A Thin Line Archtop That You Can Look Past
Written: Jan 20 '07 (Updated Sep 22 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Thin, light body is ideal for country performances
Cons: Too slight for my taste, below average collectibility
The Bottom Line: THe 350T is a nice light vintage guitar for country and jazz performance. But its slight construction and short neck leave me cold.
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| buffoonery's Full Review: Gibson Es-350t |
Always on the look out to find different ways to sell more guitars, in 1954 Gibson staffers sat down with Nashville session men Hank Garland and Billy Byrd and asked them what they would like to see in a new guitar. Both men were looking for a thinner L-5 and a few months later Gibson delivered the thinline Byrdland acoustic electric, which was an immediate success. Seeking to capitalize on that, Gibson began manufacturing the ES-350T in 1955 (discontinued in 1981) as a thinline successor to its full-body ES-350 model (first manufactured in 1947 and the first Gibson with a soft "Venetian" cutaway.
The guitar is, I think, not wholly successful.
This (I played a 1956 tobacco finish) guitar is a Byrdland with fewer bells and whistles. At 2 1/4" deep (17" wide), it is an inch thinner than the 350. As I said, the maple laminate body has a single soft cutaway that lets you play in the 12th position, albeit not entirely comfortably. The 23 1/2" short scale, very thin neck made me think that I was playing a Tele compared to the ES-5 and ES-175 I grew up with. The electronics include 2 P-90 pick-ups (humbuckers were produced beginning in 1957), two volume and two tone controls, and a three way pickup control located on the lower left, below the pick guard.
The tailpiece is a W-shape tubular design and "ES-350T" engraved on oblong crosspiece. (Later versions had Tune-o-Matic bridges.) It has a laminated beveled-edge pickguard, triple bound top and back. The single bound fingerboard has double parallelagram inlays. Parts are gold-plated. Manufacture is of the usual high Gibson quality and the guitar had the dings you would expect from a fifty-year old instrument.
The 350T was designed to appeal to a performing guitarist who did not want to stand around for three hours with the bulk of a ES-5 or Super 400 hanging on his head. The shorter neck was also intended to accomodate the faster pace of 1950's music. The speed up and down the thin neck is better than an ES5 or 175. The P-90s also sound like, well, P-90s.
But I don't think the guitar really cuts it. As one might expect with a thinline, acoustically the 350T cannot compete with a full bodied archtop. The thin neck doesn't particularly suit my playing style for a rhythm or jazz lead guitar (the 175 is a far superior guitar for jazz, esp in tone). The whole package really feels as if it were designed for an intermediate guitarist.
And that may well affect its collectibility value, because as a economy-level stripped down Byrdland, you should be very careful what you pay for this guitar. I saw this for over two grand at Guitar Center and, maybe I'm a little tight, but that's WAY too much for what you're getting here, not when you can get a nice 175 on eBay for under three grand. One thing: the natural blonde finishes are much rarer and, consequently, more collectible.
As you can see, I am rather cool to this guitar, which is conceivably the least interesting Gibson I have ever played. If I got it as a gift, sure, I'd monkey with it every now and then, but unless you're of average build, really like P-90s, or are trying to mimic a specific Chuck Berry sound (he played one for a while), I would give this guitar a pass.
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