The Gibson ES-335

Guitar box central at OK Guitars. I reuse them and reuse them until they literally fall down. Then I recycle.

OK, what does Earth Day have to do with vintage guitars? Playing vintage is, after all, a recycling victory. But not totally. I have a few ideas and observations about recycling that have impacted me and I’d like you to be aware of them. I’ve always been something of an environmentalist-at least in thought and deed. I’ve never been an activist but I dutifully and regularly recycle just about everything. This is where you come in, vintage guitar folks. You can help.

I suppose there’s some comfort in the fact that everything in my inventory is used so that no trees are being cut to make the guitars I sell and no PCBs are being dumped into rivers to make semiconductors to manufacture the amps I sell. Small contribution, I know but there’s more. I ship about 60-70 guitars and amps a year. Each one requires packing material and a box (and usually some miles of driving either by me or the Fedex man). Packing materials are notoriously environmentally unfriendly but the safety of the guitars I sell is pretty important as well. Vintage cases don’t protect guitars very well. It would be ideal if everybody could agree to have their guitars shipped in a modern case by a shipper who is careful. Not gonna happen. So, we pack and we use horribly non biodegradable stuff to do it. But we can still minimize the impact by being sensible and creative.

Packing peanuts are horrible in nearly every way but they work really well and I sometimes use them for guitars but I never fill the box with them. I always leave enough room so the guitar can be pulled out of the box without a single piece hitting the floor. OK, maybe one or two escape. The idea is that you can get your guitar out of the box, dump the peanuts into a plastic bag and use them again. I never throw them away. And I never, ever use peanuts to pack an amp and if I ever get another amp packed in peanuts, it goes right back to the seller. The heavy amp crushes the peanuts into tiny pulverized styrofoam, static charged, clingy little bastards that get into every corner of the amp, every corner of my garage and stick to every article of clothing I wear when I unpack. Even the dog was covered with styrofoam bits when a tweed Bassman came from California packed in styrofoam peanuts, the worst kind. They get outside, they get into the river and the wildlife and they don’t go away. I know there are biodegradable peanuts out there and that’s a much better choice. So, if you’re going to use them for guitars (which don’t crush them into little pieces), use them more than once and try to use the biodegradable ones made from corn starch.

Much less annoying is the bubble wrap. It works great and doesn’t make nearly the mess that peanuts do. Use it more than once. I know it gets covered with packing tape and its a complete pain to remove all the tape but I do it all the time and I re-use bubble wrap until there are no bubbles left. I buy these huge rolls of what they call “kraft paper”. It does a great job of keeping the guitar from moving around the box and I use it over and over again. I probably have paper that’s been used 7 or 8 times. As long as your packing material fills the voids in the box, it will be effective at protecting the guitar.

And the box. Guitar boxes can be used as many as a dozen times before they become ineffective at their assigned duty. Recycle them when they no longer are stiff enough to protect the guitar and if the bottom becomes rounded. Huh? Yes, if the bottom becomes rounded and the box won’t stand on end, it’s time to retire it. A box with a guitar in it that easily tips over is, essentially, the same as dropping the guitar (in its case) from 4 feet in the air, flat on its back or face. This is an excellent way to break the headstock off or at least crack it. I’ve been pretty lucky with getting my guitars to clients in one piece. Only one busted guitar out of hundreds-and it was pretty minor. I’ve been less lucky with guitars shipped to me by others-5 broken guitars-again, out of hundreds.

So, let’s see if we can find a happy place where we re-use packing materials in a environmentally conscious way and still protect our instruments. Our environment is a lot more important than a bunch of old guitars. Our current EPA is a joke (or worse) and, truthfully, we, not the government, are the stewards of Earth.  So, do your part and be nice to our planet. Just don’t ship me an amp in packing peanuts. I mean it.

And here’s packing material central at OK Guitars. Everything gets used until it no longer functions in its capacity to minimize damage. Then it gets recycled.

The little “2” is lightly stamped into the headstock right in the middle of the “open book” shape at the top.

Back in 2012, I wrote a post about the “factory seconds” that turn up every once in a while identified by the little numeral “2” stamped on the back of the headstock. Since I wrote that post, I’ve learned a little more about how things were done at Gibson back in the Kalamazoo days. I had the good fortune, a while back, to speak with a gentleman who worked in the paint department there in the mid 60’s. In the course of our not very long discussion, I had the opportunity to ask a few questions and get a little bit of an education into how things worked back then.

I think that everyone assumes that the “2” means factory second but apparently it doesn’t-or at least it doesn’t only mean that. Like most companies who turn out a product for consumption by the general public, there is a quality control department whose job it is to make sure the product is up to a defined minimum acceptable standard. I don’t know if there were two QC people or 20 but it is clear that they didn’t have to work too terribly hard based on the relatively small number of guitars I’ve come across with that little “2” on them. I don’t keep close track of it but out of perhaps 600 ES guitars that have passed through me and my shop, I would guess that no more than 12 to perhaps 16 have had the “2”. That’s a little more than 1 out of 50. Well, if it doesn’t quite mean factory second, what does it mean? Well, according to the gentleman I spoke to, it means it went back to the paint booth a second time to fix a finish issue. That could mean covering a flaw in the wood by expanding the opaque area of the sunburst, it could mean buffing out or re-spraying a drip or flaw in the clear coat, or it could mean that the finish wasn’t up to standards and had to be completely redone. Unfortunately, they don’t include an explanation.

But wait, there’s more. Apparently, if an employee wanted to buy a Gibson guitar, he was able to do so at a discount but he (or she) was only allowed to buy one that had a flaw-a factory second. It was, according to my source, quite common for an employee to go to the paint guy and ask the paint guy to tell the QC guy that there was a problem and to stamp a particular guitar with a “2” so the employee could take it home at a discount. I’m told that a few dollars may have changed hands or maybe not. So, assuming this is true (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) we have some “2” designated guitars with no issues of any kind.  That might explain why you generally can’t find the flaw when you get one of these into your hands. In fact, out of the 12 or so I can recall, only 3 had obviously been redone. All three had very deep sunbursts with an unusually large  band of opaque brown/black in the burst. These are very distinctive and quite wonderful. They have a look similar to the old pre-war sunburst you see on some early J-45’s and LG’s and Nick Lucas’s.

In general, the “2” designation doesn’t affect the value much, if at all. A finish that was done twice at the factory is still a factory original finish. In fact Fenders that have a custom color over sunburst are quite desirable-at least enough that Fender is doing on purpose on their relic guitars. To further the point, I had a 59 with a very distinctive deep sunburst that had the “2” that was one of the top ten 335’s I’ve ever had. So, I don’t avoid the 335’s with the little “2” on the headstock. Mostly, I ignore it but sometimes, it gets me a very distinctive sunburst that will set the guitar apart from the hundreds of others made that year.

This “2” 335 is an early 59 and had a flaw in the grain on the top down below the tailpiece about an inch from the rim. A normal sunburst would not have covered it, so it went back to the paint booth for another go around. The flaw is still visible under black light but not with the naked eye.

Mint 58 lefty that I authenticated a few years ago. A stunningly beautiful guitar. How did it play? Beats me, I couldn’t play it.

Recently I was asked by a reader if I had ever written a post about left handed ES guitars and I don’t recall if I have or not but it’s a good subject. There have been plenty of greats who were/are lefties. Some played right handed, some played a right handed guitar turned upside down (either strung lefty or righty) and some played left handed guitars. Jimi played a righty guitar strung lefty and turned upside down but Dick Dale learned to play with a righty guitar turned upside down and still strung righty so the high strings were on top. Albert King apparently played that way as well. Wanna feel like a total spaz? Pick up a left handed guitar and try to play. Strung either way, it’s incredibly difficult-more so for a crappy player like me, although a lefty strung as a lefty is a lot easier. Take your righty guitar and turn it over and try to play. Total spaz, right?

It’s not hard to source a left handed 335 these days but back in the day, they were only available by special order and they are incredibly rare. They also command a pretty serious premium. I don’t recall exactly how many 335’s, 345’s and 355’s were made from 58 to 69 but they number in the thousands. I figure I’ve owned around 600 or so since I started doing this and I’ve had no lefties. In fact I’ve seen less than a dozen. I know of a couple of ’58’s. Left handed dealer Alex Pavchinski sent me a mint 335 lefty a few years back to authenticate and I know he had at least one more ’58. I know of maybe five lefty 345’s from ’59 to ’64. I know of at least one red ’64 335.  Of the two known block neck blonde 335’s, one is a righty ’63 (which I owned) and the other is a lefty ’64 owned by a gentleman who lives 40 minutes from my shop. I wish we’d gotten a photo of the two of them together while I had the ’63. There was a ’68 on Ebay a while back but I can’t think of any others off hand. So, that’s ten I can recall. I’m sure there are lots more but I’d be surprised if they numbered as many as 100 during that period. In fact, if you told me there were less than 50, I wouldn’t be surprised.

ES-335’s have been relatively popular among lefty players over the years probably because they are symmetrical-you don’t give up any fret access when you flip over a righty 335. And they don’t look funny upside down like a Telecaster or Les Paul does. But if you’re a left handed player and you want a left handed vintage 335, 345 or 355, be prepared to pay a serious upcharge. “Find another” pricing is in effect here. You can ask whatever you want and leave it up to the buyer to decide if a 50% or 100% or 300% markup is appropriate. Typically, the prices seem to be in the 50% to 100% (double) range for pre 65’s. There’s a ’60 345 on the market now for $47,000. I sold a very early right handed ’60 345 last week for $16,500, so you can do the math. Fair? Ambitious? Outrageous? You’ll have to decide because supply and demand is a fickle law when both the supply and the demand are so low. The 68 on Ebay was around $8000, if I recall, which didn’t seem out of line. I have no idea if it sold or what it sold for but it was listed for quite a long time. I’m told the $47000 60 345 has been listed for over a year-I just noticed it recently but I don’t actively seek out lefty guitars.

I just checked Reverb-no vintage lefty ES’s. I checked Gbase-one ’85 335. I checked Ebay-none. Considering the number of right handed vintage ES’s on the market at any given time, the number of lefties is miniscule. I’m very happy to have been born right handed. Things would be pretty dull sitting around my shop being unable to play all the great guitars I get. I’d have to learn how to play upside down.

This 63 355 was brought to me a few years ago for authentication. It turned out to have been a converted righty. A new nut and a new top are all you need to turn a righty to a lefty. Or you could just turn it upside down.