A Mint, Custom Color ES-330 With AN ES-335 Style Neck.

1968 Gibson ES-330TD (Neck joint at 19th fret).

This factory option Custom-Color 'ES-335 style neck' guitar weighs just 6.70 lbs. Laminated maple body with thick aged cream binding on top and back. One-piece mahogany neck with a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches, a nut width of just over 1 9/16 inches and a wonderful medium-to-fat profile. Rosewood fretboard with 22 original medium-jumbo frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo. Two-layer (black on white) plastic truss-rod cover with two screws. Serial number "972630" impressed into the back of the headstock. Individual "double-line" Kluson Deluxe tuners with white plastic oval buttons, each one stamped on the underside "D-169400 / Patent No.". Two hot P-90 pickups with chrome-plated covers and nicely balanced outputs of 8.19k and 8.30k. Five-layer black over white plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way pickup selector switch, all on lower treble bout. Black plastic ribbed-side conical-shape "Witch Hat" knobs with metal tops. Patent Number ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge with nylon saddles and original trapeze tailpiece with raised diamond on cross-bar. All hardware chrome-plated. This fabulous guitar is in absolutely mint (9.50) condition - in fact it has hardly ever been played. Housed in its original Gibson four-latch, shaped black hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.25).

This is one of the very few ES-330’s with an ES-335 style neck with the neck joining the body at the 19th fret (as opposed to the usual 16th fret body joint). This option was only available for 1968-71 and only a very few of these guitars were produced.

"Built with the same body shape as the ES-335T, but not the same semi-solid construction, the ES-330T/TD were originally introduced in 1959 as a replacement for the single cutaway ES-225T/TD. The single pickup version was phased out in 1963, but the ES-330TD remained in production until 1972. Two main variants are usually distinguished up to the mid-60s... The first variant is characterized by a dot-inlaid fingerboard and black plastic-covered pickups... The ES-330TD was originally offered in sunburst and natural finish but in the course of 1960 the popular cherry red was substituted for natural... In mid-62 the fingerboard was enhanced with small pearloid block inlays and at the end of the year the the pickups were fitted with metal covers. The transitional instruments made during the second half of 1962 therefore feature block markers and black plastic-covered pickups" (A.R. Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics -- The Classic Years, p. 230).

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.