Brand: Gibson
Instrument Categories: Archtop, Electric, Guitars, SOLD, Thinline
The Gibson ES 345 appeared in 1958 as one of the two ‘upmarket’ versions of the ground breaking new ES-335, and featured a Varitone switch and Stereo outputs.
Here we’re looking at a Gibson ES 345 in its 1964 Reissue form, built during 2017 at the now-closed Memphis, Tennessee plant. This lovely piece is in very good condition with negligible wear.
The body and neck are built in the traditional manner, with Maple Laminate used for the top, back and sides and a solid Maple center block. The neck is Mahogany, with a bound Indian Rosewood fingerboard and the split-parallelogram position markers used on only a few Gibson models. The hardware is gold plated. It has Kluson Deluxe style tuners at the head, and an ABR-1 style tune-o-matic bridge with nylon saddles to improve tuning stability. Pickups are PAF-style MHS pickups – the MHS stands for Memphis Historic Specification.
This Gibson ES 345 features the rotary Varitone switch, plus the Maestro Vibrola, but is wired in Mono, not stereo. The ‘Stereo’ option was never a very popular item, requiring a special Y cable that fed two amp channels or mixer strips.
There are differences from the 1964 spec – in particular, the fingerboard was fretted after being bound, unlike most Gibson models. This means that the frets extend to the edge of the fingerboard, allowing a bit more playing space on a slightly narrower neck.
This Gibson ES 345 plays very well, is quite comfortable, looks and sounds great.
The original Gibson hard shell case is included.
At the moment, Gibson still has a legacy page on the Gibson ES 345 1964 Reissue model.
- Model: ES-345 1964 Reissue
- Year: 2017
- Finish Cherry
- Class: Used
- Serial Number: 61231
- Country of Origin: USA
- Condition: Very Good
- Date Posted: 11/12/2019
- This instrument has been sold
- Consignment Item
- Required CITES documentation
- Including original Hard case
- Instrument Weight: 8.8lbs 4kg
- Scale Length: 24.75in 628.6mm
- Nut Width: 1.673in 42.5mm
