An All Original Mid-Sixties ES-345 TDC

One of just 186 ES-345 TDC's shipped in 1966. This forty-three year old example weighs just 8.60 lbs. and has a nut width of just over 1 9/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Laminated maple body with triple binding on the top and single binding on the back and semi-solid construction with maple central block. One-piece mahogany neck with a medium profile, bound rosewood fretboard with 22 original jumbo frets and inlaid pearl double parallelogram position markers (no inlay at the 1st fret). Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and pearl crown inlay. Individual 'double-line' Kluson Deluxe tuners with single-ring Keystone plastic buttons and "D-169400 PATENT NO." stamped on the inside. Two 'Patent Number' pickups with black plastic surrounds and outputs of 8.42k and 7.47k. Each pickup has a small rectangular black "Patent No / 2,737,842" label on the underside. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch for pickup selection and six-position Vari-tone rotary switch for tonal settings, all on lower treble bout. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs with metal tops. With a gold circular plate around the Vari-tone switch. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge with metal saddles and separate trapeze tailpiece with raised diamond. With the original Gibson orange oval label inside the bass f-hole, the style "ES-345TDC" and the serial number "840376" stamped in black. All hardware gold-plated. This guitar is in (9.25) near mint condition. All hardware gold-plated. The serial number is also stamped on the back of the headstock. This guitar is excellent plus (8.75) condition, with an area of belt-buckle wear on the back, some finish checking and some tarnishing to the gold-plating. Housed in a later Guild black hardshell case with gray plush lining (9.25). An all original, great playing, great sounding mid sixties guitar…

Introduced in Spring 1959, the ES-345 "was Gibson's first stereo guitar. It had a circuit that, when connected to a suitable 'Y'-cable, would split the pickups to two individual amplifiers, creating a wide if not strictly stereo spread. It also had a Varitone six-way tone selector. By 1963...the 335 family was priced as follows: the sunburst 335 was $300 ($315 in cherry); sunburst 345 was $395 ($410 cherry); and mono 355 was $595 ($645 with stereo and Varitone)" (Tony Bacon, The History of the American Guitar from 1833 to the Present Day, p. 105).