The Gibson ES-335

Here's a B3, a B6 and a B7 Bigsby-all vintage plus the "short" hinge 3 screw hinge piece. I don't have a B5-that's the 'horseshoe' type you see on solid bodies. Only the B7 is correct Bigsby for a 335/345 and 355.

Does it make sense to anybody that a Stratocaster with a hardtail is less desirable than one with a trem but an ES-335 with a trem is worth 15%-25% less than a stop tail? Those of you who know me know I don’t like Maestros on a 335 but I kind of like the sideways as long as you don’t touch it. It looks cool, OK?  But a Bigsby, if you have the right one mounted is a pretty functional item. It makes a decent tailpiece so even if you don’t use it, it doesn’t crap up your tone. It changes it a little perhaps but not much. It makes it harder to string and it weighs 11 ounces which is a lot but it’s still a pretty durable invention considering how long they have been in use. Trems or vibratos as they should be called really weren’t all that popular until the early 60’s. The majority of 335s and 345s were stop tails. A lot of them got converted to Bigsbys later but by 1962, it seems that the Bigsby/Custom Made configuration was the default. A little Bigsby history:  It was invented, of course, by Paul Bigsby who designed guitars (and, arguably, the six on a side headstock) and a lot of other stuff as well. He received the patent in August of 1953 for the Bigsby Vibrato System and it is pretty much the same today as it was in 1953. There have been refinements along the way but the basic principle is still the same.  The four main models (with all sorts of variations) can be confusing. There is only one that is correct for an ES-335 and only one that was used by Gibson for the semi hollow line. That’s the B7 with the “ex short” mounting bracket. It says that right on it. It always attaches with 4 screws, although I had a factory 59 with a B7 that had a three screw attachment, so don’t freak out if your early 335 has the same thing. There should be a fifth hole under there for the ground wire if it was installed at Gibson. There are two screws that go into the top of the guitar that any 335 aficionado knows to look for when inspecting a prospective purchase. The B7 has a tension bar that the strings go under which gives the strings an acceptable break angle. You sometimes will see a B3 on a 335 but it is always an aftermarket mod and it will always have a shallow break angle because the unit is too short for the 335. A B6 would work better but so will a B5 “horseshoe” but they will look totally wrong so don’t but these on your 335. If you’re looking for a vintage Bigsby for your  vintage ES, try to get one that is era correct. There are a couple of things that will help you tell the newer ones from the older ones. First, look at the string posts. On the older ones they go all the way through the shaft. The newer ones don’t (see photo). Also, look at the holes drilled in the unit for the two screws that go through the top. The older ones aren’t countersunk whereas the newer ones are. I don’t know what year the changes were made but I believe it was in the 70’s. Also look at where the Bigsby name and patent number are. The older one has the Bigsby name and the patent number left unpainted. The newer one is entirely black except for the name Bigsby. I’m not sure when they made that change or if it is consistent-I have a factory Bigsby 63 with the patent number painted black. The ones from the 50’s often had no black paint there at all. Also, the arm attachment changed somewhere around 1960 from a big Phillips screw to a stud with the screw on the underside. You’ll see gold ones with the screw until ’63 or so. The aluminum ones transitioned in 60-61, although I’ve seen two from late 59. So, if whammy you must, a Bigsby B7 is the ticket. Now you know what to look for. And don’t forget, that’s almost three quarters of a pound of added weight.

Here's the bottom side. The designation "ex short" should be on the mounting bracket and the letters "LP" on the plate. I'm pretty sure they don't stand for Les Paul but actually stand for "long plate". But I could be wrong.

60's on the right, 70's on the left. Note the shaft where the strings wrap is different as are the screw holes and the paint of the plate.

This '61 335 has a very typical heel shape. Short, square shouldered and straightish across the top.

After I wrote the last post about broken lacquer at the heel of a 335, I got an email asking me to talk about the various heel shapes that have occurred over the years. Truthfully, there isn’t that much variation from 1958 to 1964 which are

This 63 falls within the range as well. A little rounder on top but still short.

the years I concentrate on and have the most experience with. Because they are so consistent-kind of flat on top, fairly short and squarish at the shoulder, it is a good way to identify a guitar as being from a different era. If, for example,

someone wants to sell you a ’59 ES-335 and the heel is very rounded, I would look very closely at the neck join and the neck pocket because something ain’t right. I don’t have photos of every ES-335, ES-345 and ES-355 that has passed through the OK corral but I’ve got more than 100. I just went through them looking for a guitar with a tall rounded heel. I didn’t find one. The length of the heel varies as does the squareness of the shoulder but the top edge is always relatively straight or very gently rounded-not tall and rounded. I did find tall rounded heels–a 2007 Historic had one, an 84 had one as did an 82. I had an 83 with a tall squarish heel-too tall to be a 58-64. In fact, the 65 to 68’s I’ve had also have the short squarish heel as do the Trinis. I recently had a renecked 64 that had a Memphis “fat neck”-also tall and rounded. There is some consistency among vintage 335s from the 50’s and 60’s and heel shape-within a range-seems to be one aspect that doesn’t vary much. And that’s a good thing because if everything else looks right and the heel looks wrong, you can be fairly certain that something isn’t kosher. Considering how inconsistent some ES-335 features seem to be-like centerblocks, neck size and shape, hardware and body thickness, it’s nice to see that heel shape can be pretty well counted on to be the same throughout the Golden Era. I’m sure there are exceptions-out of the 100 or so photos I went through in researching this post, I found only one that looked wrong for the era. So, if I may extrapolate, if you have a 50’s or 60’s ES-335, 345 or 355 and the heel is not pretty close to what you see here, you have a 1 % chance of it being authentic.

This 59 ES-355 is the only rounded heel I found in my archive of around 100 guitars. And it isn't all that round. It isn't tall like the 84 but it is rounder than the other 99%

Still flat and square in 67.

This is what your 50's or 60's 335 shouldn't look like. This is an 84 and they tend to have the tall rounded heel.

Even the Historics aren't quite right. This is a 2007 '59 Nashville Historic.

You can see that the lacquer is broken right at the heel join but does that mean the structural integrity is compromised?

Everybody who is considering the purchase of an expensive vintage guitar asks the same question. Any breaks, cracks or repairs? It’s the right question to ask and it’s also a hard question to answer. I’m going to concentrate on one area here. The heel-where the neck meets the body. This is not a weak point on an ES-335 and is rarely an issue (like it is on most SGs). The long tenon design of the neck join has proven itself over more than 60 years. But there are still questions regarding the heel, so I’ll try to address them. Ideally, when seeking out a vintage 335, you want to minimize structural issues. But a perfect neck join on any vintage ES is not so easy to find. By perfect I mean, no lacquer break at the join. It’s funny, most folks accept lacquer checking all over the guitar without batting an eye but if the lacquer is cracked along the seams at the heel, many buyers balk. The truth is that the lacquer across those seams is just as likely to check as anywhere else on the guitar. Perhaps even more likely since there is some “give” at any glue joint. Once the lacquer has completely cured (and an extra 40 or 50 years for good measure), it isn’t terribly elastic but the wood underneath still “breathes”. So the wood moves and the lacquer doesn’t. That’s what causes checking. Now, consider that a single span of lacquer crosses from the maple laminate body to the solid mahogany neck and you got two different kinds of woods moving with the heat and humidity and the lacquer having to stay intact. Not so likely after 50 years. I would estimate that 75% of the ES’s I see have a lacquer break at the heel. It usually just follows the seams and has nothing to do with the integrity of the neck join itself. It also gets full of crud like guitar polish residue and dirt so it often looks a lot worse than it is. It’s not hard to see a repair at the heel and it’s not hard to see a real stress crack in the lacquer. The lacquer at the seams can flake a little or bulge a little but as long as the glue joint is solid and shows no sign of repair, you shouldn’t worry too much about it unless you’re spending some big bucks on a mint guitar. By all means, use the broken lacquer at the heel as a warning sign to look more closely at the neck pocket (the neck pickup rout). It’s a pretty good indicator that something has been done in there but if you see no sign of a reglue or clamp marks or overspray at the heel, then don’t worry about the integrity of the neck join. Just a note, if you see shims on either or both sides of the tenon, don’t jump to the conclusion that repair work was done. Lots of guitars came from the factory with shims in there. Hand tools are notoriously inaccurate and if the tenon was a bit loose in there, a small shim was added. If you conclude that something is amiss in there, then by all means, pass it by if the price doesn’t reflect the problem. But if it’s simply a break in the lacquer at the heel, that isn’t enough to set off any alarms. Interestingly, it’s less of a concern on other Gibsons (particularly Les Pauls) because the heel isn’t flush with the back of the guitar. That “shelf” makes a lacquer break a lot less obvious and, in my limited dealings with LP’s, no one has ever even brought it up. Would I rather have a guitar with no lacquer checking anywhere? Yes but I know I’ll pay for it.

Would I worry about the neck join on this 59? Nope. Not for a second.

Funny. It also applies to guitars and it's not usually that funny.

A favorite T-shirt among 80’s geeks was “Gravity: it’s not just a good idea, it’s the Law.” Funny. But gravity can wreak havoc on a guitar that sits under the bed for too long. You know that bookshelf you had in your college dorm room that you built out of cinder blocks and plywood? Do you remember what it looked like after four (or five) years of college. Yep. It sagged in the middle. Wood is not a stable substance. It has all kinds of imperfections that make it a less than ideal foil for constant forces like gravity. I inspected close to 100 vintage 335s, 345s and 355s in the past year and what struck me more than anything else was the number of them that had neck issues. Most of them weren’t major but all of them needed attention. A little tweak to the truss rod is to be expected in any guitar that has sat unplayed for any length of time but sometimes its more than that. The typical resting place for a “forgotten” guitar is under a bed, lying on its back. If it’s strung to pitch it will have two sets of forces working on it. The strings will try to pull the ends of the neck upward, while gravity pulls everything downward. If the upward force of the strings “wins”, you end up with a bow and a usually easy fix. That’s what the truss rod is for. If the guitar is not tuned to pitch or if the strings are missing and it lies on its back for years on end-decades, even-then you’re looking at some potential trouble. Gravity pulls the neck downward except where it sits in the neck rest. Result? A back bow or a hump at the fret where the neck rested-usually around the 9th. If the truss was already tightened when the guitar was put away, you may be able to adjust some of it out. If the truss was loose, you have a problem that the truss won’t fix. All is not lost. There are other remedies. A well known luthier/repair guru told me “you don’t play the fingerboard, you play the frets.” A fret level may take care of the problem entirely. It very often does and is neither invasive nor expensive. A moderate back bow will require other measures. A fret job-what they call a “compression refret”  can remedy this. It’s kind of technical, so I’m not going to go into a detailed explanation. A good luthier will know if that alone will cure what ails your guitar. If he says it won’t, then the next remedy is often planing the fingerboard to compensate for gravity’s wrath. Nobody wants to start taking wood away from their precious Brazilian board nor do they want to thin out the markers or the neck binding but that’s the collateral damage. There are luthiers who are adept at steaming or heating a neck to remove a bow or twist but it can be dicey. Wood is pretty forgiving but its also fickle. If you reshape the neck by heating, there is no guarantee its going to stay reshaped. I had some neck work done on a favorite acoustic of mine and it took a full year before the repair was deemed stable enough. They kept heating and the neck kept moving back to it’s distorted posture. The larger point is that you need to inspect the neck carefully before you buy. Most sellers don’t really know what to look for so when  you ask them if the neck is straight, you get the exact same answer every time. Yes. No one is going to say “Oh, yeah, the neck has a rise at the ninth fret and a back bow all the way to the nut.” ES-335s are no worse than any other set neck guitar-in fact they are generally pretty good. The 60-62 “wide flat” necks are prone to bows and twists because there just isn’t much wood there-less wood equals less stability. Remember those shelves? If you had made them thicker they would have sagged less. All 335’s that sit in a case for a long time are prone to the rise where the neck sits on the neck rest and all of them are prone to the rise that occurs where the neck meets the body which I wrote about some months ago. Most are caused by gravity and time. A neck problem is rarely a deal breaker but it is a serious consideration when negotiating a price. Decide with your hands and your ears. Sighting down the neck might show you a hump or a dip but if the guitar plays well, chances are someone has already compensated for it, probably with a fret level. If it doesn’t play well, you can walk away or you can use your approval period (if you can get one) to take it to your local luthier for an expert opinion. Show the seller what you see and then start negotiating. UPDATE: The question as to how to counter the forces of gravity has been posed. The answer is you can’t but I would suggest that, if you don’t play your guitars often, to store them upright. I lean mine against a wall in a closet (in their cases). I would say that storing them flat on their backs under a bed is perhaps the worst choice. I leave mine tuned to pitch but then I don’t ever leave a guitar unplayed for more than a few weeks.

The guitar closet at my house. This is pretty much the whole collection. You can see a few 335s and 345s in their cases, the Taylor 12 string and my tweed Tremolux (with a custom 2-10" baffle)and "El Grande"-a 54 Supro Spectator.

Starting at the top left-pickup height adjustment (4), pickup pole screws (12), bridge pickup ring (4), neck pickup ring (4), bobbin (8). Lower row starting at left: pickguard (2), truss cover (2) and tuner (12)

The real 335 geeks (like me) get all obsessive over the small details. when I get a “new” guitar, the first thing I do -if only for a minute or two-is play it. Then I take it apart. I pay a lot of attention to the screws because they can tell you a lot. If any of them are not right, then you know that someone has been in there. You just don’t know to what extent. Screws don’t get changed by themselves and the factory was relatively consistent in the type of screws they used for each function that requires them. Let’s take a quick inventory of all the screws and then I’ll describe each one and talk about whatever variation there is. There are two pickguard screws-both phillips, both countersunk oval head and both the same size. They are nickel plated on a 335 and gold plated on a 345 and 355. This will be true of all the screws on the guitars except for the pickup surround screws and the pickup bobbin screws. There are eight pickup surround screws-4 short and 4 long. They are flathead wood screws and are almost always phillips and are always black. Occasionally, especially in 1958 and 1959, the neck pickup will have slotted screws. The bridge pickup will have long screws on all four corners and the neck pickup should have short screws on all four corners. These screws tend to strip out fairly easily so it isn’t unusual to find a couple of long screws in the neck pickup. I don’t think Gibson put them there, however. There are two screws in the truss rod cover. They are round head, phillips  wood screws and are the same length. There are 12 tuner screws-all the same round head wood screws but there seems to be some variation in the screw type. From 58-65, they appear to all be phillips round head although slotted screws show up on earlier Gibsons. My 53 J-200 has slotted tuner screws. They are almost always threaded all the way to the head but I keep seeing tuner screws that have a section of the shaft non threaded. I believe Gibson used both.  There are two height adjustment screws in each pickup ring and they are round head machine screws that are threaded from head to end. They, of course, each have a spring and they are threaded into the bottom plate of the pickup. Next, there are the six pickup pole screws on one of the bobbins for each pickup. These are slotted fillister head machine screws. A fillister head is a screw head with flat sides and a slightly rounded top. They are nickel plated on 335s up until 1965 when they switched to chrome. Generally, if the pickup has a chrome cover, the pole screws will be chrome plated. I have seen nickel screws in a chrome plated pickup cover but never the reverse. Flip the pickups over and you’ll find four round head nickel or brass phillips screws on each, holding the bobbins in place. The earlier PAFs have nickel, later brass. You start finding slot heads in the mid to late 60’s and these usually indicate T-top pickups. If you find slot heads on a 65 or earlier, I would question the pickup. Finally, each strap button has a screw holding it in place. These are countersunk oval head phillips wood screws and are usually the same size. The screw that holds the strap button at the butt end is sometimes slightly longer than the one at the base of the neck. If the screws on your 335, 345 or 355 don’t correspond to what I’ve found, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Nobody deducts much value for a wrong screw and most folks don’t ever check. Besides, correct screws are available from all the usual sources.

And two more I forgot in the other photo. The strap button screws. They should be the same although, I've seen a longer one at the butt end.

Well, ya can't tell by looking but these pickups are out of magnetic phase. Gibson did this on purpose in all their stereo guitars. Did anybody ever play this one?

I’m not an engineer but as long as I’m driving this train, I’ll take a stab at some scientific stuff that is pretty well misunderstood. The issue is out of phase pickups-particularly on stereo guitars like 345s and stereo 355s. I’ll try to keep this simple which shouldn’t be hard because I really don’t totally understand the science anyway. There are two kinds of phase to consider-electronic and magnetic. When two sound producing elements feeding the same source (amp) are out of phase, the result is subtractive rather than additive. Simpler? Instead of hearing the sum of the signal, you hear the difference. That means the parts of the two signals that are alike will cancel each other out. That’s why when your pickups are out of phase, only the middle position is affected. The individual pickups, working alone, have no phase issue because there aren’t two sources. Simple, right? Same goes for speakers in an amp with more than one speaker. If they are out of phase, one speaker is pulsing outward while the other in pulsing inward. The result is less than the sum of the parts (because it isn’t). But it gets more complicated with pickups because there are two different types of phase to consider. Magnetic phase and electronic phase. As with speakers, if you solder one speaker correctly but you solder the ground wire to the “hot” terminal on the other (and the hot wire to the ground terminal), your speakers will be out of phase. With vintage pickups, it’s a little harder to do because the ground wire is the braid and the hot wire is the strand. I learned about electronic phase from my years in video. If an audio cable from one channel was out of phase with the wire from another and the same signal was present on both channels, the sound would be thin and reedy with pots channels open but full with only one open. But electronic phase isn’t really the usual problem with a stereo guitar. The problem here is the magnets. Gibson intentionally configured the magnets to be out of phase, although I’m not entirely certain why (help me out here, anybody). Inside a humbucker pickup, there are two coils wired in phase with each other sitting above a magnet. This means that the one coil sits on the magnets South pole and the other coil is sitting on its North Pole. Normally, the magnets of both pickups are going in the same direction-each has the “north” pole going in the same direction. In a 345 or stereo 355, one magnet is north pole over the slug coil  and the other is south pole over the slug coil. This is why simply turning the pickup around by 180 degrees doesn’t work. You would have to turn it upside down. With a stereo output the pickups would be going to separate channels so even if both pickups are active, the don’t “sum” because they aren’t being processed by the same amp (or channel). When you use a mixdown cable or simple swap out the jack for a mono one, you get the difference which is that thin reedy tone that some folks like (Peter Green was famous for this). You can’t fix this with the wires or the pickup positions, you have to physically remove one magnet and flip it over top to bottom, like a pancake and reinsert it. This requires removing a cover which is never advised. It doesn’t matter which pickup because phase is relative (both can be south pole up or north pole up). I read a post on a guitar forum that said that a player got around the phase issue using a Fender blackface amp using both channels. He stated that since the two channels are out of phase-which they are-that the out of phase pickup problem was rectified. UPDATED: I didn’t think that would work but I was told that it actually does but it doesn’t address the larger problem which is folks who want their 345 to be mono and in phase and feeding a single input.  I still suggest that a 345 is at its best when using its stereo circuit. Wanna take out the Varitone? Go ahead but there are lot of cool things you can do with a stereo guitar, especially if you’re into pedals.

Here are a couple of PAF magnets. The N pole has been marked. Here, the N poles are facing the same way, so if these were in the pickups, the pickups would be in phase. Also note that the magnets stick together because the S pole of one is adjacent to the N pole of the other. Opposites attract. I f your magnets aren't marked (and they won't be) that's how you tell if they are in phase. It doesn't matter which end is N or S only that they are pointing in the same direction to be in phase.

Here's a fifty year old 335. Modding a vintage 335 doesn't happen much these days. Most of the what you see was done years and years ago before they were worth anything. If you're going to put a stoptail on your Bigsby only '63, for the love of god, put it in the right location. Unless you're Larry Carlton, this just looks wrong. This, by the way was a killer player. Lives in Kansas now.

Seems like a long time, doesn’t it? A fifty year marriage is positively revered in our culture. Fifty years on the job still gets you a pat on the back (it used to get you a gold watch). But a lot can happen in fifty years and it doesn’t take much to alter the course of things over that span of time. One moment of poor judgment probably won’t ruin your career or your marriage. Marriages can survive thousands of moments of bad judgment. If I got fired every time my boss didn’t like something I did at work, I would have wound up asking if you want fries with that but then I have a problem with authority figures which explains why I’ve been my own boss since 1983. Do you think democracy has lasted 240 years in the USA without some seriously bad judgment?  The Bay of Pigs comes to mind. Or Prohibition. Or the 70’s. Now consider your ES 335. Fifty years is a long time. It only takes one moment to mess up what, fifty years later, would have been a no issue collector’s piece worth all kinds of money. Just as in a marriage, there’s a pretty big range of poor choices you can make-some much more destructive than others. Having an affair with your secretary is not on a par with forgetting to take out the garbage before you go away for the weekend. Similarly, putting a set of Grovers on your guitar is not on a par with painting it purple sparkle and then cutting an access panel in the back. The really bad part, when it comes to the guitars, anyway, is that you probably had nothing to do with it. Some guy back in 1975 decided the guitar would be so much cooler if the pickup covers were off. It probably took the 70’s guy less than ten minutes to do the damage but it’s done and it stays done. A no issue guitar can only be a no issue guitar if that moment never occurs. And fifty years is long time. Granted, there are plenty of changes made to guitars that are reversible without a trace. I’ve said before that there is no way that anyone can tell if a vintage correct part was on the guitar the day it left the factory. Now, with so many of the original owners being pretty old, the “original owner” guitar isn’t even totally reliable. But that won’t really affect the value of a “no issue” example. When I inspect a guitar, if the parts are vintage correct and the wear patterns are consistent, I have no problem making the small leap that says its original. On the other hand, if I swap out an incorrect part for a vintage correct one, you may not know it but I will and that gets disclosed. Here’s a simple truth: The fewer of these guitars that are available out in the market place, the more they are going to cost.  As the guitar of your dreams starts receding into the distance because it’s just too much money, you need to start deciding what issues you will accept. It would be nice to be able to construct a big chart that says clearly what each type of mod will deduct from the value of a “no issue” ES-335. But it doesn’t really work that way. The “deductions” are not necessarily additive. Otherwise, you’d have to pay me to take a guitar with a refinish, broken headstock, Bigsby holes, changed tuners, open pickups and the wrong harness. Yes, people do some pretty destructive things over fifty years but, somehow, the thing survives.  It seems that if anything is going to last fifty years or more in this world, it will need to endure some level of compromise. Just ask your congressman. Or your wife.

For the price of 30 of these, you can have the guitar at the bottom. What's it gonna be--paper or wood?

It’s pretty hard to explain to your significant other that you want to spend $15000 on a guitar. Especially when you’ve already got a few in the closet. She (or he) didn’t bat an eye when you bought the Volvo for $40K. Perhaps she didn’t realize that the car will lose close to half its value the day you drive it off the lot. Or perhaps that after 5 years, it’ll be worth less than a third of what you paid. Buy hey,you needed a new car, you played the safety card and you got a nice car even though you wanted the BMW. Never mind you could have bought an old Volvo wagon like I drive (1997) and still had $35000 left over for guitars. That’s not really the point. The point is that a vintage guitar doesn’t have to cost you a nickel in the long run. We all know how high the market got during the “bubble” that ended in 2008 (unless you’re one of a few select dealers who didn’t get the memo, not to mention almost every Ebay seller). The vintage market is still fairly low but has shown signs of life lately. I can go out and buy a brand spankin’ new ES-335 dot or block Historic for around $4500. But I can also go out and find a pretty decent mid 60’s ES-335 for less than $1000 more and that is significant. In five years, the Historic will probably be worth $3500 if you decide to sell it. OK, that’s not so bad. But the 66-68 that you paid $5000 for is going to be worth at least that. Can I guarantee that? No, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to get out of bed tomorrow but I’d bet on it. Let’s go up the scale a bit. Let’s look at the 335 you really want. I’ll use a 64 as the example because they are so popular. You can get your hands on a 64 with minor issues for around $12000 for a Bigsby/Custom Made or a few thousand more for a stoptail. You can probably get a no issue stoptail 64 for around $18,000. At the top of the market, the Bigsby was closer to $18000 and the stop pushed past $25000. You still see them out there for as high as $32000 but they never sell anywhere near that. So, the loss since the top of the bubble has been around 25-30%. The good news is that they have not dropped any further since the bottom fell out and, in fact, I’ve seen an improvement of 10-15% in the past couple of years for 335s. But percentages are a funny thing-an increase of 10% from the bottom doesn’t make up a third of a 30% drop from the top. Do the math. Even so, a rising market tends to continue to rise (until it doesn’t)-the trend is upward as the economy improves. Most buyers of vintage 335’s are men in their 50’s. The kids are done or  just about done with college and you’re secure in your job. You’d love a 64 but you just can’t justify the expenditure. I know, it sounds like a sales pitch from the guy with the 335’s but it really is an investment. And it’s a lot more fun than 30 shares of Apple stock. As long as expensive new guitars continue to be inferior to the vintage ones we all love, vintage guitars will sell. So tell the wife (or the significant other) that you want to make an investment that you can enjoy for the rest of your life and maybe hand down to your children. An investment that is nearly as liquid as Apple shares and will give you a heck of a lot more pleasure than trying to play a stock certificate. I can never keep them in tune and they don’t sustain worth a damn.

This is a lot easier to play and will keep you company on a cold night. Let's see your stock certificate play the blues.

The top bridge is a thin one they used in 58 only but it shows a more exaggerated bend than most normal size ABR-1s do. When the bottom one starts looking like the top one, it's time to take some action (and I don't mean go get a drink).

No, not the movie this time either (which I also didn’t see). Just the sequel to the last post where I covered things that wear out like strings and frets and plastic parts. Over the very long haul, there a lot of other parts that can wear out. Because the ABR-1 bridge is made out of some really crappy metal, they aren’t very strong and after 50 years of pressure from the strings, there is a pretty good chance that your bridge is falling down (falling down, falling down). They sag in the middle and the nature of the metal is such that it doesn’t bend back very well. In fact it usually breaks and if it doesn’t, it just sags again. So get a repro or a Tone Pros and put the original in the case pocket. Nobody will mind. How will you know if the bridge is sagging? The strings should follow the radius of the fingerboard. If they don’t, the bridge is sagging or the saddles aren’t properly seated. Check the saddles. If they look right, then take off the bridge and remove the saddles. Lay it on a flat surface upside down. It should be dead flat-no light passing under the straight edge. Seeing daylight? Into the case pocket. The saddles themselves get worn out as well. The single most likely culprit when your 335 is sounding dull and plinky (plunky?) is a worn out saddle. If the groove is too deep, it will keep the string from vibrating freely. Usually new saddles are the best solution. I’ve had some luck with filing the tops of all the saddles so that the groove is much shallower but you have to be careful not file them unevenly or you’ll screw up the heights. Again. put the originals in a ziplock in the case pocket and get some new ones. The metal ones are easy to find-the plated brass ones are closest to vintage. If you want nylon saddles, it’s a bit trickier. The original nylon saddles were milled and are hard as a rock. The newer ones aren’t. I haven’t found decent new nylon saddles. The Tusq ones are a good substitute but they are expensive. They work great though. When I get new saddles, I string the guitar up before I notch them to see where the strings cross the saddles without deflection (straight across at 90 degrees). It’s not always the middle. Then I mark the saddles with a sharpie. Then I get out the little teeny file I use and make the shallowest notches I can that will still hold the strings in place. Heading to the other end of the neck, we have another culprit in the “why does my 335 sound like crap” parade. The nut. A lot of folks complain that 335s don’t stay in tune and almost everyone blames the tuners. Klusons are not high tech items. They’re kind of crappy. But they aren’t the reason your 335 goes out of tune. The nut is slotted too tight. So, some wear in the nut slots is actually a good thing because a slightly enlarged slot will help keep your guitar in tune better no matter what tuner in on it. But beyond a little wear, there are other problems like strings popping out of the slot or poor sustain caused by too much play in the slot. Time for a new nut. The originals are nylon and most folks use a nylon replacement. Bone is another choice and, to be honest, I don’t hear much difference and if a guitar has had its nut replaced, I don’t really care what it was replaced with as long as it works properly and was properly (and neatly) installed. I let my tech do nuts. A changed nut shouldn’t impact the value of the guitar very much if its done properly. Next, Part 3 where I go inside the guitar and look at the electronic doo hickeys that give up the ghost after 50 years or so.

These saddles are pretty worn but they work just fine because they aren't too deeply notched. At least half the string should be above the notch.

Nothing more useless than rusted guitar strings. Hey, these are NOS. I think I can get the whole lot pretty cheap.

No, not the action movie, which, by the way, I didn’t see. Expendables, in my other business, are items that get used once and thrown away-lighting gels, gaffers tape, diffusion material, dulling spray and the like. But guitars have expendables too and 335s are no exception. OK, they get used more than once but you get the idea. When you’re considering a vintage piece, there are certain elements that simply wear out over time. If you’re a collector, your tolerance for worn out elements is pretty limited. Most collectors don’t care if the strings aren’t original-probably because they rarely are and because 50 year old strings won’t sound very good. But there are other parts that wear out over time that may affect the value but not the playability. Frets are the obvious one. In general, a pro refret doesn’t affect the value of a guitar very much unless it’s an otherwise mint example. Then you can ask yourself why would anyone refret a mint guitar? A couple reasons, actually. There are guitars that get played extensively but are so well cared for that they remain in extraordinary condition. But that’s pretty unusual. There are refrets that occur because someone along the way wanted larger or smaller frets and there are refrets that are done to try to correct a backbow in the neck or other problems. I’m always wary of newer frets on a mint guitar but, unless there is a noticeable neck problem, it is rarely, if ever,  a dealbreaker. If I’m buying a non mint vintage guitar, I always prefer the original frets but I don’t exactly fret (pun intended) if they are properly redone. Another element that I would consider an expendable are the tuner tips. They don’t so much wear out but often deteriorate due to age. When

You've seen these before. Mummified Kluson tuner buttons. This would never stop me from buying a great old guitar. Put repro tips on or just stick 'em in the case. People expect this and it won't hurt the resale unless the guitar is otherwise mint-then maybe a little.

Gibson built these guitars they weren’t looking 50 years into the future. They probably weren’t looking more than a few years ahead and probably only “fixed” durability problems when someone complained about them. Oddly, tuner tips from the years up to 58 seem to hold up just fine but 59-60 don’t. It seems that 61-65 are better but still shrink and mummify while the later ones seem fine. Plastic. Go figure. And speaking of plastic, there’s another plastic part that seems to be a real problem and that’s the block inlays on 62-65 ES-335’s. It’s funny, the dot inlays of 58-62 don’t seem to shrink or curl up, although they do occasionally fall out but that’s usually a glue issue. The inlays on a 345, which are made of the same celluloid based plastic shrink a lot but they usually don’t curl up. And 355 inlays almost always stay put and are totally stable because they aren’t plastic at all-they are mother of pearl. But early 335 block markers can be a real problem. Gibson knew this and changed the material in the mid 60’s. This was, as is usual at Gibson, a long transition but it seems that by 67, they were the lighter colored material that was more shrink and discolor resistant. But 62-65 blocks can be a nightmare. They shrink, they turn brown, they curl up at the edges and they fall out. If you replace them, they always look too white, although they can be darkened using the tricks that the guys who age these things use-like soaking them in coffee, tea, coke or dye. In terms of lost value to a vintage guitar, changed tuners and changed block markers are going to make a difference-not a huge difference but as always, the more original, the bigger the price. My attitude on tuners is, essentially, I don’t care as long as the tuner itself is original. With the markers, I have a stronger opinion. My preference will always be for original markers. A little curl won’t affect playability much and a good luthier can remove them, scrape out the old glue and reglue any of them that are causing trouble as long as they aren’t too thin. If they are unusually thin, you might want to take a closer look at the fingerboard to see if perhaps it was planed at some point-plane the board and the markers get planed too. If they are thin, falling out or otherwise causing you concern, one or two changed markers, if well matched to the ones you can save, aren’t going to significantly affect the vintage value of your guitar. I’d rather play a guitar with smooth new markers than one with markers that continually annoy me. There are more “expendables” that while perhaps a bit more durable, have a finite lifespan as well. Saddles, bridges and nuts. We’ll cover those another time.

Sometimes, things just wear out. It just doesn't make sense to keep a guitar original if the original parts are no longer functional. ES 335 block markers are often so badly deteriorated that they have to go.