Gibson 335

The Gibson ES 355 was launched by Gibson Guitar Corporation in 1958 as the world’s first semi-hollow bodied electric guitar. It has a narrow neck and a solid wooden block that runs through the center of the guitar’s body with the sides left hollow and f-holes on the outer surface. Because of its special body design, it emanates a peculiar mellow, ’woody’ sound and is popularly played in jazz, blues and rock music.

There are many versions based on the Gibson ES 355 electric guitar. The Trini Lopez standard has narrow diamond shaped cavities instead of the f-holes, a headstock with all tuners placed on one side and slashed-diamond inlays a similar pattern found on the Rickenbacker semi-hollow bodied guitars. The ES 333 has a 490R/498T combo pickup, rear access panel to connect to electronics and comes without a pickguard. The ES 340 comes with settings of pickups in-phase, pickups out-of-phase and standby. The ES 345 can be wired for stereo capabilities. The ES 347 is equipped with a coil tap that lets the humbuckers produce a ’single coil’ sound, block markers on an ebony fretboard and a fine tuning tailpiece. The CS 336 is the latest and a slightly smaller version of the ES 335. The front and back surfaces of the guitar are made out of a single piece of mahogany. The CS 356 comes with gold plated knobs and hardware with multiple binding on the body, neck and headstock.