"Under-The-Bed" for Nearly Fifty Years…

This absolutely mint and very early 1960 guitar has that wonderfully thick '59 neck profile and a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches. This incredibly light guitar weighs just 5.50 lbs. and has a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Laminated maple top, back, and sides, one-piece mahogany neck and a rosewood fretboard with 22 jumbo frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Inlaid pearl "Gibson" headstock logo. Individual Kluson Deluxe 'single-line' tuners with white plastic oval buttons and "D-169400 / PATENT NO." stamped inside. One black P-90 pickup with a huge output of 8.99k. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Two controls (one volume, one tone) with gold plastic bell-shaped knobs. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic non-retainer bridge with metal saddles and trapeze tailpiece with raised diamond on cross-bar. All of the hardware is nickel-plated and the FON (Factory Order Number) "R 2839 4" is stamped in black inside the treble f-hole. This guitar is in mint (9.50) condition and is housed in its original Gibson four-latch "Lifton" brown hardshell case with pink plush lining (8.75). A spectacular 'time capsule' which has literally been kept 'under-the-bed' for nearly fifty years. It is, quite simply, the best example you will ever find.

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.

The "dot-neck" ES-330T was introduced in 1959, and a total of approximately 1,500 guitars were made until the model was discontinued in mid-1962. This mint example is one of the earliest of 772 made in 1960.