| Comments | Here’s a near-perfect 1997 Gibson Herb Ellis ES-165. The ES-165 is a single-pickup version of the classic ES-175, and Herb Ellis is, of course, one of the great American jazz and studio guitarists; he was born in Farmersville, Texas on August 4, 1921 and died in Los Angeles, California, on March 28, 2010.
Many Gibson signature guitars have the artist’s name engraved on the truss rod cover. However, Herb Ellis commonly removed this part to mount a George Van Eps string damper (a lever device that damps the open strings from ringing), so the signature is stencilled on the headplate. During 2004, the single pickup was taken off the top and ‘floated’ off the end of the fingerboard and pickguard; the tone control was removed and the volume control moved to the pickguard. The ES-165 was produced from 1991 until early 2013. |
| Serial Number | 91337331, dated May 13, 1997 and built in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. |
| Pricing | $1649.00 CAD with original case. SOLD |
| Neck | Mahogany neck with bound rosewood fingerboard; faux mother-of-pearl dual parallelogram position markers starting at the 1st fret. Black headplate finish with Herb Ellis and Gibson stencils in gold. |
| Frets | Original medium-jumbo frets with no appreciable wear. Currently strung with flatwounds, which don’t damage frets nearly the way roundwounds do. |
| Body | Flame maple laminate, single venetian cutaway body; full ES-175 size, but with one pickup instead of two. Rosewood bridge base. |
| Finish | Gloss nitrocellulose sunburst lacquer finish in excellent condition. |
| Hardware/electronics | All original and gold plated hardware; sealed Grover tuners with ‘tulip’ buttons, trapeze type tailpiece, single Gibson 490R pickup, volume and tone controls. |
| Playability/Action | Plays very well and we can of course set the instrument up to the player’s requirements. |
| Case | Original hardshell case included. |
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