Les Paul Meets ES-335 -- The Best of Both Worlds

This very loud 14 3/4-inch-wide jazz guitar weighs 8.00 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Laminated maple body with Chromyte center block, one-piece maple neck, and ebony fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. The body is triple-bound on the top and single-bound on the back. Single-bound headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and pearl crown inlay. "Howard Roberts Fusion" on truss-rod cover. Individual Gibson Roto-Matic tuners with half-moon metal buttons. Serial number ("91095546") and "Made in U.S.A." stamped on the back of the headstock. One 490R Alnico magnet humbucker pickup with an output of 7.85k and one 490T Alnico magnet humbucker pickup with an output of 13.27k. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on lower treble bout. Black plastic barrel-shaped "Speed" knobs with white markings. Nahsville-style Tune-O-Matic bridge and adjustable finger-style tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. This guitar is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condtion, with a minimal amount of belt buckle wear on the back and a few surface marks on the sides, especially down by the jack socket. Housed in the original Gibson brown hardshell case with purple plush lining (9.00).

As the Fusion name suggests, this guitar was developed primarily for loud jazz players. It is very feedback resistant and offers up none of the low growly feedback of a true hollow body (i.e., the ES-175). The body style is a single large Venetian cutaway, featuring a toneblock like an ES-335. The toneblock is made of "Chromyte" (a more expensive name for balsa wood). Overall, it looks vaguely like a Les Paul, but a little larger and with a semi-hollow body.

Howard Roberts was once described as a jazz guitarist who could play anything. Howard was an innovator and guitar designer in addition to being an astonishing player. By the mid-sixties he began developing a series of unique instruments, some of which remain available to the present day. The trend began in 1961 when Howard was approached by Les Prop, an executive at CMI (Chicago Musical Instruments, the company which controlled both Gibson and Epiphone), to design an Epiphone signature model. The result was the Epiphone Howard Roberts model. Co-designed by Andy Nelson, this namesake guitar was introduced on Capitol's Something's Cookin' album, recorded in July-August of 1964. The Epiphone Roberts was essentially an ES-175 upgraded to better wood, equipped with a single floating mini-humbucking pickup mounted at the end of the fingerboard, and an oval sound hole instead of the traditional f-holes. It was offered in both Custom and Standard models.
The gold finger pieces on the saddle are not, contrary to popular belief, fine tuners, but in fact, the method with which to adjust the amount of downward pressure on the bridge so that the player can add or subtract sustain.