A Fine '59 Dot Neck 330

An unbelievably light (5.90 lbs) 16-inch double cutaway thinline, with laminated maple top, back and sides and a 24 3/4 inch scale length. One piece mahogany neck with a huge nut width of just over 1 11/16 inches, and a rosewood fretboard with pearl dot inlays. ABR-1 Non Retainer Tune-O-Matic bridge and trapeze tailpiece with raised diamond. Two hot black P-90s with outputs of 7.66k and 8.44k. This guitar has been expertly refretted, a miniscule amount of belt buckle wear on the back, a tiny amount of finish checking, and a couple of very small marks on the back of the neck, otherwise this superb guitar is in near mint and totally unfaded condition with a neck to die for. Housed in a slightly later Gibson black hardshell case with purple plush lining. (9.00).

Quite simply the finest example of an early ES-330 with that "perfect" '59 neck profile that we have ever seen…

Known affectionately as the "poor man's dot neck guitar," the ES-330 was numerically speaking, the biggest seller of the double cutaway series in the late fifties and early sixties even if it was not a real semi-solid guitar! Built with the same body shape as the ES-335, but not the same solid construction, the ES-330T/TD were originally introduced in 1959 as a replacement for the single cutaway ES-225T/TD. The main differences from the more expensive ($282.50) ES-335 were the absence of the solid center block and the use of a trapeze tailpiece as opposed to the 335's stop tailpiece. This example is one of the first variants, characterized by a dot-inlaid fretboard and black plastic covered pickups. These guitars are very underrated and undervalued...and disappearing fast!