NGD - '64 Historic ES345 w/bigsby Olive Drab (pics Pg2)

[Musjagjazz]

Despot - Memory is not what it used to be, enjoy the guitar!

Kosmonautmayhem - have the Soft Spring on my Gretsch, love it.

[zhivago]

Very cool guitar, and I love the colour!

I totally missed this thread, being busy with work and life lately. Good to see spot #3 is filled!!

I have a total soft spot for ES345s...usually in Sunburst (or Blonde), but this Olive Drab one just works for me...more than the light blue I think they did round the same time?

[Despot]

Thanks Yannis.

They did this model in five variations iirc - there was the OD, white (same as LP Custom), seafoam green (looks awful) and frost blue (which is sort of a Gibson version of Sonic Blue - don't think it's metallic) as well as cherry red. The cherry red is the vintage correct colour - they offered them with a stop tail in cherry but the most common one is with a varitone - I've seen most with the custom made plate ... but a few with the varitone and no custom made plate.

What's curious is that the prices on these are all over the place - if you go onto reverb there's a second hand version of mine selling for 100 euro more than mine cost new ... and new versions in other colours going for 1,500 more! This ... while Thomann are selling the other colours for the same or less than I paid for my green one. My version of it (in OD) seems to the second cheapest - the classic white one (with stop tail, varitone in mono) being the cheapest. Looks pretty decent.

I'm not a fan of the seafoam green or frost blue versions. What was surprising to me was that they didn't offer the 345 in 'traditional' vintage colour options - like Cardinal Red, Firehouse Red, Sparkling Burgundy or Pelham Blue. If this had been available in PB I'd have struggled in the choice between that and OD. Cardinal Red is a cool colour too - it's just different enough to catch the eye, being a block red rather than cherry with wood grain showing. But then I guess they've reissued 345s in PB, black, white (i.e. the usual colours) before - perhaps they were hoping to get some collector/repeat sales.

[Despot]

Actually ... now that I think on it, custom colours on ES models were pretty rare.

There were some black ones early on - and a few cherry ordered as 'custom' before it became the standard colour. You do see a good few post '65 guitars in Sparkling Burgundy ... and there are of course those Pelham Blue Trini Lopez guitars.

I recall that Chicago Music Exchange had a gold '67 or '68 ES355 with chrome hardware that looked pretty awesome.

I don't think I've ever seen an ES in flat reds like Cardinal Red ... or even a 335 in PB. Even white ... a relatively common custom colour on SGs ... I can't recall seeing a factory white ES from the '60s.

It's probably due to the market for the guitar. ES guitars were more expensive than SGs or Firebirds ... from what I recall of the pricing structure the next most expensive models were custom orders like Byrdlands or Super 400s - the big custom made jazz guitars. If folk had that much money to spend on a guitar they were probably not going to mess with a colour that they had never seen on an ES before - I mean ... if you were throwing down £200/£250 in the 1960s on a guitar (which represented a big purchase) would you take a chance on liking the colour you ordered from a colour sheet or would you go with sunburst/cherry? Similarly if you were a store ordering in the '60s and you were ordering stock to hang on your wall ... would you order the colours that people were buying for your more expensive guitars or try something different knowing that it could hang there a lot longer...

[shadowplay]

In short - I love it. This is the nicest new Gibson I've played in quite some time - and only the second time I've bought a new Gibson. I'm going to have to decide whether I love this more than the old ES345 - but what it does allow me to do is to keep the ES345 in the hope of selling it down the line ... not as an immediate need, but as a 'fall back' if we need more cash to work on the house in a year or two. If I had to let my vintage ES345 go I wouldn't feel too hard done by having this.

sounds like you've got something to take the pain out of selling the old one if you have to. I've been in a similar situation with an old car (69' 911S) I'd had for 20 years but had become worth more than a dozen times what I paid for it. I ended up selling it and the DS I had at the time to take the edge off a house move mortgage and at the time I was pretty happy to do it but it still hurt badly. With me it worked out in the end because while I adored that car, it was pretty much just the limit of my ambition and budget when I bought it and the true cars of my heart came from further south.

I had no hopes of getting anything similar but letting the car go, avoiding debt and buying and selling cars led me down a path where suddenly my dreams were somehow possible and I'd bet that some time down the road you'd find a way back to your old ES345 or better if you ever had to let it go.

I sold a really nice Olive Land Rover S3 recently which would have been perfect for ferrying your ES and for trips to the DIY shed! It wasn't ex military drab, it was originally special ordered in gloss Olive by a country estate for ferrying fly fishers about. Non surplus olive ones are quite rare, I've a Bronze green (S3) that's nearly finished and pre-sold and a mid grey (s3) which given the RUC spec colour probably isn't the right image in Eire and one I'm probably keeping for myself.

D

[Despot]

That spec only matters north of the border D - here in the leafy Dublin suburbs that association is a long way off! It's only 90 minutes’ drive north but sometimes the difference can seem like an Atlantic crossing.

I've always been tempted by those by the way - I long to be able to drive something with a little more character than my current diesel box ... but unfortunately Lady Despot has zero interest in cars. If it were down to me (and I'm still adjusting to the idea that decisions are not unilateral anymore) I'd have something along those lines regardless of how seldom I manage to get to parts of Ireland that really warrant a Land Rover.

That being said (and we're now getting into total off-topic territory) I picked up a book recently that's been a godsend in terms of our exploring of Ireland - it's called Stopping By Woods - a complete encyclopaedia of Ireland's fairly extensive publically managed woodlands - complete with maps of the woods, descriptions of what you can expect to find there and useful information like access/parking etc. Basically we're using this as our "what shall we do today" guide at weekends. Perhaps if I pitch it as part of Operation Woodland Idylls I could sneakily bring her around to my way of thinking re: Defenders...

[shadowplay]

Perhaps if I pitch it as part of Operation Woodland Idylls I could sneakily bring her around to my way of thinking re: Defenders...

My Landies were always frowned upon until we started spending a lot of time in the sticks, then suddenly Lady Shadowplay thought they were a good idea. Not the old ones mind, no matter what I do to them she's not interested in them to the power ten but in winter I'm not allowed to drive 'Larry'* our Stornoway grey Land Rover 90 SWB XS Stationwagon when there's any kind of met office weather warning lest she want to use it.

Anyway, I'm really glad you've got on with your guitar, I like that it's not a straight reissue, I'd like to see more guitars in non original colours, don't get me wrong I like custom colours on old guitars but I struggle to feel even a glimmer of interest in old colours on new reissues.

D

*called Larry because it's identical to the one the mad farmer Larry has in Detectrorists.

[Arthon]

I really like the Olive Drab color. I prefer it to cherry red or sunburst on es 335-345-3555. I think it suit the guitar better.

You are also right about the mhs pickups. I have a Es-175 '59 and they suit the guitar so well. I prefer those pickups to every HB I have tried on a Gibson or a Fender. I would like to tried those MHS pickups on a R7-R9 Les Paul.

I never really like the Varitone thought. Too much options. Can you bypass it?

[Despot]

The varitone on these is a different circuit than on the old ones - for a start it's mono (so no need for a stereo to mono conversion cable), but it's also wired as true bypass when in the '1' position (as opposed to the old ones where even in 'bypass' the capacitors can still have some influence on the sound depending on whether or not they've started to drift/bleed ... supposedly).

I find it useful to be honest Arthon - particularly the 2 and 3 positions - after that it thins out too much ... but the 2 setting on the bridge has Telecaster like honk, and 3 on the neck is lovely too. Given that it's completely out of the circuit in setting 1 I've no issue with it ... it's always nice to have extra sounds on tap.

[Arthon]

The varitone on these is a different circuit than on the old ones - for a start it's mono (so no need for a stereo to mono conversion cable), but it's also wired as true bypass when in the '1' position (as opposed to the old ones where even in 'bypass' the capacitors can still have some influence on the sound depending on whether or not they've started to drift/bleed ... supposedly).

I find it useful to be honest Arthon - particularly the 2 and 3 positions - after that it thins out too much ... but the 2 setting on the bridge has Telecaster like honk, and 3 on the neck is lovely too. Given that it's completely out of the circuit in setting 1 I've no issue with it ... it's always nice to have extra sounds on tap.

Nice to know.

[Musjagjazz]

I didn't know much about the Varitone circuit till you posted your NGD

Found out what it does exactly:

Position 1: Bypass, Position 2: 5db-1950Hz, Position 3: 12db at 1100Hz, Position 4: 16db at 620Hz, Position 5: 18.5db at 360Hz, Position 6: 21db at 120HZ.

Full article here:

https://reverb.com/ca/news/the-varitone ... son-es-345

[zhivago]

Thanks Yannis.

They did this model in five variations iirc - there was the OD, white (same as LP Custom), seafoam green (looks awful) and frost blue (which is sort of a Gibson version of Sonic Blue - don't think it's metallic) as well as cherry red. The cherry red is the vintage correct colour - they offered them with a stop tail in cherry but the most common one is with a varitone - I've seen most with the custom made plate ... but a few with the varitone and no custom made plate.

What's curious is that the prices on these are all over the place - if you go onto reverb there's a second hand version of mine selling for 100 euro more than mine cost new ... and new versions in other colours going for 1,500 more! This ... while Thomann are selling the other colours for the same or less than I paid for my green one. My version of it (in OD) seems to the second cheapest - the classic white one (with stop tail, varitone in mono) being the cheapest. Looks pretty decent.

I'm not a fan of the seafoam green or frost blue versions. What was surprising to me was that they didn't offer the 345 in 'traditional' vintage colour options - like Cardinal Red, Firehouse Red, Sparkling Burgundy or Pelham Blue. If this had been available in PB I'd have struggled in the choice between that and OD. Cardinal Red is a cool colour too - it's just different enough to catch the eye, being a block red rather than cherry with wood grain showing. But then I guess they've reissued 345s in PB, black, white (i.e. the usual colours) before - perhaps they were hoping to get some collector/repeat sales.

Seafood Green!? My god what were they thinking!!?

Cardinal Red is incredible on Gibsons. There was a guy a few years ago that refinished a 50s LP conversion in Cardinal Red and it just looked amazing!!!

I find it hard to keep up with new Gibsons...not only is the pricing all over the place, but also the different names of the models has me all mixed up...I can sort of keep up in the reissue field (although even there they have different grade models), but then they make all these crazy runs...it's weird!

[zhivago]

I don't think I've ever seen an ES in flat reds like Cardinal Red ... or even a 335 in PB. Even white ... a relatively common custom colour on SGs ... I can't recall seeing a factory white ES from the '60s.

Cardinal Red was a Firebird colour mostly, I think...there probably is the odd guitar out there knowing gibson, but on ES guitars it looks like Black was probably the rarest.

There are a few old ES guitars that were actual red, and not Cherry...they are very few too.

I am guilty of loving the boring colours...I love aged Blonde Gibsons...ES 345s in Blonde were moderately rare too I guess

[Despot]

I didn't know much about the Varitone circuit till you posted your NGD

Found out what it does exactly:

Position 1: Bypass, Position 2: 5db-1950Hz, Position 3: 12db at 1100Hz, Position 4: 16db at 620Hz, Position 5: 18.5db at 360Hz, Position 6: 21db at 120HZ.

Full article here:

https://reverb.com/ca/news/the-varitone ... son-es-345

Yeah - another good source is www.es-335.org ... Charlie Gelber’s 335 website. It’s an awesome resource for this sort of thing as he’s entirely devoted to ES guitars. He linked to a test conducted on old varitone circuits a few years ago - I think the conclusion was that the bypass position wasn’t entirely ‘clean’ of the capacities but the actual effect was minimal (and certainly to minimal to be noticeable), but that cap values drifting (particularly on the some years) leads to the varitone notched positions sounding weaker than intended.

Varitones are extremely usable - I mean, why wouldn’t you want to have extra sounds if the only downside is the little bit extra weight from the choke for the circuit (which seldom seems to impact resonance in any way)?

[Despot]

Cardinal Red was a Firebird colour mostly, I think...there probably is the odd guitar out there knowing gibson, but on ES guitars it looks like Black was probably the rarest.

There are a few old ES guitars that were actual red, and not Cherry...they are very few too.

I am guilty of loving the boring colours...I love aged Blonde Gibsons...ES 345s in Blonde were moderately rare too I guess

32 natural in ‘59, 18 in ‘60. So ... rare.

Incidentally they only made 102 sunburst in 1962, of which mine is one. Crazy when you see production numbers like that!