1949 Gibson ES-125 Hollowbody Electric Guitar

What a pretty ES-125, huh? This one also has the cool, non-adjustable-poles version of the "P90" which is closer in construction to a Jazzmaster or '30s Gibson lap steel pickup than it really is to a "normal" P90. The sound is thus smooth, clean, and jazzy but with some good bite and snap due to higher output vs. your average single coil from the time. It's not as growly or angry in the mids like you'd normally expect a P90 to be.

This one came in via a New York customer and he needed it refretted. It came in with "new frets" that someone had super-glued in while simultaneously tearing-out the fretboard and then leveling them down to flat-shaped boxes. Ew.

Work included: a board plane and refret with jumbo stock, fitting a new StewMac rosewood bridge (frustratingly: at tension the top deflects oddly around it on the bass foot), tuners install (the owner had some '50s Klusons on hand), cleaning, and setup. The neck is dead-straight and the action is perfect at hair-over 1/16" EA and 1/16" DGBE at the 12th fret. I've used gauges 46w, 36w, 26w, 18w, 13, 10 on it to give it a rock-n-roll feel, but these can take up to 13s with no problem -- so long as you stick with wound-G strings for proper intonation.

Scale length: 24 3/4"

Nut width: 1 11/16"

String spacing at nut: 1 1/2"

String spacing at bridge: 2"

Body length: 20"

Lower bout width: 16"

Waist width: 9 1/4"

Upper bout width: 11 1/2"

Side depth at endpin: 3 1/4" + arching depth

Top wood: ply spruce

Back/sides wood: ply mahogany

Neck wood: mahogany

Bracing type: tonebar

Fretboard: Brazilian rosewood

Bridge: Indian rosewood

Neck feel: medium C-shape, 12" radius board

Condition notes: replaced tuners and tuner ferrules, new bridge, replacement endpin, but otherwise all-original and in fantastic shape. The finish glows.