A Superb Early Sixties ES-330TDC

This guitar weighs just 5.80 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Laminated maple top, back, and sides, one-piece mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo. Individual closed-back tuners with white plastic oval buttons. Two hot P-90 pickups (with nickel covers) with outputs of 8.32k and 7.76k. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch on lower treble bout. Black plastic bell-shaped knobs with white markings and metal tops. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic non-retainer bridge with nylon saddles and original nickel trapeze tailpiece with raised diamond on cross-bar. This guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition, with just a little bit of checking all over (very slight) and a few minuscule marks. A fabulous example. Housed in its original Gibson black hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.00).

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 is one of only 652 ES-330TDCs that were shipped in 1963.