When originally introduced in 1912, the Gibson L-4 appeared as a 16 inch wide, oval hole archtop, switching to F-holes in 1935. The cutaway body L-4C appeared in 1949 and by 1956 had displaced the non-cutaway model. In Gibson’s naming convention, the ‘C’ was dropped some years ago.
Acoustic
For 2006, the Memphis plant introduced the Gibson Satin 335, a somewhat stripped down version of the classic design. Most noticeably, the fingerboard was unbound and the finish is satin – sunburst, cherry or translucent black as seen here. Later versions seem to have restored the fingerboard binding. These models were discontinued with the Memphis plant itself in 2019.
Here is an excellent Epiphone Elitist ES-335 /NA in Natural finish, built during 2006 at the Terada plant in Nagoya, Japan. This is the same plant that builds many pro-line guitars, including Gretsch models, and this guitar illustrates the quality of their work. The Epiphone Elitist ES-335 is based on an early 1960’s Gibson ES-335 with dot position markers, but it is not an exact copy.
Here we’re looking at a Gibson L-4CES (CES for Cutaway Electric Spanish) in Natural lacquer finish, dating to January 11 1989 and built at Nashville. This example is in overall very good, clean and original condition with light wear to the back finish and very light fret wear. The gold plating on the pickups shows typical wear to the bass edge, but the bridge, tailpiece and tuner plating has very little wear.
The Gibson G-00 appeared in 2021 and hearkens back to classic entry-level models like the LG-0. It also adds a ‘Player Port’ on the upper bass bout that directs sound to the player. The G-00, now discontinued, was part of the ‘Generation’ series, which all feature the secondary sound hole.
This instrument has sold
MORE →Here we’re looking at a Martin 2-17 #25 built during early 1930 in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, showing a 1929 feature – a straight saddle. Not long after this guitar was built, Martin shifted to slanted saddles, giving the bass strings a little more length for intonation purposes. Apparently 449 were built during 1930 with this saddle, and 50 with the slanted saddle.