t do it,
shouldn’t do it, don’t really
need to do it,” and then you
ignore the voice of reason,
gingerly lift the guitar off
the hook and wander off to
find a stool where you can be
seduced in privacy. Of course, unless the store has one of those
isolated audition rooms like Guitar Center, there is no privacy,
and the longer you sit there petting that new puppy, more customers amble by, stop, look at the guitar and mumble, “Man,
that’s nice.” Just what you need to hear. Well, we figured out
some kind of way to buy the Historic ‘59 through a combination of a trade and cash now forgotten, brought it home and told
our readers all about it. We also mentioned it to Greg Martin of
the Kentucky Headhunters, who owns a vintage ‘59 335…
TQR:
We have a Historic blonde dot neck 335 that just has a vibe, and so far we’ve left the original Gibson Classic ‘57 pickups in it. They sound great.
They’re not bad at all. If you watch the video for Cream’s
farewell concert, I think that may have been some of the best
tone Clapton ever had.
TQR:
You mentioned that you also used your ‘59 335 in the studio recently. A 335 through a Marshall is an under-appreciated joy…
It’s pretty cool… I really do
like the 335. You can’t quite get
into the Billy Gibbons territory
– almost, but it has a little more
high end than the Les Paul.
For some odd reason, my 335
captures the Michael Bloomfield “Super Sessions” vibe,
and Mike played a Les Paul
and Twin Reverb combination.
My old 335 seems to cut more,
and it sits well in the mix.
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cover story
The truth is, we didn’t trust anyone we knew at the time in
Atlanta to pull the harness out of that Historic 335, and we
weren’t mentally prepared to tackle it yet ourselves, so the ‘57
Classics remained, and yes, while the rhythm pickup lacked
the level of treble presence and snap that we prefer, as modern
humbuckers go, the bridge pickup was rich with a soulful
treble quality that we find quite pleasing. JT Ribiloff was a
key member of Gibson’s R&D team when the ‘57 Classic was
developed in cooperation with Tom Holmes, and we’ve revisited our conversations with them for reasons that will become
vividly clear soon enough. If you really want to understand
what was happening with vintage PAF and early patent number pickups, these two have done the heavy lifting…
JT Ribiloff
“By the time I was 21 I had owned over 400 guitars. I’ve
been a guitar freak since I was 14 years old, I’m 44 now, and
I’m sure I’ve had over a 1,000 guitars. I grew up in southern California, so we had access to a lot of guitars and I’ve
owned lots of vintage Les Pauls, SG’s, Specials and ES175’s.
When we started to develop the ‘57 Classic, I had quite a few
vintage pickups at my fingertips, and George Gruhn was very
generous in that he would let us go in and pull guitars and
hold on to them overnight so that we could find those that
really had the ultimate tone. There were significant inconsistencies among all of those old instruments, because you have
to remember that these factories existed primarily to make
money, and the way to make money was to keep material and
labor costs low and build as efficiently as possible. They were
trying to use whatever was commercially available, but in
the music industry, the quantities of usage are very, very low
compared to the automobile industry, for example, and that’s
where the inconsistencies in materials came in. The rod stock
for the pole pieces in the PAF’s was basically low-carbon steel,
and I had different pole pieces analyzed to find out what types
of carbon compound and grade of steel they used, because
that’s a big part of getting that authentic sound. They used
plain enamel 42 gauge wire, and the very first PAF’s basically
used the same magnets that were being used for the P90’s at
the time. The magnets didn’t really change dimensionally until
around 1961, but the magnet material in the early PAF’s did
vary between Alnico II and Alnico IV.
The ‘57
Classic
was specifically
aimed at
making a
“middle
of the
road”
version
of the PAF pickup that would sound equally great played
through a Fender reverb amp or a Marshall 100W Super
Lead. The final testing came down to just playing the pickup
through a variety of guitar bodies and amps. And it’s not just
about how the pickup sounds, but also how it feels… At the
same time the Classics were being developed, we were also
trying to develop the Historic Les Paul, so we were listening
to a lot of different vintage guitars. There were some vintage
pickups that didn’t sound good at all, and it wasn’t so much
due to the way they were originally made, but the way they
had aged. Enamel wire becomes brittle with time, and as
it gets brittle, you can get little breaks in it, and the pickup
actually stops working on inductance and starts working on
capacitance. Some pickups with these breaks can become
warmer sounding, and others become really bright.
The final testing of the Classic took place in multiples of different guitars because what I wanted was a good, rudimentary
pickup that worked equally well in a broad range of instruments, and I’m sure that was the goal they had in mind when
the original PAFs were designed. Any time I tried to duplicate
the extremes that we heard in vintage pickups, one style
of playing always seemed to suffer. A pickup that sounded
particularly great through a Marshall amp for really aggressive kinds of rock music would sound way too dark through
a Fender. Then, if you made the pickup sound super sweet, it
would sound like a buzz saw ripping through your skull played
through a really bright Marshall. Gibson had just started potting pickups prior to the time we were working on the Classic,
and they had never wax-potted pickups prior to 1988-89. Fortunately, at the time we were working on the Classics we were
also going through a complete re-tooling, so all of the usual
restraints and resistance to change had been removed.
There is so little to these things that what little there is does
a lot. That’s my rule of thumb with pickups. If you change
the type of steel you use for pole screws, you change the
sound. Change the spacing of the pole pieces, or pot values,
and you change the sound… What we tried to really do with
the ‘57 Classic was to make them as close to the originals
in terms of the material specifications as was physically
possible. The actual grade of steel was specified from the
original pickups, the #22 shielded wire was the same… The
Classics are potted, even though the originals never were, but
I haven’t noticed anything detrimental from potting, unless
of course you were trying to create a counterfeit PAF. It was
Tom Holmes and an engineer at Gibson named Ray Atwood
who really helped me with the development and documentation for the ‘57 Classic. I’m proud of the fact that when I
left Gibson, I also left them with complete documentation
on every aspect of the pickup. In fact, one of the stipulations
made when we developed the Classic was that there were to
be absolutely no deviations in the production of that pickup.
I hope that is still true today.”
-continued-
8
cover story
Our experience
with the ‘97 Historic ‘59 ES-335
was instructive.
The stop tailpiece
produced a far
more robust and
penetrating attack
and deeper, stronger sustain and
‘63 Historic resonance than the
late ‘60s models equipped with the trapeze tailpiece that had
been used on the ES-330, and we began to remember why we
had ultimately let our ‘67 go. Tastes change. We eventually
sold the ‘97 Historic once again to acquire more gear for review in these pages, but it wasn’t long before we stumbled on
another thinline that was too affordable to pass up. Nashville
Historic 335s are rarely seen for sale today, and when you do
find one, they are very expensive – no less than $3800, and
usually more, since there seems to be a perception that guitars
built in the Nashville Custom Shop are ‘better’ than those built
in the Memphis Custom Shop. We’ll address that, too…
1982 ES-335 DOT
In 2004 it didn’t seem as if the
secret was out quite yet on the
early ‘80s ES-335 DOT reissue guitars built by Gibson
in Nashville. That has since
changed, and our original
article on the 1982 335 we
bought for review may have
contributed to these excellent
guitars now routinely selling
for $2200 or more – still quite
a bit less than a Nashville
Custom Shop Historic, which
seem overpriced due to the
usual snob factor that permeates certain segments of the used guitar market. You’ll find
these early ‘80s 335s in blonde, sunburst, alpine white, and
cherry red finishes, and our review of the ‘82 will give you
more than enough motivation to go looking for your own…
We walked into Midtown Music to return a borrowed,
handwired Fender ‘57 Twin and the first thing we saw as we
walked through the door was a blonde 335 with amber
highlights leaning against the wall behind the counter. “Who’s
that?” we asked. “Oh, that’s an ‘80s Dotneck...” “Are you
setting it up for someone or did you take it in on a trade?” “It
just came in on a trade...” (handing it over the counter). We hit
one chord and promptly requested an overnight stay to really
check out the guitar, and it isn’t coming back.
Gibson introduced
the first reissue of
the 1960 ES335
in late 1981 as the
ES335DOT, and the
serial number on
the guitar we scored
(#80622531) indicates
that our 335 was built
Peter Stroud playing the ‘82 on the 62nd day of
1982, making it an early model. The mahogany neck is a
3-piece, and after 22 years it has remained dead straight and
true, kinda in between a full ‘50s round shape and a slim taper. An old but very good refret looks as if it has been dressed
one or twice, and we will be putting new frets on this guitar
soon, documenting the refret for publication with George
Goumas. But for now, the frets are still quite playable – just
a little low. The original tulip
tuners had been replaced with an
outstanding set of older Schallers,
and they will remain, along with
the original Schaller tune-o-matic bridge (the cool and original
Schaller nickel studs would have
to be pulled to retrofit a different bridge). The nickel Schaller
bridge is actually very well
made, and we will continue to
experiment between a lightweight
TonePros aluminum stop tailpiece and the heavier, original
nickel-plated brass Schaller when we change strings. We’ve
found that some hollowbody guitars seem to respond better to
a heavier tailpiece... there are no rules! The original ‘82 Gibson humbucking pickups (now referred to as collectable ‘Tim
Shaws’) didn’t really leave us reeling, but they did motivate
us to complete our first pickup replacement in a semi-hollow
guitar with f-holes.
Getting the entire
wiring harness out
through the 2-inch
space adjacent to
the bridge pickup
rout was easy
enough, and soldering in the new
Gibson ‘57 Classics was a cinch,
but staring at the harness sitting on top of the guitar, it was
hard to imagine how to snake everything back in so that the
pots, input jack and toggle switch all lined up in the mounting
holes. But like many things in life, the anticipation was far
worse than the actual task, and after a couple of tentative halfstarts we had the whole rig back together in no time.
-continued-
9
cover story
We chose Gibson
‘57 Classic pickups for several
reasons – we had
just played a 1996
Historic ‘59 reissue Les Paul with
original ‘57s and
it totally knocked
Original pickup
us out, our 1997
Historic 335 with ‘57s was very impressive in every way
(including the price), and the ‘57 Classics happen to have been
originally designed by Tom Holmes and J.T. Ribiloff when
they were employed by Gibson. Yes, that Tom Holmes... If
you’re looking for righteous tone for your humbucking guitar
and you’d rather not pay a premium for somebody’s latest rendition of a ‘PAF” (whatever that means), don’t ignore the ‘57s.
They’re real good, as is our ‘82 ES335DOT. Every guitar is
different, but this one sounds and looks like an old guitar that
has grown better with time, it was built right, and it cost much
less than a new reissue or a used Historic. We’re keeping ours
for now, but we urge you to find one and enjoy optimizing
it. There is nothing more rewarding than finding a relatively
inexpensive guitar with priceless tone that is routinely passed
over by collectors.
ES-333
The introduction of the ‘budget’
ES-333 built in Memphis in
2003 didn’t seem to make
waves among the guitar aficionados who like to stay abreast
of limited edition releases, but
that’s OK – the 333 wasn’t built
for them. The premise behind
the ES-333 was straightforward
and exceptionally clever…
Build a raw 335 guitar to the
original vintage specs as far as
the neck and body construction and materials were concerned,
apply a nitro matte finish that didn’t require the additional
labor of a gloss finish, forego a pickguard, pickup covers and
pearl headstock inlay, use cheaper pickups, and add easy
access to the wiring harness from the back for players who
would inevitably wish to upgrade the electronics. We bought a
333 for review in 2003, upgraded it with CR Coils pickups and
TonePros hardware, and everything we said then still stands.
Today, used ES-333s commonly sell for $1100, and they are
worth every penny. Here’s what we wrote in ‘03…
Whatzat, you ask? A very affordable and respectable ‘budget’
rendition of the classic ES335 that’s just begging to be personalized? Yes, we are still pushing 33-something guitars. Why?
Because we’re just plain tired of going to shows and finding
the same two food groups represented (Lesters and Strats,
with an occasional Tele.) A guitarist without a semi-hollowbody is like an artist without a tube of blue paint. Here’s what
you need to know about the 333…
Along with the standard Gibson reissue 335’s, the ES333
is built in Memphis with the
identical specs, tooling, and
materials used for the reissue
335, including maple/poplar/
maple ply body, mahogany
neck, and nickel plated ABR1
bridge and stop tail. However,
the 333 is equipped with the
cheaper 490R and 498T Alnico
humbuckers rather than ‘57
Classics, it has no pickguard, and the very thin nitro finish
consists of a faded cherry stain, two clear coats of lacquer
and a tinted satin top coat. And there is access to the wiring
harness through a small plastic cover on the back! Give the
man that dreamed that up a raise. We love this guitar for a lot
of reasons: It looks cool – more
like an old guitar than a new piece
of furniture – it’s built right (we
compared the 333 to a vintage ‘62
335 and the construction of the
maple center block and long neck
tenon were very similar), and with
that thin finish, the 333 really
sings. Of course, we made a few
improvements, beginning with the
pickups… TQR board member
Don Butler (Toneman) turned us
on to Jim Wagner and CR Coils. We settled on his Crossroads
humbucker set, and they were outstanding — open, airy,
smooth, balanced and very Creamy.
Optimizing the ES-333
In addition to the Crossroads
humbuckers, we replaced the
stoptail and ABR1 bridge with
TonePros hardware. As we’ve
described in the past, the stud
caps on the super-lightweight,
nickel plated aluminum
TonePros tailpiece can be
screwed down, locking the
tailpiece firmly in place and
preventing it from pivoting on
the studs under string tension.
This design significantly improves sustain by transmitting
-continued-
10
cover story
more string vibration to the body of the guitar. The TonePros
ABR1-style bridge can also be locked down on the posts with
two Allen screws. Once your bridge height is set, it will stay
set during string changes, and as Dan Erlewine observed in
his September ‘03 interview, the TonePros bridge saddles are
precision-machined for a tighter, smoother, longer travel.
The fretwork
on our new
333 was
passable, but
we wanted
a larger fret
profile with
a higher
crown. Brian McDaniel refretted the 333 with Stew-Mac
#154 fret wire and the result was a significant improvement
in overall playability, sustain and easier string bending. We
also replaced the stock ceramic disc tone caps with Jensen
(Denmark) copper foil/paper in oil caps – a .022 for the bridge
and .015 for the neck pickup. For now, the best source we
could find for these caps was Angela Instruments (and now
RS Guitarworks).
If you’re interested in acquiring and customizing a 335-style
semi-hollowbody guitar (and nothing sounds or sustains quite
the same) for comparatively light dough, you deserve to check
out the ES-333. This model was only built from 2003-2005,
but there are plenty in circulation, often in barely-played, as
new condition.
Gibson ES-330
We also bought a vintage ‘66 ES-330 in 2005, reviewed in the
now infamous June ‘05 ‘Jimbo’ issue. If you’re jonesing for a
vintage ES model, the 330 remains your least expensive option
in 2011.
While the Gibson
ES330 and
ES335 may look
similar, they
are very different.
Both deliver a
tone and vibe that
are exceptionally unique and
desirable, but our
focus is on Jimbo
Mathus’ main squeeze in the studio – the vintage ES330. We
bought a ‘66 330 on eBay in exceptional condition for under
$2000. If the seller had started the auction at less than his
minimum selling price it probably would have sold for much
more. eBay people like to play the game and bid stuff up, and
they tend to ignore auctions that start at the minimum price
the seller will accept, even though half a dozen bidders may
have exceeded that price by the end of the auction if it had
started lower. Our cherry 330 was in outstanding condition
– very lightweight at 6 lbs. with lots of fine finish checking
typical for its age and no structural cracks, breaks, repairs
or gruesome dings. Only the pickguard had been replaced
with a proper replica along with the original plastic saddles
(why did they ever use those in the first place?) The chrome
covered P90’s were strong and untarnished, and the guitar
sounded fantastic, with all the hollow acoustic woodiness that
is so characteristic of the fully-hollow ES330, and it played
extremely well. The original frets had been dressed at least
once, and although they were wide and a little low, we didn’t
feel compelled to immediately send the guitar off to be refretted. Even the nut was original and in good shape. For a 40
year old guitar, the 330 was in remarkably good condition and
definitely delivered the goods.
The ES330 often
gets shoved to the
lower rung of the
‘ES’ hierarchy because of its shorter
neck (full-length
models were
only introduced
in 1969) and
feedback at high
volume due to the absence of a center block. Our 330 was
quite happy plugged into any of our vintage Fender amps, and
we were able to produce plenty of overdriven, bluesy tones
with no howling feedback simply by paying attention to our
physical orientation to the amp. Of course, should you want to
generatea little wooo-wooo you can do that, too, just by leaning into the speaker a bit. Various band-aids have been used to
cut down feedback and howling in fully-hollow electrics,
including foam stuffed into the body, covering the f-holes
with thin sheets of plastic film, and installing sound posts
similar to those used in violins, violas and cellos. We tend
to agree with Joe Glaser’s observation that if you are really
driven to neuter your hollow body, you’re probably just
playing the wrong guitar. The ES330 has a very distinctive,
woody voice that lacks the punch and sustain of a 335, yet it
produces a lush, organic acoustic tone that is deeper than the
335, and that’s the best reason to play one.
Nashville Custom Shop CS-356
We’ve seen lots of Gibson 336 and 356 guitars at various
guitar shows and during our frequent visits to the Gibson
Custom Shop in Nashville, but it wasn’t until a next-to-new
356 was traded in at Midtown Music that we finally had an
opportunity to really party with one, and it was a good
party, indeed.
-continued-
11
cover story
At first
glance,
you might
assume that
the CS356 is
simply a
scaled-down
version of an
ES335, but
this guitar is
entirely different by design. The body dimensions are smaller
—13 3/4”x 16”x 1 11/16” for the CS356 compared to 16”x
19” x 1 3/4” for a standard ES-335, but the CS is also built in
a completely different fashion and with radically different
materials than the vintage 335, starting with the top. The figured maple top on the CS356 is solid maple rather than
plywood, and the back, sides and center block are carved from
a solid piece of mahogany. Add a one-piece, 22-fret mahogany
neck, stop tailpiece or optional Bigsby, and you get some
mighty good wood, brilliantly designed, well-built, comfortably light in weight, and eminently suitable for just about any
musical style. With gold hardware and the distinctive ‘custom’
peghead inlay, a ‘stinger’ on the back of the peghead running
down the neck and triple neck and body binding, the quilted
356 was a little more dressed up than we are accustomed to,
but on this guitar it’s a good look.
\
The ‘57 Classic Gibson
humbucking pickups in the
356 predictably produce very
warm, clear, clean tones in
all three positions, and they
can also push the front end
of an amp into a very sweet
and balanced overdriven tone.
They aren’t ‘hot’ pickups with
the snappy treble or higher
output of the Burstbuckers,
but they seem to be extremely
well-suited for this style of
guitar. The CS356 sounds just
like it’s built; the hollow body
tone is there, but it’s a more
solid and anchored sound than
a typical semi-hollow body
guitar with a center block. Purists may prefer to continue leaning into a wide body 335, but for those of you with an itch to
try something beyond the mainstream, these innovative guitars
definitely deserve your attention.
The Gibson Johnny A Signature
The Gibson Custom Shop doesn’t keep a lot of completed
guitars sitting around, and there were no Johnny A’s in pro-
duction at the time this article was being developed, so we
prevailed upon Willcutt Guitars and they promptly sent us a
Johnny A for review.
If there is one word
that can describe the
‘A’, it’s stylish, in a
very old school style,
yet still unique when
viewed against the
backdrop of the entire
Gibson heritage. We
like it a lot, as the
look seems to have
been inspired to some
extent by a vintage
Barney Kessel, Trini
Lopez and a Les Paul,
with none of the
funky quirkiness of a
Barney/Lopez. Even
more significant are the practical design features that evolved
from Johnny’s wish to maintain the hollow character and
comfort of his ES295, and the solidbody prowess of his Les
Pauls when a song calls for ballsy sustain. The ‘A’ can range
between the classic, clean, hollow humbucker tones needed
for jazz and swing tunes, and it can also be pushed into subtle,
bluesy tones with just the right hint of girth and dirt, or all-out
screaming sustain. The ‘A’ was specifically designed to avoid
being a one-trick pony, and nearly every stylistic variation on
the electric guitar can be authentically explored with it. The
key contributing factors to this uncommon versatility are the
solid mahogany back and sides carved from a single block of
wood and joined to a solid maple top, which creates a much
more stable and
controllable
hollow body
electric guitar
tone than the
typical ‘ES’
design that has
historically utilized plywood
construction
with or without
a center block. The ‘A’ is also laid out by design to provide
easy and constant access to the Bigsby and the entire length
of the 25.5” scale length neck. As described, the toggle switch
can be moved with a flick of the pinky, literally between
notes. This is also a very light and comfortable guitar at 6.8
pounds, very well balanced, with none of the dive-bomb
tendencies of a Les Paul teetering on your lap. Even in the
absence of a traditional center block, the thinline-style hollow
body produces a great acoustic tone without robbing the gui-continued-
12
cover story
tar of sustain or causing squealing feedback at higher volume
levels.
The neck profile can best
be described as similar to
a ‘60s ES335 – not nearly
as clubby as a typical ‘50s
neck shape, but slightly
more rounded than an
early ‘60s thin-taper or the
flatter Les Paul Classic
neck shape. The fret wire
feels similar to medium
jumbo Dunlop 6105 with
plenty of crown, and the
fret ends extend over the
fingerboard binding rather
than beneath it – a good
move. We were also pleased to find that the ‘A’ did not exhibit
any string binding and telltale creaks at the saddles or the nut.
We sometimes find new Gibson guitars to be plagued with
nut slots that bind the strings during tuning until they have
been tweaked with a fine needle file, and if you choose to use
anything larger than a .010-.048 set, you’ll need to re-work
the nut slots.
The ‘57 Classics
remain among our
favorite humbucking pickups, and
the more variations
on humbuckers we
hear, the more we
like them. At $198 a
pair, they are priced
far lower than typical “designer” pickups, and they are well-suited for all types of
music. As much as we admire and enjoy the work of builders
like Jason Lollar, Jim Wagner at CR Coils, Holmes and Rolph,
the ‘57 Classics continue to earn “classic” status. They are
warm and rich, exceptionally well-balanced with a
very musical top end character. Driven to extremes
through a great amp they
produce thoroughly pleasing harmonics, all of which
serve to remind us that you
don’t always have to lay out
a thick stash of cash to get
the tone you crave.
Although we aren’t big fans
of gold-plated hardware,
the workmanship and detail on our review guitar was really
phenomenal from top to bottom. The sole negative we can
offer is that the ‘A’ may simply be too pretty and flashy for
some players who would otherwise really dig this guitar. Perhaps Gibson and Johnny A will consider an optional model
offered with nickel hardware and a slightly less flashy, toneddown look that would match up better with a t-shirt, jeans and
a wallet chain, ya’ll. We do believe they would sell well. In
all respects, the ‘A’ earns an A, and we urge those of you who
can appreciate an extraordinarily versatile and exceptionally
well-built ES-style guitar to check them out. This is one “signature” model that truly earns its name. (Note: A ‘standard’
version with nickel hardware was subsequently added to the
line after this review was originally published, although we
aren’t taking credit for it).
Lee Ritenour Signature ES-335
And now we arrive
at a crossroads in
our review of ES-3
series guitars… the
Memphis Custom
Shop, just sixty
miles north of the
original crossroads
in Clarksdale,
Mississippi where
Robert Johnson
sold his soul to the
devil.
Every once in a
while, through
nothing more than
chance fueled by optimism and curiosity, we discover a guitar
that sets a new benchmark for the kind of deeply resonant
vibaciousness we all crave, yet is never guaranteed at any
price. You immediately know when you’re playing a guitar
that has ‘it’ – a unique vocal quality richly endowed with
a distinct character that seems to complete you. When we
find one of those guitars, it is a good day indeed, and we are
forever spoiled by it.
In 2008 the Gibson Custom Shop in Memphis shipped two
signature Lee Ritenour ES-335s to Midtown Music in Atlanta,
and we were on top of them immediately. A cursory strum in
the store prompted extended sessions with both guitars, until
we finally chose one to take home over the weekend. We’ll
get straight to the point… Both of these guitars were oddly,
strangely, inexplicably, overwhelmingly good – lightweight at
around eight pounds and remarkably resonant with tremendous
sustain. The basic construction was that of a vintage-correct
335, with a 1-piece mahogany neck, maple center block and
-continued-
13
interview
rosewood
fingerboard
with a 12”
radius,
medium frets
and a stop
tailpiece.
“Ritneour’
touches included a medium elliptical neck profile,1 11/16” wide low-friction graphite
nut, aged nickel hardware and Grover tuners, VOS trans cherry
nitro lacquer, and the guitar was shipped with installed strap
locks. The pickups were ‘57 Classics. To this day we can’t
explain what made those two guitars so special, but they were,
and we’ve never forgotten them. The aged cherry finish was the
best we have ever seen, the neck was a perfect transitional shape
falling between the bigger ‘50s necks and the slim taper, and
both guitars sounded, played and looked extraordinarily fine.
Fifty Ritenour ‘relics’ were built in 2008 selling for $5,200,
and one hundred VOS Custom Shop models like those we
played at $3,200. If cherry red is you, and you happen to see
one for sale, ya might just want to pull the trigger.
The 50th Anniversary 2008 Custom
Shop ‘58 ES-335
As the theme for this
issue was gradually
revealed to us, we realized that we would need
to find a centerpiece that
would provide a proper
climax for our celebration of the ES thinline
guitars. The funny thing
is, so many different
variations all of the classic guitar designs have
been produced by now
that without the help of
the Gruhn Guide and the
Internet, it is impossible
to fully comprehend all
the models that have
been produced by a single maker. If anything, we humans are
a remarkably prolific and industrious bunch…
Personal preference plays a significant role in the process
as well. If we are going to spend several thousand dollars on
a guitar that we can freely customize (and you can’t do that
with a new loaner), we’d prefer to buy something we will enjoy
owning and playing. So all we knew for certain prior to beginning our search was that we wanted a guitar that was special and relatively unique, but not odd or quirky – something
that would embody everything we (and you, perhaps) could
possibly desire in a 335. As so often happens in the Quest for
tone, having successfully found just such an instrument, an
interesting and unanticipated back story emerged.
After several days of study and research, we bought a lightly
used 50th Anniversary 2008 Custom Shop ‘58 ES-335 on
eBay for $2750. Two days later another one sold for $3300, so
we felt pretty good about having successfully made an offer
below the seller’s listed price of $3250. A limited run of two
hundred ‘58s were built in ‘08, and that was that. We could
no longer find the original Gibson web page for the ‘58,
although pages for the ‘59 and ‘60 50th Anniversary Custom
Shop models remain from 2009 and 2010. Features on the
‘58 include a VOS sunburst finish, aged binding, a truly huge
and perfectly rounded mahogany neck, lightweight aluminum nickel plated stop tailpiece and ABR-1 bridge, standard
Custom Shop vintage Kluson tuners, Bumble Bee replica tone
caps, CTS 500K pots and ‘57 Classic pickups. The frets on
our guitar were also dressed on the Plek machine at the Memphis Custom Shop. Let’s linger there for a moment and reflect
on why a ‘Pleked’ guitar might appeal to you…
INTERVIEW
Joe Glaser — Plek
We have no way
of knowing how
many of you really understand
what the Plek
machine does
and why it’s
important, but
with companies
like Gibson, C.F.
Martin, Suhr,
G&L and Duesenberg among others now using Plek machines in production
as well as independent repair shops like Joe Glaser and Gary
Brawer, understanding what the Plek does is important. Joe
Glaser was the first to embrace the Plek in the U.S, Gibson
was the first major manufacturer to install them, and Joe has
been involved in the initial training and installation for all
new Plek users in the U.S. His explanation of how the Plek
machine works is fascinating, informative, and in our opinion,
essential, because you really can feel and hear the difference
in a properly Pleked fretboard…
-continued-
14
interview
“The Plek is a computerized tool that scans an instrument
strung to pitch, generating graphic views of the fret plane, fret
heights, fret shape and placement, fingerboard relief radius,
humps and bumps – basically everything you always wanted to
see well but couldn’t. Within an extremely accurate map of the
neck on the computer monitor, the operator creates a virtual
fret dress incorporating any individual real world preferences,
then the strings are moved aside and the Plek does that dress,
applying complex relief calculations to the particular action
and string gauges on that guitar, accurate to a resolution of
.00005 in.
TQR:
And has it been accepted well by your customers in
Nashville?
People like the work that
it does a lot. They were
initially pretty afraid of
the machine because the
process costs more, and
it does cost a little more,
but not a lot. People do
talk about their guitars
sounding better, which
surprised me. I suppose
that’s because it puts a
consistent, equal center
on the frets and it allows
maximum clean attack
everywhere, given their
action. And you hear
those two things, as well as feel them. People say fret dressing
is an art, right? But to me, the Plek machine is like a guitar
tuner. Today, I can’t imagine living without a guitar tuner, and
now I can’t imagine not being able to see what’s really going
on with the neck. It’s not like sighting down the neck from
either end and trying to see past the optical illusions to where
the high spots are, or playing it and figuring out where the
high and low spots are and what problems are due to string
quality. It’s like discovering a major tool family, just like with
calipers when I first began using them. Even though manual
fret dressing is an art, I can do a virtual fret dress with the
Plek and account for every possible consideration – whether or
not I want any particular compound radius further up the neck
because a player bends and likes low action, or if I want lower
frets in the first position to keep a hard grip in tune while leaving higher frets up the neck for vibrato… All of those things
that I have always taken into account when I hand dress frets
are still done, but once the parameters are programmed into
the Plek, I’m turning the actual work over to the most accurate
and consistent employee in the shop, or in the entire the U.S.,
for that matter. It’s not like I plan to do my best fret dress and
execute it pretty well, because life is tricky. With this tool, it is
executed perfectly. That’s the result of technology gone right,
to say nothing about the benefit of doing the hyper-accurate
analysis scans with the neck at full string tension. It has
powerful viewing capability. You can look at a graph or topo
map of anything. Its like X-ray to a broken bone. Goodbye
to the witch doctor. A difference of .003 of an inch is a night
and day difference in playability, but that’s a typical tolerance.
Now we hold a tenth of that or even less and do it in an ideal
relief. That’s important, too. The master-level guesswork is
gone. The neck jig was a great idea, but you can’t hold a neck
in place with the kind of tolerance that can make or break a
great fret job, nor fight the bizarre contours that occur when
string tension is released. The Plek measures each fret relative
to the fingerboard, then when the strings are pushed aside, it
levels and shapes them perfectly regardless of the effect of
the tension release. The only similar effect that I’ve ever seen
is that device that Ken Parker has that truly simulates string
tension as the frets are dressed and polished. But not everyone
is a genius.
You get different learning skills from people.
Part of the whole thing
with Plek is that we’ve
learned not only about
the technology but how
people use the technology. Gary Brawer uses
his Plek Machine very
differently than I do,
which is kind of cool. It
was initially thought of
as this robotic machine
where you strap in your
guitar and it comes out
finished, but in reality peoples’ philosophy about fret work
very much colors what happens. So early on we thought
about how these machines could proliferate, which led us to
think about manufacturers. When I first met the guys from
Plek, they had been to a NAMM show and all the manufacturers had come by and just chuckled… At that time the machine
ran an hour to an hour and forty minutes for each guitar, and
we realized that the only way these machines would be appropriate for manufacturers is if they were capable of running
much faster, so we began working on that. You could do about
six guitars a day and we asked ourselves, “Who really needed
the quality improvement?” Ultimately we learned that if you
show the player what can be achieved, eventually that comes
back to the company, which is what happened with Gibson.
People on the Les Paul Forum began talking about the Plek,
and eventually Gibson made the decision to install one. We
had figured out that if we were able to get the capacity of the
machine to 12 minutes per guitar for cutting the frets, the nut
slot and the nut top, it would work for Gibson, and that’s what
we did.
-continued-
15
interview
TQR:
Yes, but they sometimes
run more, and all the
data on each guitar is
stored. Matthew Klein
at Gibson is a very
sharp guy and a very
good problem solver
in engineering, and the
one thing he realized the first day we were scanning guitars
was that the first fret was always high and there was this kind
of scoop beginning at the nut. The machine is like a forensic
tool that enables you to identify problems on the production
line. One thing that they saw is that the fingerboards weren’t
exactly a symmetrical 12” radius. So the Plek is really useful
for doing R&D on how the necks are being put together. You
can literally see a fingerprint of whatever is affecting a neck in
manufacturing, and I was impressed by how Gibson took that
information and proactively took steps to improve everything
they possibly could.
Not really. You can raise the
bridge or tighten the truss
rod a bit but regardless, it is
so much better having been
Plekked. If you take a finished Plek-dressed guitar and
then re-enter the data with
a different string gauge, the
difference is slight. We configure the relief algorithm
based on string gauge, but
all of the benefits of the Plek
remain. It’s so much better…
The other thing about it is,
you can’t guarantee that
someone won’t leave their guitar in a hot car and the neck will
get whacked, or that you’ll have a problem from simply a bad
piece of wood. I had a Martin guitar here for its third Plek dress
and looking at the history, you can see the pattern of fret wear,
but the neck had otherwise remained very, very stable. Then
you have necks that just aren’t stable, and never will be.
TQR:
TQR:
So they could run 30-40 guitars a day in theory…
Did you set up the first Plek at Gibson for specific
models?
Matthew and the guys at the Custom Shop built this beautiful
tooling to hold the guitars in the machine and with the exception of the Jimmy Page model, the parameters were set for a
specific fret height. We also scanned a lot of guitars for them
so they could understand what was possible. Another benefit
of the Plek is that you don’t have your best people dressing
frets all day.
TQR:
How long was the training process?
We worked with Matthew and Jeff in the Custom Shop for
four days, and they both totally got it right away.
I’m a huge believer in full disclosure. We try to be nice about
it, because people want to love their guitars… If you’re a
pediatrician, you’re inevitably gonna see an ugly kid, but there
is no advantage to putting it that way. If we look at something
and it’s not stable, some people care and others don’t. If they
do, we might ask them to bring it back in six months. If it’s a
bolt-on maybe they can replace it, but we don’t want people to
feel bad about their instruments necessarily. With manufacturers and small OEMs, it’s a win/win even if what we see makes
them introduce changes in how they operate right away. Plus,
I suppose that fretwork can be mindlessly therapeutic but at
some point you want to move on to other things…
TQR:
TQR:
Well, for those who own a Gibson that wasn’t
Pleked, it’s still always possible to get your guitar
Pleked by someone, and influence the final result
by choosing specific fret wire, action, etc.
Right, so there is a slight advantage to an after-market Plek
dress. We ask people what they want, and one of the typical
things we do for some people is dress a little lower on the bass
position – not distorting the fret surface, but tipping it slightly.
The personal choices are almost endless.
TQR:
Well, let’s say that a guitar Pleked at Gibson is
dressed for a set of .010-.046 roundwound strings,
you buy it, and immediately install a set of .011s or
.009s. Doesn’t that negate the benefits of the Plek
dress?
What do you say in that instance?
It is increasingly difficult to find people that do
good fret work, if you can find someone that does
it at all. Did you know that?
Well, I know that very few people do good fret work…
TQR:
Working with manufacturers must be tremendously
fun and rewarding for you, though…
It’s hugely fun… the most fun thing because I get to relate to
them at a level where you can watch their eyes open as they
realize the potential of the Plek. The Plek costs over $100,000
US, so you see people trying to talk themselves into it, out
of it… But the fact is, there is really just no point in people
doing fret work anymore given the fact that the Plek can
consistently exceed the work of your best fret dresser on his
or her best day, every day.
-continued-
16
review
Trial & Error…
We could have left the Gibson ‘57 Classic pickups in the ‘58
335 and felt no great remorse, but we had a an excellent set
of unpotted Holmes in our desk drawer that we have used
as a benchmark whenever we wanted a little extra bite, so in
they would go. Way back in the ‘70s Tom Holmes was being
hounded by George Gruhn to figure out why the PAF pickups
sounded so good (or modern humbuckers didn’t), way before
there was any such thing as an aftermarket, ‘custom’ alternative, and we thought you might enjoy being reminded of Tom’s
story, as it is not likely to be repeated…
“I’ve built guitars for years, going back to the early ‘70s,
but my first real exposure came from the Bo Diddley and
the Cadillac guitars I built for Billy Gibbons. Vintage Guitar
published a nice article on those years ago, but I’ve never
advertised since I began building humbucking pickups. From
1989-90 I worked as a consultant for Gibson, basically setting
up their coil-winding operation and getting the pickup thing
going for them, and I built a lot of machines in their electronics division. Then I went over to the Nashville plant and built
the tooling that cuts the tenon joint for the Les Pauls and archtop guitars – anything where they needed help building hard
tooling, because I was a guitar builder and a toolmaker.
When I first came to Nashville, I did all of the electrical repairs for George Gruhn, and George kept pounding me about
why the old pickups sounded so much better than the new
ones. He was trying to bounce this off of me and I was going
around to the magnet companies asking them what they were
making back in the ‘50s – what had changed? So I approached
it from a pure study of procuring the raw material and looking
at the die changes, to why the cover got out of shape and the
pickups didn’t really look like PAF’s anymore.
One of the things that varied a lot in this industry was wire
size. People don’t realize that there is about a mile of wire
on a pickup, and it wasn’t uncommon for #42 gauge wire to
vary slightly. If you got a batch of #42 gauge wire that was
slightly larger, you couldn’t put 5,000 or 6,000 turns of wire
on a bobbin. By the same token, if you got a slightly smaller
lot of #42 gauge you could easily go beyond 6,000 turns. I’m
sure the girls at Gibson went a little crazy with the variation
in the wire they were supplied with in the old days. I think
they just wound them until they were full, and if the coils
looked like they were getting too full, they just backed off
the number of turns.
All the vintage PAF pickups I’ve seen were made with
AlNiCo II or IV, and this was confirmed in the archives that
were shown to me at the magnet companies. That’s what was
being bought at the time, and I think it had more to do with
the purchasing agents getting the best prices. It had nothing to
do with tone. AlNiCo II is just a name, and II from one plant
is not the same as II from another. When they had 900 people
pumping out guitars in Kalamazoo, I don’t think they were
talking about whether to use II or IV. They were looking for
price and delivery.
I use #42
gauge
plain
enamel
wire and
AlNiCo
II, and we
all have
access to
the same
raw material, but
two pickups built from identical material by different people
can sound very different, and I attribute that to craftsmanship. I build everything by hand and each coil is wound by
hand. I have an expensive winding machine here, but it’s
never been used because people really want hand-wound
pickups. It’s a slower method of doing it, but you can go
into a pickup factory and these people waste wire like you
wouldn’t believe because they’re trying to do it too quickly.
One of the biggest problems they have is with their tensioning devices – they get the wire on too loose or too tight, and
it’s a constant hassle. When you hand-wind or scatter-wind,
the more you wind, the better you get, and the tension on the
bobbin is right; you start to work and understand the relationship between the wire, your hands and that bobbin. Every
pickup has its own resonant frequency, and if it supports
the frequencies that people like to hear, then you’re lucky.
If it supports those that we’d prefer not to hear, then you’re
unlucky, and there’s definitely some luck involved. For me,
it involved years of trial and error and a lot of hard work that
began in 1971.”
-continued-
17
guitars
The Quest for ‘Vintage Tone’
We don’t spend time lurking in chat rooms, but in researching
the 50th Anniversary 335 and the construction features of vintage and modern 335s in general, we noted some interesting
perceptions expressed in forum threads that neither reflect reality or make guitar buying any easier. For example, there are
people who believe that a guitar built with modern adhesives
won’t sound as good as a vintage guitar assembled with hide
glue. Or you could say that an old guitar built with hide glue
will sound better… The theory is that hide glue dries to a hard,
crystalline form that allows string vibrations to freely pass
through it, while Titebond and other modern glues impede or
stop resonant vibrations wherever they are used (such as in a
neck joint, or in joining a fingerboard and neck). We do know
of one custom builder who will build a guitar using hide glue
for an extra $600… OK, we’ve heard this theory before, but
does it imply that the presence of hide glue insures that every
guitar built with it will sound extraordinarily fine? You may
have heard how Kim LaFleur at Historic Makeovers routinely
replaces the fingerboard on Historic Les Pauls with Brazilian
rosewood while also removing the modern plastic truss rod
‘condom’ and re-setting the truss rod in bees’ wax circa 1959.
Same question seems to apply there as well. Can bees wax and
Brazilian consistently turn a frog into a prince? We also read
posts in which the actual plywood construction used in vintage
335s was debated with much speculation on the use of maple/
birch/spruce/mahogany/poplar/basswood, etc.) as well as a
suggestion that the composition of the phenolic resins used in
the ‘50s and ‘60s to bond the veneers in the top, back and rims
of 335s would produce a superior ‘vintage’ tone compared to
whatever is being used today.
Well, if such details
actually can consistently produce the
sound of a ‘magical’
vintage instrument
that far surpasses
the tone of a modern
guitar, perhaps we
should also examine
the composition of
the ‘nickel-silver fret
wire used in the ‘50s
and ‘60s, the alloys
used in guitar strings
made in the ‘50s and
‘60s versus today, not
to mention the wire used to assemble wiring harnesses past
and present, (oh, yeah, you can buy ‘vintage’ wiring harnesses
18
all day long), or the alloys used to make truss rods, bridges,
tailpieces and tuners. And there is the great finish debate…
Must nitrocellulose lacquer be used to insure the best tone? Is
the nitro made today the same as the nitro made in 1958? Is it
applied in the same way?
Do you remember the Defelsko Positector? It’s a device that
employs ultrasound technology to measure finish thickness in
mils (.001 inches), and as our August ‘05 article pointed out,
Gibson has used these devices since 1995 at different factory
locations to measure the thickness of their finishes. Prior
to that, they would lift the finish off a guitar with heat and
measure it with calipers. We acquired a Positector to measure
the finish thickness of dozens of new and vintage guitars at
Midtown Music. Each guitar was measured at two points on
the top of the body below the bridge and near an upper bout,
and at a single point on the back, and we were careful not to
select any measuring points on vintage guitars or relics where
the finish was visibly worn. The last column in our table represents the measurements taken from the back. All measurements are shown in mils (.001 inch).
Positector 200 Guitar Finish Thickness Readings
30’s Gibson A4 Mandolin 2.8 1945 Martin 000-18 2.5 60’s Guild Starfire 3.0 63 Vintage Esquire Custom 2.3 99 Jerry Jones 6-string 1.8 82 Gibson Dot RI 335 4.0 1940 Epiphone Broadway 3.9 05 Relic Telecaster 3.9 05 ‘56 Relic Strat 5.1 94 Historic Les Paul Custom 5.9 52 Gibson J45 nitro refin 5.9 05 Martin D18V 6.2 05 Relic Telecaster Custom 6.2 05 Gretsch DuoJet 6.5 04 Epiphone Elitist 335 6.6 05 Relic Nocaster 6.6 05 Relic ‘62 Strat 7.0 05 Martin HD28V 7.7 62 Strat nitro refin 7.7 95 Historic RI ‘58 Les Paul 7.3 02 ‘54 Goldtop Les Paul 7.8 91 30th Anniversary SG 9.2 05 Custom Shop ‘65 Strat 9.7 89 Custom Shop Les Paul 10.0 01 PRS McCarty Burst 10.6 04 Nash TQ Telecaster 10.6 Terry C. McInturff Monarch 10.0 05 Fender Masterbuilt Strat 11.1 01 ‘57 Goldtop Les Paul 11.3 Fender Japan Tele (90’s) 12.0 TONEQUEST REPORT V.12 N.9-10 July-August 2011
2.3 2.4
2.4 5.2 4.2 5.5 6.9 6.0 6.9 6.8 7.3 6.7 6.5 6.6 8.2 8.2 6.1 8.8 6.5 6.2 6.6 9.4 10.7 8.4 10.4 8.3 10.4 10.9 12.4 13.9 3.1
2.0
3.6
4.2
2.3
5.1
5.4
4.8
6.0
5.4
8.1
5.6
7.7
4.0
6.2
6.8
6.4
7.0
6.9
7.1
3.0
8.4
10.8
8.1
11.5
9.4
11.5
12.3
12.7
10.4
guitars
05 Fender Masterbuilt Strat 14.4 63 Vintage Firebird VII refin 15.1 01 DeArmond M75T 21.3 05 USA ‘62 Strat 26.7 04 Robert Cray Strat/Mexico 37.7 12.7 15.8 18.1 21.4 31.7 13.1
19.2
17.3
24.8
27.1
Conclusions? The numbers speak for themselves with a few
interesting surprises, but it is clear that a lot less finish was
left on older instruments. Time = money.
Something else we
noticed as we entered
key word searches and
referenced discussions
related to Custom
Shop 335 guitars on
the web is a latent
love/hate relationship with big guitar
companies. Entire
web sites and forums
are dedicated to guitars made by Gibson,
yet some people
can’t seem to resist
inevitably suggesting that Gibson doesn’t make a sincere effort to build faithful
recreations of vintage models, nor can the company be trusted
to provide accurate information on the construction features
of specific vintage guitars and modern reissues. Interesting,
because we have met and interviewed people at Gibson past
and present who have meticulously analyzed vintage examples
of all the classic Gibson models as part of the Custom Shop
and Historic program. Billy Gibbon’s Pearly Gates was put under the microscope not too long ago, and some extraordinary
guitars were built as a result. Chasing vintage construction
specifications at Gibson is nothing new, although it can be argued that the pursuit of vintage tone is still a work in progress
as far as pickups are concerned.
Tim Shaw was consumed by a desire to get back to the old
ways of building guitars at Gibson in the early ‘80s, although
his hands were tied to some extent at the time compared to
what the Gibson Custom Shop can do today…
TQR: Speaking of pickups, Tim, what was really going on
with Gibson humbuckers and the entire PAF mystique?
“By today’s standards, the early Gibson humbucking pickups
were all over the place in terms of the number of turns on the
coils, the resistance, and their tone. Some people like the
warmer tone of the original early humbuckers that were built
with AlNiCo II magnets and plain enamel wire, but later on
they went to AlNiCo V magnets and poly-coated wire that
made them sound a lot brighter, and some people like that
sound. But there was never any conscious attempt throughout
the evolution of the humbucker to retain the sound of the
original pickup. When I first developed the reissue of the PAF
in the early ‘80s, I could use the original AlNiCo II magnets,
but not the enamel wire, because it cost a buck or two more
per-pound. We were buying tons of that stuff, but don’t forget
that while we were doing a lot of this R&D work in the early
‘80s, the company was hovering on going down the tubes.”
JT Ribiloff previously referenced the early ‘90s as a time
in which the Gibson began to take a much closer look at
vintage Les Pauls prior to developing the Historic program,
and we featured extensive interviews with Historic Program
Manager Edwin Wilson and Tom Murphy in our April 2003
issue devoted to the Gibson Custom Art & Historic operation
in Nashville. They pulled no punches in honestly describing
what had been involved in getting a big company like Gibson
to change. It’s never easy, but clearly, they succeeded. We
also spoke with Mike Voltz as we were developing this issue.
Mike is the product manager for the ES-3 series Custom
Shop guitars in Memphis. Prior to joining Gibson in 1984 he
attended the Roberto Venn School of Lutherie and worked for
Shot Jackson and George Gruhn doing repairs and restorations
in Nashville. These people
are all passionate ‘guitar
guys’ with deep experience
in guitar building and an
equally deep understanding
of ‘vintage’ Gibson guitars.
And by the way, the same
can be said for Fender.
The amusing aspect of
such obsessive/compulsive
speculation and analysis
found on the Web is that
more often than not we
find that the old methods
19
guitars
and materials that were used to build the classic archetypes
were subject to change based on available supplies, price,
and the need to meet production quotas. Yes, vintage Gibson
guitars were usually built to a higher standard, but consistency
in tone and ‘mojo’ wasn’t one of them, as evidenced by the
random nature of vintage pickups alone. And no, those old
pickups didn’t all sound identical when they were new. We recall reading about Warren Haynes having been presented with
two identical ‘61 ES-335s – one described as being really
clean and the other as sounding really good. Which guitar do
you think he bought? Any assumption that guitars made from
wood can be built to a consistent and repeatable outcome with
no variation in sound is a noble goal, but a practical impossibility. Furthermore, any attempts to ‘optimize’ or make a
modern guitar more ‘vintage correct’ will be limited to a great
degree by the fundamental character of the neck and body you
started with. Happy and unhappy accidents abound in equal
measure. In our experience, pickup swaps produce the most
significant results in optimizing the tone of a guitar, followed
by tone caps, tailpieces and bridges. Bigger frets and bigger
strings can also introduce a mind-altering change in volume,
depth, presence and attitude. Worrying about the type of glue
that was used to build your guitar? There is some wicked
irony in spending a fortune on a vintage ‘hide glue’ guitar that
will be too valuable to be taken out of the house and played.
On the other hand, if we spent five or six figures on a vintage
guitar, we wouldn’t want to entertain the thought that a modern version could possibly sound as good or better.
Thinking Inside the Box
We played the 50th Anniversary ‘58 335 as received with a
new set of Pyramid strings for a couple of days just to get the
original sound set in our mind. Weighing 8.4 pounds, the ‘58
represents a medium weight based on the actual measured
weight of selected vintage 335s that ranged from 7.5 to 9
pounds. For more information see Tom Hollyer’s excellent
site dedicated to the ES-3-series vintage guitars at www.
es-335.net.
Given the
considerable mass
of the
maple
center
block that
extends
from end-to-end in the 335, the weight of the block seems to
be the most likely source of random weight variation, with the
1-piece mahogany neck also contributing to those variances.
Again, no one in Kalamazoo would have ever thought to sort
maple center blocks by weight… McCarty no doubt chose
maple for its stability, hardness, density, price and availability.
Whatever he was thinking, the structural design of the ES-335
was a brilliant stroke of genius…
Kerfed
spruce
boards are
glued to
the top and
back of the
maple block
to achieve
a solid
bond with
the curved laminated top and back, and in vintage models a
mahogany end block was glued between the end of the maple
block and the bottom rim. Inside the body, kerfing made of
Spanish cedar is used to support the top, back and rims where
they are joined. Much of the original tooling from Kalamazoo
remains in use in Memphis, like the press used to form the
laminated and arched top and back in the Es-3 series guitars.
The original specification for the laminations in the 335 was
3-plies consisting of maple, poplar or basswood, and maple,
although there are vintage examples in which four plies of
maple were used. The thin veneers supplied to Gibson to
construct the ES 3-series guitars are actually ‘peeled’ from
entire logs. The two outer maple plies measure fifty thousandths of an inch, and the middle ply of poplar or basswood
one hundred thousandths. If the factory periodically ran short
of poplar or basswood veneer, they would have just doubled
up with four veneers of maple at fifty thousandths to meet the
required thickness of 200 thousandths for the presses and kept
on rolling.
All the 3-series ES models made in Memphis are also built
with the vintage-correct long neck tenon. This is another
‘vintage’ feature that gets a lot of attention, not unlike true
bypass in effects pedals. As a point of interest, the ‘82 ES-335
we bought was built with a long neck tenon as well. When
viewing the neck tenon beneath the neck pickup, you’ll see a
small gap between the mortise and tenon that can also be seen
in vintage Gibsons. We noted with interest that someone had
filled in the gap in our guitar with glue and wood shavings,
which we had
never seen before.
‘58 Neck tenon
The uncommonly
huge neck on our
50th Anniversary
‘58 certainly was
no accident – you
just don’t make an
-continued-
20
guitars
‘accident’ of those proportions,
and while the girth of the neck
definitely contributes to enhanced
resonance and sustain, if bigger
necks aren’t your thing we suggest you consider a ‘59 or ‘60
Custom Shop Anniversary 335,
as the neck shapes will reflect the
gradually smaller profile found
during those years. We love ours,
however, and the action and feel
of the fretboard is flawless with
perfect intonation and absolutely
no fret buzz or compromises in
playability. The ES-335 Fat Neck
model was also introduced by the
Gibson Custom Shop in 2008.
As the Gibson info sheet states:
“For players who prefer a larger,
heavier neck with a rounded profile for any reason – playing
technique, larger hands, resonant characteristics, or just a
true vintage look and feel – this historic reissue is the perfect
instrument.” We’re betting this is the same profile on the ‘58.
Here’s a very
cool find…
Roy Bowen at
RS Guitarworks
found a small
supply of new
old stock nickel
‘Posi-lock’
strap buttons used from 1981-1985 by Gibson. As you can see, they
completely eliminate the need for strap-locks. We had an
original set on our old ‘82 ES-335 and why they aren’t made
by someone today escapes us. Roy is selling them on eBay as
of June, but they aren’t listed on the RS site.
The Indian
rosewood
fingerboard
on our ‘58 is
an exceptional slab
of oily figured wood.
One of the
things we
have sometimes not liked in Memphis ES-335s we have seen
over the years are dry rosewood fingerboards with an odd,
light color and grain that just doesn’t look right and seems to
repel lemon oil, remaining dry and unappealing. Fingerboards
are a real make or break issue with us. Call us rosewood snobs
if you wish, but if the rosewood is funky, we pass.
We elected to keep the stock, lightweight aluminum tailpiece,
since this guitar didn’t seem to ‘need’ the additional bottom
and mids that a heavier stop tailpiece usually provides, nor
did we feel that new tuners were needed. If they had needed
replacement, we would have used TonePros Kluson TPK33N vintage-style tuners available from WD Music Products,
among other sources.
We selected the Holmes pickups for the 335 because they had
already been installed in at least half a dozen different Les
Pauls over the past two years and we knew what they could
do. Tom Holmes stamps and plates his own nickel-silver
covers, and if you request ‘aged’ covers as we do, he simply
doesn’t plate them. Not only does the thickness of a humbucking cover affect the tone, but the thickness of the plating can
significantly change the sound as well. This was first noted
by Seth Lover when he developed the PAF, and he has been
quoted as having warned Gibson not to use heavy plating on
the original PAF covers.
We felt that the higher output
of the 455 bridge pickup
(8.3K ohm) would work best
with a semi-acoustic guitar.
This is a matter of taste, but
in our experience the open
acoustic sound of the 335
seems to benefit from a bridge
pickup with slightly higher
output. Holmes’ 450 rhythm
pickup typically measures a
little low, at 7.3K. It’s interesting to note that we’ve heard
more than one veteran with experience repairing and dissecting original PAFs comment that many of the ‘double cream’
versions of the PAF they have seen measured higher in resistance (above 8K), and an inordinate number of them seem to
have been installed in 3-series thinline models. This is surely
mere coincidence, due perhaps to more 3-series guitars being
built at the same time Gibson’s supplier was unable to ship
black bobbins in the late ‘50s, but the correlation between
cream bobbins and higher resistance and output is interesting…
The one
drawback
with a
335 is that
pickup
swaps are
no longer
so easily
-continued-
21
components
accomplished. You can do ‘em, certainly, but unless you’re
experienced and have assembled some cheater tools like those
used in the factory, it’s a time consuming bitch. We felt fully
prepared to install the Holmes and new tone caps, but repositioning the tone pot for the neck pickup was a challenge. The
tone cap is soldered on top of the CTS pot, and should you
leave any space whatsoever between the capacitor and the pot,
getting it repositioned beneath the mounting hole in the top
will test your patience. They don’t spare any solder in fixing
the braided pickup ground wires to the pots, either. Even
using our Hakko at full power with a heat sink, we worried
about cooking the volume pots as we heated the thick mass of
original solder to remove the ‘57 Classic pickup leads. Fortunately, the ‘58 was built with the post-’61 center block design
with a 2-inch space cut in the block below the bridge pickup
rout in the top. Prior to ‘61, the pickup leads were snaked
through two tiny channels drilled in the block, requiring the
harness to be pulled and reinserted through the lower f-hole.
The Vari-tone stereo wiring eventually required more room,
resulting in a cut being made in the block.
The Dwarf Tiger
In the
process of
optimizing
the ‘58 we
experienced
another
stroke of
luck that
must be
mentioned
as well,
compliments of Mr. Valco, aka Terry Dobbs. Southern Indiana
is often referred to as ‘God’s Country’ (yes we’ve said that
before, but we know places there where you would just bow
your head and agree), and all kinds unexpected surprises
await those who possess the presence of mind to simply pay
attention (lose the f ’ing cell phone). ‘Country’ Hoosiers are
by necessity a practical and frugal bunch whose skills include
the art of growing garden vegetables in quantities sufficient
to feed their families and neighbors for an entire summer,
while city folk would be dead from starvation within a month
without access to a debit card and a grocery store. Oldfashioned swap meets also remain popular in rural Indiana,
so when some old joker spreads out a bunch of new old stock
vacuum tubes and capacitors on a camp table at a rural swap
meet, fair deals will be made – for cash, maybe, or a bushel
of home grown tomaters and sweet corn, apple butter, cider,
or a freezer full of grass-fed beef and venison sausage. The
currency of
the realm
in Bean
Blossom,
Indiana is
‘Whatcha
got?’ Mr.
Valco had
scored
some new old stock capacitors, and he kindly sent us a small
bag with typical ‘guitar’ values of .022 and .015 mf. We
were particularly intrigued with a couple of vintage CornellDubilier .015 ‘Dwarf Tiger’ caps, which would be the smaller
cousin to the original ‘Gray Tigers’ found in ‘50s goldtops.
We could tell just by looking at them that something good was
about to happen, and we installed both for the rhythm pickups
in our ‘57 goldtop and the 335. People, people, people…
Now, please don’t pester Mr. Valco, ‘cause whatever’s left
he ain’t sellin’, but should you be capable of finding any
‘Dwarf Tigers’ at .015mf, we urge you to stick ‘em in the
neck position of every humbucking or P90 guitar you’ve got.
Hearing the little Dwarves on the neck pickup is a transformative experience as the plain strings suddenly display amazing
treble presence and snap, as if you had walked over to your
amp and zeroed the bass while turning the treble on 10. The
problem with that is when you jump to the bridge pickup you
have to reset the controls on your amp again. If you want the
usual muted sound of a neck humbucker, just roll the tone
control back, but for vintage rock and blues, the Dwarf Tigers
are insanely good.
We couldn’t be happier
with the 50th Anniversary ‘58 335, and it is
by far the most lively
and responsive 335 we
have ever owned. The
big mahogany neck,
maple block and body
generate intense resonance and sustain in
response to chords, and
the acoustic tone is rich
with vivid harmonic
overtones. Plugged
into our vintage Fender
amps, the 335 possesses the woody and vocal
acoustic character that is so unique to the 335 – bluesy and
expressive in a style that mimics the human voice so beautifully played clean. At higher volume levels where the Holmes
humbuckers can push our amps into breakup, the sharp attack
and sustaining qualities of the 335 design create an animated
singing tone that has no equal. The bridge pickup provides
-continued-
22
guitars
a perfect balance of musical treble, robust upper mids and
lush harmonics. The neck and bridge combined produce a
more hollow character with a little quack available on solos
with the neck pickup volume backed off, and the neck pickup
with that Dwarf Tiger is simply the best we have ever heard
– bright, anxious and urgent on the plain strings, deep, solid
and threatening in the bass frequencies for rock and blues, or
smooth and seductive played at lower volume levels with a
softer attack. The 335 offers an entirely unique and essential
dimension in the tone of an electric guitar, reminding us again
why we have come back to them so often over the years. This
guitar plays like a dream, the tones are a mile wide and deep,
and in every way it meets and exceeds our expectations for a
Gibson Custom Shop guitar. The Memphis Custom Shop also
got the appearance details right, from the VOS sunburst finish, aged binding, mahogany stain on the rims, neck and back,
and the long pickguard. Best of all, as the original Gibson ad
proclaimed, the Thinline just ‘feels right.’ We hope the journey
we have taken together in this edition of the Quest will result
in you discovering the joys of playing a 335-style guitar yourself, if you haven’t already. Quest forth…TQ
Resources
For a video tour of the Memphis Custom Shop:
www.gibson.com/_microsite/electricspanish/memphisVids02.
html
Need a Plek treatment? Joe Glaser, Nashville, TN
1-615-298-1139, [email protected]
Excellent Larry Carlton lessons can be found on Youtube
titled “Larry Carlton - 335 Improv”
Recommended Shuggie Otis 335 tracks on Youtube include
“Slow Goonbash Blues”, “Shuggies’ Boogie”, “Me and My
Woman” and “Sweet Thang.”
See “Cream Farewell Concert 1968” on Youtube
(51 minutes)
captures the classic liquid tones of Leo Fender’s Jazzmaster,
which is kinda the polar opposite of a big 335, in’t it?
We also dedicated nearly an entire issue to the Jazzmaster in
February 2007, and for good reason. Yeah, the tremolo and
bridge assembly were not the best, but the tones certainly
were and remain so if you’re fond of the full fidelity of the Fullerton sound at its finest. The Jazzmaster doesn’t quite sound
like a Tele or a Strat, but there is a lot of both lurking in those
big pickups, along with a signature tone that is just bigger,
wetter, sweeter and more organically orgasmic, and that’s why
we love to love the Jazzmaster. Roy Bowen and his partner
Scott Leedy at RS Guitarworks like ‘em, too, so they set out to
see if they couldn’t create their own unique design with a nod
to the original Jazzmaster minus some of the quirks, and a few
unique touches of their own. Listen…
“As much as I love the Jazzmaster from owning over thirty of
them, I’ve never bonded with the rocker bridge and trem and
it was the single reason Scott and I had not built one. Taurus
Corporation (our distributor in Japan) asked us if we would
build some Jazzmaster-inspired guitars with the RS twist to
them, so from that came the Surfmaster ‘57 (a fictional ‘what
if’ ash with maple neck version) the Surfmaster ‘61 and
the Surfmaster HT. The HT was our spin on what a hardtail
Jazzmaster would have been like and we really love how it
turned out.
For information on vintage 335s and great pix see:
www.es-335.net
RS Guitarworks Surfmaster HT
We realize that some of you may already own a comely ESthinline, or perhaps you don’t and won’t for some perfectly
good reason unknown to us… That’s fine, and for you we’ve
added a lagniappe that in many ways is every bit the sonic
equal of a great 335, but in this case one that thoroughly
The pickups are basically Lindy Fralin’s
standard vintage
Jazzmaster set, but with
a slightly underwound
neck and weakened
Alnico V magnets. I
love them because they
really capture the sound
of the best vintage
Jazzmasters I’ve owned,
but with better detail.
The bridge used on the
HT is made right here
-continued-
23
guitars
in central Kentucky just for us and it’s a variation of the bridge
we use on our SolarFlair guitar. We call it a ‘Sustainmaster’
bridge and it’s machined out of a solid billet of 7075 aluminum for the best transfer of string vibration into the body. We
offer the ‘61 and 57 models with roller bridges and a modified
traditional Jazzmaster Trem, but we wanted the HT to be a
solid guitar without all the bugs that come along with the vintage guitars. Like all RS guitars, the Surfmasters are built to
order and sold direct here in the US, so the customer can pick
any vintage color (from just about any company) and many
custom colors and sparkle finishes. Neck shape can also be
chosen from four other standard shapes we offer. The radius
can be ordered in 10” (standard), 7.25” or 12” with any fret
size (6105 is standard) as long as they are not stainless. The
HT retails for $2695, the ‘57 and ‘61 retail for $2795, but our
direct price is slightly less running in the $2200-$2400 range.
Review
Imagine sliding into the deep end of a shimmering cool blue
pool and that’s what we experienced playing the ice blue metallic Surfmaster through our ‘66 Deluxe Reverb. We love the
Surfmaster, and especially for what it does beyond the realm
of typical ‘surf ’ guitar tones.
Of course the contoured
alder hardtail body fits
like no other whether you
are standing or sitting, and
at 7.2 pounds the Surfmaster exacts no tolls on the
torso. The neck and fingerboard are a work of art
with a perfectly rounded
shape that is larger than a
vintage Jazzmaster neck,
with taller frets, and a dark
rosewood slab that feels
and plays like a custombuilt guitar should, and far
better than any Jazzmaster
we’ve ever played. They nailed the neck.
We also really like the simple hardtail bridge and 3-barrel
saddles, the single toggle switch, volume and tone controls.
Nothing fussy or unnecessary. Oh, and they couldn’t resist
placing a 2-position slider tone switch on the upper horn –
down for ‘normal’ and up for treble roll-off that makes the
Surfmaster sound kinda like an old Harmony Bobcat. Call it
the ‘cheap guitar switch.’ You can milk some very interesting
bluesy stuff there, and especially with a fuzz or overdrive for
1965 garage band tone. It’s actually very cool.
The Fralin Jazzmaster pickups are ridiculously sick, which
doesn’t surprise us
because we know
Lindy Fralin and he is
a huge fan of Fender
clean tones. The bridge
pickup is bright, but not
in the metallic microphonic style of a Tele,
or thin and piercing like
many Strat bridge pickups. There is some serious depth and clarity in
the Surfmaster bridge,
and when you combine
it with the under-wound
neck pickup, game
over (as in “Wicked
Game.”) No other guitar sounds quite like this, except this one
switched to the neck pickup. The clarity, fidelity and depth of
the neck pickup is stunning, so lush, reedy and defined that
you can almost hear the wrap on the wound strings vibrating
in concert with the shimmering, quivering treble overtones
on top. The Surfmaster beautifully claims its own space in
panoramic wide-glide high fidelity, perfectly crafted and conceived, versatile beyond words with a big, woody, translucent
hardtail voice that will never be mistaken for another guitar.
Yes, Jimi, we shall hear surf music again… Surf’s up, ya’ll… TQ
www.rsguitarworks.net, 1-859-737-5300
REVIEW
Eastwood Guitars
It’s been five years and
change since we first
spoke with founder Mike
Robinson about the evolution of myrareguitars.com
and Eastwood guitars for
our February 2006 cover
story. Since then Eastwood
guitars has expanded
well beyond Robinson’s
original vision of producing reproductions of rare
guitars that are “better
than the originals.” An obsession with ‘wacky’ Japanese models that could
be bought for $100-$300
ten years ago evolved
-continued-
24
guitars
to include Mosrites, Valco Airline models, Ovation UltraGPs, designs by Univox and Tokai, Supros, and obscure ‘60s
guitars from Europe like the rare Wandre. Today, Eastwood
remains a successful and vibrant manufacturing and distribution operation based in Toronto, and we asked Mike Robinson
to comment on the remarkable growth of his company…
TQR:
Your catalog of different guitar models has grown
quite a bit since we last spoke six years ago. Are
the guitars still being built by the original factory,
and what changes or enhancements have you made
in design and manufacturing? What should players who may be unfamiliar with your guitars know
about the quality of construction and components?
Yes, our catalog has grown significantly since then – we now
have over 50 different models, each in 3 or 4 colors – back
then we had about 15 models. In the very early years, most
of our budget models were made in a Chinese factory. As we
added the Airline brand to the Eastwood stable, we migrated
most of these to a high-end boutique Korean factory to ensure
a consistent quality. Today, the bulk of our top selling models
are still being produced in the same Korean factory.
These days most Korean guitar factories
are producing very
high quality guitars
and continue to improve year after year.
However, some guitar
brands are migrating
production to China
in order to cut costs,
while we seem to be
moving in the opposite
direction. I’ve found that it is all about relationships with the
manufacturer. We have built a solid working rapport with our
Korean engineers and this is paying off with consistently outstanding product reviews. We continue to expand production
and each year introduce some new models – some of which are
produced from alternate factories in China and Indonesia, but
the design and quality control for these projects are still managed by our engineering team in Canada and overseen by our
Korean factory. They have full responsibility for the production
and final quality assurance for all production facilities.
Over the years we have also continued to take steps to keep
ahead of the technological curve. Quality components such
as Bigsby licensed tremolos and custom made Airline
pickups are found in the full range of guitars. We recently
started shipping our Airline ’59 Custom series with TonePros
bridges, Wilkinson tuners and other minor upgrades that
keep our guitars at a professional level.
TQR:
Do you feel that you have managed to cover all
the retro designs that first inspired you to create
Eastwood, or are there more ahead?
You might be surprised to see how long the list of guitars is on
my “to-do” list. Even if we did five new models every year, I’d
never get through this list in my lifetime! Many of our new
models come from recommendations from our employees and
customers; they understand the style and vibe of Eastwood.
When researching new models, there are always three basic
hurdles that need to be achieved before we consider moving
forward. First, is it possible from a trademark and patent point
of view? This hurdle shuts down most ideas in the early stages.
If we get past that step, I look at the value of the original version we are trying to replicate. If we cannot bring to market a
better guitar at half the cost, then we will not proceed. As many
of the originals still sell for under $1,000, why would someone
pay almost as much for a replica? Thirdly, I then look at the
market potential. This is a gut feel procedure, but after 20 years
of www.myrareguitars.com and www.eastwoodguitars.com, I
would like to think I’m getting pretty good at this.
We have been expanding
our existing range in other
ways, taking our top selling
models and finding ways
to take them up a notch.
Rather than just make a
cool replica, we’ve found
that a lot of professional
players are starting to take
notice of the brand – not
just for its cool replica
value, but for its professional design and playability. For example, last fall
Randy Bachman contacted
us to share his ideas about
his Airline Tuxedo guitar. He loved the guitar, but offered a few
ideas to make it even better. So this spring we introduced the
Tux Deluxe which incorporated Randy’s upgrades – a zero fret,
headstock binding, upgraded tailpiece and a unique coil tap in
the P-90 pickups. So now we have something that has taken
the cool retro look of a late 50’s guitar, but made it much better
than the original could ever have been. We also released the
Warren Ellis Signature Tenor guitar this year. It was ridiculously successful. Who would have thought? Not me, but as a music
fan and long time follower of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I
had to follow my gut and go with Warren’s idea. It has opened
up a whole new group of players/customers to our brand and I
plan to continue looking for new opportunities like this.
TQR:
Which models are the most popular, and do you
have any particular favorites?
-continued-
25
guitars
Historically,
the Airline 2P
and the Classic
series have
been the most
popular. Our
initial success with the
Airline brand
was certainly
helped along
with the popularity of The White Stripes. That little 2 pickup
red Airline model just flew off the shelves from 2003-2008.
It still does, as we upgraded it to the ’59 Custom, adding
some nice cosmetic touches – rubber body binding, vintage
style chrome switch plate and we also add the Airline Vintage
Voiced Single Coil pickups. Jack White might have helped
kick start it, but the guitar now stands on its own and will
continue to be one of our top sellers.
The Classic series of 6 and 12 string models have always done
well. Perhaps because of the “poor man’s Gretsch” appeal, but
with many bands using these guitars, I think it holds it own
with any semi-hollow body guitar under $1,000, and ours is
under $500! The Classic 4 Bass is also a hot selling model.
Simple design, short scale semi-hollow bass is really a 60’s
retro hit and is by far our top selling bass.
More recently, the Airline MAP and the Tuxedo have moved
up into the top five ranking. Both of them are finding homes
with professional players. I think this is because they are completely unique in a player’s arsenal. The MAP has somewhat
of a Les Paul feel, but a zero-fret gives the neck an incredibly
comfortable touch and the balance of the guitar is quite remarkable. It is perhaps the most comfortable guitar we make,
and the tone is monstrous. It continues to get great reviews.
The other interesting thing about the Airline MAP is you can
see it being used professionally in country bands, rock bands,
shredder bands, and even out on tour with Lady Gaga.
The Tuxedo – which is my personal favorite – is the one I
am most proud of. It is like nothing else out there. It is a full
hollow body guitar but without f-holes. It is much smaller
than most hollow body guitars, so it quite comfortable. It has
P-90’s which is rare in a full hollow body guitar, and with this
design you can have the most exotic controlled feedback I
have ever found in any guitar. This is why this guitar is so successful because it is like nothing else you have and when you
play it, you begin to realize how versatile it can be compared
to all the other guitars you might own.
TQR:
What have been the most significant challenges and
surprises that have come with the growth and success of Eastwood?
There have been many challenges along the way, but surprisingly none too big to discourage me in any way. Of course
with all the successful models, we have had a few duds. It is
inevitable. I look at these duds as “one day collector items”,
but that is perhaps overly optimistic. There are a few models
out there where we made small initial runs – less than 48
pieces – and then they were cut from the lineup right away.
So perhaps in 40 years someone might wonder, “What the
hell is this Eastwood guitar? When was it made? How many?
I wonder if it is worth anything.” Who knows? All I know is
that I’ve kept one of everything, so hopefully my son Troy will
hang on to them when I’m gone!
I very pleased with the way things have gone for us here at
Eastwood. Even with the 2008 credit crunch – which was as
painful for us as everyone else – we have managed to continue
to grow the brand and introduce our cool stuff to new customers every day. At the heart of it though is one thing - it is still
so much fun to be doing this. I like the direct contact with
customers, artists and bands. It’s always been about the music
for me. I listen to music 90% of my waking hours (except on
the golf course, my other passion) and it is constantly inspiring me to grow this business. I remember thinking back in
my early 20’s that this whole “rock ‘n roll” obsession would
surely wear off as I grew older. I was wrong. Thirty years later
I still get excited about seeing a live band, meeting pro players
and just being involved in this industry. We all feel this way at
Eastwood – although many of us have different tastes, it’s still
all about the music – it happens that the business affords us
the ability to stay in the sandbox.
Airline Map
Memories of
our first electric,
a ‘64 National
Westwood (the
cheaper single
pickup model)
came to life
when we opened
the case for the
Eastwood Airline
MAP., which
true to Mike
Robinson’s vision,
does indeed
seem better than
an original. The
Eastwood MAP is designed to honor the top-of-the-line dual
pickup ‘62 National Newport, and while these Korean-made
guitars neither feel or look cheap, bargains they are. As usual,
we noted the buzz-free, low factory setup and promptly raised
-continued-
26
guitars
the action, which, as usual, enhanced the acoustic volume
unplugged and allowed us to get under the strings a bit and
also break out a slide in G. Low action is so overrated… The
7.85 pound Airline MAP is built to a standard that feels and
looks comparable to a contemporary Gretsch from the Terada
factory. Available in seafoam green, red, black and white, the
nicely contoured Airline body is chambered mahogany with
a bound, bolt-on maple neck, rosewood fingerboard with
block inlays, 24 3/4” scale and 1 11/16” nut. The pickups
are described as Alnico ‘Hot-10’ humbuckers with a 3-way
switch, dual volume and single tone controls. The bridge is a
licensed Bigsby tremolo with roller bridge, tuners are nickel/
chrome Grover style. Price $799.00 US.
Airline Tuxedo
The $799.00
Tuxedo pays
tribute to the
original mid
‘50s Barney
Kessel sold
as both
Airline and
Kay models.
Fully hollow
with a maple
top and back
with mahogany sides,
the Tuxedo
weighs just
6.75 pounds
and feels
extraordinarily comfortable and familiar straight out of the case
like few other guitars we have played. Like the Airline Map, the
neck is bound maple with a rosewood fingerboard and block
markers with a longer 25 1/2” scale. The Tuxedo features two
‘Custom Hi-Output’ P90s, dual volume and single tone controls, tune-o-matic bridge, a trapeze tailpiece and vintage-style
open back tuners. In all respects the Tuxedo is a dynamite little
classic with a look that is just too cool, right down to the funky
trapeze that extends nearly to the bridge. Both Airlines feature
moderately slim necks, and were we to wish for any changes,
we’d ask for a slightly chunkier neck shape.
lines are not among them. The guitars and the pickups rock.
Like our old National, we feasted off the neck pickup in particular on the Map guitar. Measuring 8.13K, it’s a huge sounding beast with surprising clarity, and when you move your
pick attack closer to the bridge at the front edge of the pickup,
the Alnico humbucker jumps with a solid dose of treble
presence and bite. The combined middle setting is equally
satisfying for a great rhythm chunk tone. The bridge pickup
measures a whopping 13K and sounds more like a single coil
than the usual humbucker, with strong treble presence and a
reedy vocal tone that is quite unique – sharp in a good way
and anything but shy. Further reflection led us to conclude
that it is similar to the sound of an old ‘60s humbucker found
on National guitars and lapsteels, but with stronger output and
a more aggressive tone that is bolder, more confident and strident than the old pickups ever were. Our sole complaint with
the Airline Map is the rather stiff feel and narrow range of the
Bigsby – you really have to lean on it to get a good wobble.
Otherwise, the Airline Map works for us in every way. It’s a
great $800 guitar that won’t languish in the case.
The Tuxedo is a phenomenal instrument for blues, rootsy
toneful music, slide and anything else short of metal and high
gain rock. The better your ears and chops, the more likely you
are to love it. We immediately cranked the bridge much higher
than the original setup, the guitar came to life and we can say
with confidence that you probably haven’t heard a guitar quite
like this. The lightweight maple and mahogany closed hollow
body really produces a unique acoustic-electric tone – loose
and jangly on the top, deep and vocal on the bottom. The
stout 8.72K neck and 8.56K bridge P90s add focus, definition and upper midrange overtones that create a captivating
soundstage, buoyed with a hollow acoustic dynamic sag that
spills over into subtle
harmonic feedback at
higher volume levels.
We love both of these
unique and exceptionally cool guitars. They
are extremely well built
and easy-playing, with
tones that deftly marry
the benefits of modern
quality control and consistency with the musical mystery of ‘vintage
cheap’ at its very best.
Quest forth…TQ
Tone
Well, well, well… If you should happen to be one of those
finicky guitarists who turn their nose up at anything from
Korea other than Bulgogi or Kimchi, it’s time to get your mind
right, because passing up these Airlines would be wrongheaded on all counts. Yes, there was a time when Asian guitars
were plagued with horrible pickups, but these Eastwood Air-
www.eastwood guitars.com
www.myrareguitars.com
416-294-6165
-continued-
27
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EDITORIAL BOARD
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Joe Bonamassa
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Butler Custom Sound
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The Toneman
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Germino Amplification
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ZZ Top
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Glaser Instruments
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Mambo Sons
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A Brown Soun
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Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitar Amplifers
René Martinez
The Guitar Whiz
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The Kentucky Headhunters
Richard McDonald
VP Mktg, Fender Musical Instruments
Joe Mloganoski
Co-Founder K&M Anaslog Designs
Gregg Hopkins
Justin Norvell
Mark Johnson
James Pennebaker
Vintage Amp Restoration
Delta Moon
Phil Jones
Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitars
Artist Relations, Fender Musical Instruments,
Nashville
Gruhn Guitars
Riverhorse
Mark Karan
Tommy Shannon
Robert Keeley
Todd Sharp
Hamer Guitars
Gordon Kennedy
Tim Shaw
Ronnie Earl
Ernest King
Steve Carr
Carr Amplifiers
Larry Cragg
Neil Young
Jol Dantzig
Dan Erlewine
Stewart-MacDonald
Bob Weir & Ratdog
Robert Keeley Electronics
Gibson Custom Shop
Chris Kinman
Double Trouble
Nashville Amp Service
Fender Musical Instruments Corp.
John Sprung
American Guitar Center
Kinman AVn Pickups
Peter Stroud
Mike Kropotkin
Buddy Whittington
Klon Centaur
Sonny Landreth
Greg V
Lindy Fralin
Albert Lee
Peter Frampton
Adrian Legg
Larry Fishman
Fishman Transducers
Bill Finnegan
KCA NOS Tubes
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Nashville
Lou Vito
Dave Malone
The Radiators
The ToneQuest Report™ (ISSN 1525-3392) is published monthly by Mountainview Publishing LLC, P.O. Box 717 Decatur, GA. 30031-0717, 1-877-MAX-TONE,
email: [email protected]. Periodicals Postage Paid at Decatur, GA and At Additional Mailing Offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to:TheToneQuest
Report™, PO Box 717, Decatur, GA. 30031-0717.The annual subscription fee for The ToneQuest Report™ is $89 per year for 12 monthly issues. International
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ToneQuest Report™ are not necessarily those of this publication.Mention of specific products, services or technical advice does not constitute an endorsement.
Readers are advised to exercise extreme caution in handling electronic devices and musical instruments.
28

guitars - The ToneQuest Report

Transcription

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