"Roll Over Beethoven"

This 17-inch-wide archtop guitar weighs just 6.40 lbs. and has a nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a short scale length of 23 1/2 inches. Beautiful curly maple body, three-piece maple/mahogany/maple neck with a typical thick '58 profile, and rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl split-parallelogram position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and pearl crown inlay. Two-layer (black on white) truss-rod cover. Orange oval label inside the bass f-hole, the model ("ES-350T") in black ink and the serial number ("A27169") is stamped in black. Inside the treble f-hole the batch number is stamped in black ("U1554 7"). The batch number corresponds with a manufacturing date of 1957, yet the serial number on the orange label is early 1958, and the neck profile on this guitar is definitely a typical '58 and not a '57 "V." The body is triple-bound on the top and back, the f-holes are single-bound, the headstock and fretboard are single-bound. Individual single-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with single-ring Keystone plastic buttons. Two powerful PAF pickups with outputs of 7.06k and 7.84k. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) on lower treble bout plus three-way selector switch on treble horn. Gold plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge with nylon saddles on rosewood base and specific wire-loop tailpiece with "ES-350" on cross-bar. All hardware gold-plated. At one time the tuners were replaced with Grovers, but the original Klusons are now back on the guitar. The only evidence of this are six tiny (filled) holes on the back of the headstock and slightly larger "bore" holes for the tuner pegs (which are only visible when the tuners are removed). Apart from some minor tarnishing to the gold-plated hardware, some minimal finish checking, and a couple of very small marks on the back of the guitar, this guitar, in excellent plus (8.75) condition, is one of the best examples of these wonderfull '50s Rock'n'Roll specials that we have ever seen. There is a tiny filled strap button hole on the dowel at the end of the neck. The top and back are nicely flamed. On the back of the headstock by the D tuner, there is a small piece that has been chipped away (a tiny little sliver of laminate which measures approximately 3/4 x 1/4 inch and about 1/16 inch thick). Housed in its original Gibson brown hardshell case with purple plush lining (8.25). Gibson produced just 727 Sunburst ES-350Ts between 1955 and 1962, but this, the preferable "PAF" version did not appear until 1957, and only 104 were made in 1958.

Introduced in 1955, the ES-350T (with two P-90 pickups) featured the overall characteristics of the Byrdland, especially with respect to the body and neck dimensions. But it differed in a number of details that were borrowed from the earlier ES-350 (no "T") that it was replacing in the Gibson line. The body was entirely made of curly maple without a solid spruce top, and the bound fingerboard was of rosewood instead of ebony, and featured split parallelogram inlays. It lacked the black and white purfling of the Byrdland, and the tailpiece, though having a loop design vaguely resembling a "W" was in fact quite different, with the "ES-350T" name engraved in the upper part. When introduced in 1955 the price was a modest $395.00 compared to the very expensive $550.00 Byrdland. Chuck Berry played an ES-350T in the mid to late fifties, while Steve Cropper played a Byrdland in the early days of the Mar-Keys.