Gibson ES-339 Custom

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Gibson ES-339 Custom:
$1795.00

Spotless! Classic \'57s sound awesome! Ships in original Gibson Case.

A quest to wed the dark, rich tone of hollowbody guitars with the edgy command of solidbodies sparked the invention of the ES-335 in 1958, and the rest is history. In 2007, the Gibson Custom Shop revisited that historic mission. The result is the ES-339, a semi-hollowbody newcomer that has the size, power, and response resistant qualities of a solidbody guitar, yet sports the classic looks of Gibson’s great, vintage Electric Spanish models.

The ES-339’s ancestry in the ES-335 is apparent not only in its appearance and semi-hollowbody design, but in the ES-339’s slim neck profile. Nonetheless, the ES-339 is just as much a direct descendent of the more contemporary CS-336, which has back and sides carved from a single block of mahogany with a mahogany centerblock. The ES-339 is lighter and less costly thanks to its laminated figured maple, top, back, and rims and maple centerblock and weighing in at about eight pounds (This guitar weighs 6 lbs, 12 oz).

The ES-339 also boasts another small design improvement over classic ES-335 and ES-355 models – the input jack is mounted on the rim rather than on the body of the guitar.

While the historic look of vintage ES models is reflected in the ES-339’s finish options of caramel burst, antique red, and vintage sunburst, its 13-inches wide, 16-inches long, and 1 11/16th-inch deep body gives it solidbody dimensions. The neck is one-piece mahogany for classic Gibson resonance and sustain. There are 22 frets on the model’s rosewood fingerboard, which has pearloid dot inlays and a single-ply cream binding.

The “30/60” neck has the slim feel of an early ’60s Gibson, with an extra .030 inches of depth. The headstock sports tulip-style Kluson tuners. The neck’s scale length is 24-inches and a 1 11/16-inch width at the nut. It has multi-ply binding on top with single-ply on the back.

The other major Gibson innovation in the ES-339 is the patented Memphis Tone Circuit. Using a logarithmic system to analyze the way a guitar’s volume controls affect tone, the Custom Shop’s engineers developed special 500-k frequency audio taper pots to preserve high end as the volume decreases, giving the ES-339 a consistently sweeter, brighter, punchier tone than other guitars of its ilk as it gets quieter.

Besides the Memphis Tone Circuit, the ES-339 model’s electronics are pure Gibson: two ’57 Classic humbuckers, two volume pots, two tone pots, and a three-way selector switch. Additionally there’s an ABR-1 bridge and a stopbar tailpiece; all hardware in nickel.

The guitar comes inside a Custom Shop case, with a certificate of authenticity. And as with all Custom Shop guitars, each ES-339 is examined and dressed by a state-of-the-art Pleck machine before leaving the shop, guaranteeing the optimum ready-to-play condition.