Vintage Gibson ES-125 TDC 1966

Mid 60s Vintage Gibson ES-125 TDC thinline electric guitar

This ES-125 TDC has such a wonderfully vibrant cherry sunburst finish it brings joy to the eyes of the beholder. It’s also a joy to play, bright and breezy acoustically, and those P-90 p/ups chime like blues bells.

It’s either a transition-period guitar when Gibson were changing from nickel to chrome plating, hence chrome trapeze and nickel tuners, or the chrome trapeze tailpiece is a replacement. The ‘zebra striping’ on the back of the neck is where fine finish lines have appeared in the varnish but this wont deteriorate and is not noticeable when playing. A strap button has been removed from the upper bout, leaving a hole. Unfortunately, the pickguard shown in the picture has been removed and lost, so the guitar will be supplied without it (sigh). It is therefore worth less than the 3k these usually bring, making it a really good value vintage Gibson ES-125 TDC guitar.

The TDC moniker is for thinline double pickup cutaway

The TDC model blurred the lines between student and professional. 125s were originally sold as student instruments, but the double pickup put the ES-125 TDC into a higher category altogether. In fact, the difference between the 125 and the much more expensive 330 of this era was purely cosmetic – neck binding and double cutaways for the 330 and bigger fret inlays for a while too.

Gibson ES-125 TDC Features

• Single bound, single cutaway hollow-body guitar with f holes
• Unbound mahogany neck
• Rosewood fingerboard with perloid dot markers
• Adjustable rosewood bridge
• Trapeze tailpiece with raised parallelogram (replacement)
• Double P90 pickups with black covers
• Gold reflector volume and tone-cut controls
• Kluson ‘3 on a plate’ deluxe tuners
• Chrome and nickel-plated hardware
• Modern tan-coloured hard case