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Gibson ES-335 Guitars
The reputation of the Gibson guitar company as primarily built on its excellent jazz-orientated hollow body electrics. The company's Les Paul guitar was a radical, but reluctant, step forward. With 1958's ES335 Gibson showed they could fuse the two traditions, delivering one of the most versatile guitars ever made.
The ES335 was a unique synthesis of solid and hollow body electric guitar, equally at home in sophisticated jazz or high volume rock'n'roll settings. For this reason it would prove Gibson's most enduring classic, its slim body, symmetrical double cutaways and central sustain block defining forever the shape and construction of the 'semi-acoustic' guitar. As one of Gibson's best/selling professional instruments, the ES335 has never acquired the rarity value-or cachet-of the company's Les Paul Standard, but perhaps the ultimate tribute to this classic instrument came from Fender, who'd done so much to launch Gibson into the solid electric guitar business. They launched their own derivative, the Starcaster, in 1976.
By Melanie Bradley
