The Gibson ES-135 is a semi-hollow body electric guitar made by the

Gibson Guitar Corporation Gibson Brands, Inc. (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation) is an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was forme ...

. Originally introduced in 1956, it was discontinued in 1958. Some guitars were stamped with and marketed as an ES-130. The original run amounted to 556 instruments produced. The model, with some modifications, was reintroduced in 1991 and remained in production until 2004. The Gibson ES-135 has a Florentine cutaway, a trapeze tailpiece, two P-100 pickups (stacked

humbucker A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in d ...

s with

P-90 The P-90 (sometimes written P90) is a single coil electric guitar pickup produced by Gibson since 1946. Gibson is still producing P-90s, and there are outside companies that manufacture replacement versions. Compared to other single coil desig ...

covers) with two tone and volume controls and a three-way switch. It had looks and tone reminiscent of the old ES-125 TDC, but was not a fully hollow thinline guitar, having a feedback-suppressing sustain block running under the pickups and bridge from the neck/body joint to the base of the body like the

ES-335 The Gibson ES-335 is the world's first commercial semi-hollowbody electric guitar, sometimes known as semi-acoustic. Released by the Gibson Guitar Corporation as part of its ES (Electric Spanish) series in 1958, it is neither fully hollow nor ful ...

. Unlike the ES-335, the sustain block in the ES-135 was made of

balsa ''Ochroma pyramidale'', commonly known as the balsa tree, is a large, fast-growing tree native to the Americas. It is the sole member of the genus ''Ochroma''. The tree is famous for its wide usage in woodworking, with the name ''balsa'' being ...

wood rather than maple. The body itself and neck were again of similar construction to the ES-335, being built from laminated maple but with an unbound rosewood

fingerboard The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The stri ...

with dot-style fret position markers. The metal fittings were chrome-plated, and the P-100s had black plastic "soapbar" style covers. The guitar, when launched, was the most basic and lowest-priced in the Gibson ES range, but had the same fittings, wiring and construction quality as more expensive models. At launch, Gibson claimed it was the first semi-solid electric guitar with a Florentine-style single cutaway in the world. The ES-135 went through several changes during its production life. The P-100 pickups, intended to have the tone and output of the

but without the single-coil P-90's tendency to hum, did not meet with universal approval, having a slightly less biting tone and at times an equal tendency to squeal at high volumes. The use of P-100s was therefore discontinued and conventional Gibson covered humbuckers substituted. The original trapeze tailpiece gave the guitar a distinctive tone and an aggressive "bark" when played with vigor, but again was not entirely popular. The trapeze makes re-stringing a slow operation and the very long string length needed to reach from the tailpiece to the tuners meant some brands of strings did not fit. The ES-135 Studio featured no f-holes, a stop tailpiece and Tune-O-Matic bridge, and humbuckers. The 1991 reissue was similarly constructed with a balsa block, Tune-O-Matic, and P-100's. The Gibson Guitar Corporation released a similar model with more up-market appointments (neck binding and inlays) and two classic humbucking pickups, the

Gibson ES-137 The Gibson ES-137 is a semi-hollow-body guitar which was manufactured in Gibson's Custom Shop Memphis factory as a limited production run from 2002–2013. It was a relatively new design in Gibson's ES line which was not based on a vintage instrum ...

, in 2002.

References

Gear Vault Review
Gear Vault Review. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gibson Es-135 Semi-acoustic guitars ES-135

See also

References