One of the finest rhythm guitars ever produced
Written: Jul 31 '00 (Updated Sep 22 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful jazz and country guitar
Cons: Boxy and a little cumbersome; not a rocker
The Bottom Line: This is a superb rhthym guitar that also excellent jazz and country lead possibities. Vintage copies are very expensive and highly collectible.
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| buffoonery's Full Review: Gibson Es-5 |
As the guitar increased in popularity and technology advanced during the 1930's, more and more guitarists wanted their instruments amplified. Having outgrown the crude and unsatisfactory expedient of playing into a microphone (which generated feedback and fuzz and seriously diminished sound quality), musicians wanted to plug their guitars directly into amplifiers. This is done by placing "pick-ups" (essentially small microphones) on the guitar body directly under the strings and hooking them into an outlet on the guitar that would be plugged into the amp.
The addition of pick-ups placed some stress on guitar design, which had concentrated on designing acoustic guitars from the ground up. Amplifying a guitar requires not only adding the pick-ups, but volume and tone controls as well as an outlet; moreover, pick-up design is an art to itself as different pick-ups generate vastly different sounds. Gibson Guitars, then and now one of the foremost manufacturers of American guitars, initially made some experiments with its acoustic guitars, i.e. guitars with hollow bodies that are designed to be played without amplification
By 1935, however, Gibson decided to design a electric acoustic guitar from the ground up, starting the "ES" or "Electric Spanish" series, which debuted with the ES-150 in 1936. As demand increased, in 1949 Gibson produced two classic designs: the ES-5, under review here, without question one of the finest jazz and rhythm guitars ever produced, and the smaller, more affordable ES-175, to be reviewed later. Both are superb guitars.
The ES-5 is a standard archtop hollow body guitar that was built off the L-series body and frame, providing the guitarist with a 20-fret guitar with a rounded cutaway on the bottom. (Contrast this round shape on the right bottom of the guitar with the "sharp" cutaway on the ES-175, which can be clicked under the Gibson heading here.) . The cutaway allows the guitarist to play on the higher frets; most guitars before 1940's did not have a cutaway, thus limiting guitarist primarily to the first 12 frets (a "Super" Stratocaster guitar now has 24 frets.)
There are two f-holes, one above and one below the strings. The particular guitar I own is about a 1950 vintage sunburst (click on the ES-335 dot reissue guitar for an idea of my color scheme), with three P-90 (invented in 1946) pick-ups. It has one tone and three volume controls, one for each pickup; the absence of a switch makes this guitar more difficult to control than the later "Switchmaster" model, which had a switch and separate volume and tone controls for each pick-up.
A digression: why three pick-ups? Isn't one enough? Good questions. Like any other plucked instrument, the sound you get depends on where you pluck the string. (Other factors affecting sound are the type of amp and pick; I won't get into stomp boxes or synthesizers here.) On a guitar, the closer one plucks the string to the bridge, the more metallic or tense the sound; as one plucks closer to the fret board, the sound becomes more mellow. Placing pick-ups at different points of the body allows a guitarist to produce vastly different sounds. Mellower, less obtrusive sounds are preferred for rhythm while lead players need something that attacks the ears more strongly.
The ES-5 and its progeny quickly moved to occupy central stage with orchestral rhythm players and jazz players. The guitar is a wonderful combination of size, sound and action. The pick-ups generate an incredibly mellow, classic jazz sound and does very well with country, too. You won't be playing rock and roll on these things. I prefer to use a higher-gauge string (.12 or so on the E string) and coiled lower strings to help that great sound--I leave the double bends for my Stratocaster (see my review). (A double bend is when a guitarist pushes up a string to get a sound that is a full step higher than the sound ordinarily generated at the fret.) Chords are full and powerful. The lead is crisp and clear.
The action is good but not great. You will not get the lightning speed that is possible on a Strat or similar instrument. It holds tuning very well, especially because you won't be bending much. Given the size, you won't be playing this behind your head.
I play this through three different amps, a 56 Gibson, an early 60's Magnatone, and a late 60's Univox. It sounds beautiful.
However, as time advanced and culture changed, the Gibson hollow bodies faded in popularity as kids and pros both rushed out to buy solid body Fender Stratocasters and the thin-body Gibson Les Pauls. Most of these series were dropped from production with time, although Gibson is now reproducing some of these lines and you can now get an ES-5 reissue for under $3,000 (originals will run $4,000 and up).
This is a guitarist's guitar and I wouldn't start playing on one (unless your dad owned one). If you find one lying around, even if you're a Schecter or Washburn metal head, buy it. Mortgage the house if you have to. It will be a religious experience.
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Recommended:
Yes
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