Description

This guitar is incredible. There’s not a mark on it, not even a belt buckle mark, not a string end scratch, nothing at all. The hardware has oxidised a little and lost its shine, but that’s quite nice as it makes it look a bit like nickel hardware.

When you pick it up to play it you notice it’s got weight. Not heavy like a solidbody, but serious archtop weight – gravitas perhaps. Then you play it acoustically and realise immediately it’s got “it”. The neck feels fine, not skinny not too fat. Everything feels just right. Even without an amp the sound is “there”. Who knew a 70s guitar could be this good? The top strings ring out like bells, but you can’t wait to plug it in, because that’s what this guitar is all about.

So amp on, with its eq set flat, tone and volume pots up to 10, pickup selector switch up for the neck position and a nice long Cm7 chord on the VIIIth fret and …. OMG, this is pure jazz. This is everything it’s supposed to be and more. Fingers now walking all over Autumn Leaves (Bb is the one true key no matter what the fake book says. Yeah, I also used to think G, “but I’m all right now”!) There’s so much complex sound going on in that tone, from that single pickup, with absolutely no bass, mids, treble or reverb coming from the amp and it sounds so great you just wouldn’t want to do anything at all to it. There’s wood in there, there’s richness, there’s sonic seduction, there’s every great jazz player from Charlie Christian to George Benson. No wonder Joe Pass used to plug straight into the mixing desk – you can, you should!

Now we check out the bridge pickup. It takes a little adjusting to because, well, it’s quite different. It’s got a little bit of edge to it, some hardness which has something of the edge that an acoustic has when played near the bridge. It sounds great with some Yes stuff – little Steve Howe finger-picked pieces. No doubt indie would work well too, only I don’t that. Besides, this ES175 has got one more big trick to show. With the pickup selector in the middle position and both pickups on, the sound is truly a polyphony of the two. It’s not a blend, it’s really the two pickups working in an unblended inter-dimensional way. Kind of like stereo, but the channels are separated by tone rather than by left and right. Like listening to the flute or the trombone in an orchestra, you can easily listen to the sound of either pickup in this mix – awesome. I love this guitar.

Provenance

Bought from Dougie Wyatt, a well respected luthier, who bought it from the original owner when he decided he wanted to play like Steve Howe from Yes. It didn’t take him long to realise that you needed the right technique and not just the right guitar, so Dougie put this guitar away for twenty years, and that’s why its in this most amazing condition.

ES-175 Features

• 16¼” Arched maple top with f-holes, maple back
• Black and ivoroid bound body
• Sunburst
• Maple sides and neck
• One piece mahogany neck
• Black pickguard w/ beveled edge
• Neck joins at 14th fret, 20 fret fingerboard,
• Double parallelogram markers
• 1-11/16" width at nut
• 16½" wide, 3 3/8" deep, 24¾" scale
• Rosewood fingerboard with pearl double trapezoid inlays
• Adjustable compensated rosewood bridge
• Chrome bar style trapeze tailpiece
• Gibson Deluxe double ring tulip tuners
• Black “witches hat” reflector cap volume and tone knobs
• Two humbucking pickups
• Sunburst finish
• Original Gibson hard case (handle broken) with gold Gibson logo

Gibson ES-175 suburst

Gibson 175 double pickup in sunburst