CATEGORY: SEMI-HOLLOW ELECTRIC GUITAR
BY CHRIS GILL
DURING TED McCARTY’S tenure as president of Gibson from 1950 through 1966, the company developed some of the greatest and most enduring electric guitar designs of all time. In fact, literally every electric model Gibson offers today was designed by McCarty and his team during this golden era, including the Explorer, Firebird, Flying V, Les Paul and SG. These are all timeless models, but McCarty’s semi-hollowbody design for the ES-335 and its numerous variants may be his greatest achievement of all time.
Gibson introduced the ES-335 — the music industry’s very first semi-hollow electric model — in 1958, only six short years after the company’s first solidbody model, the Les Paul, made its debut. The 335 was a natural progression of ideas sparked by input from players, who wanted a “best of both worlds’’ instrument that combined the best features of solid-body and hollowbody electrics, namely the former’s ability to be amplified to generous volume levels without feedback and the latter’s warm, round tones and acoustic-like resonance. Gibson’s thinline models like the Byrdland introduced in 1955 [as seen on page 68] were a first step toward this goal, but the semi-hollow ES-335 was the ultimate refinement and, as a result, became an iconic electric guitar model.
The 335’s key feature is a solid block of maple extending through the body underneath the strings from the neck joint to the tail block, providing a truly solid center. This block is encased inside a slim hollow body, dividing it into two resonant chamber “wings” on either side of the strings. A generous double cutaway design allows easy access all the way up the neck to the 22nd fret, something even the “radical” new Fender Stratocaster model didn’t quite offer back in the day. The crowning touch was a pair of hum-bucking pickups, which had just started appearing on Gibson guitars around this time.
The 335 became the blueprint for several successful variants, like the fancier ES-345 and ES-355, one of two Trini Lopez models introduced
