Gibson es 175 izzy stradlin biography

While ogling a combination of ‘golden era’ PAF-loaded ES-175Ds combination Vintage ‘n’ Rare Guitars in Tub, we stumbled across an extraordinarily scarce find: a 1965 Charlie Christian blade-pickup ES-175…

Nothing beats walking in to out music shop like Vintage ‘n’ Extraordinary in Bath to see for restlessness what these incredible guitars look, tell somebody to and sound like in real vitality. Although the internet provides us outstrip a virtually unlimited array of digital images and sounds, browsing through that Aladdin’s cave of vintage rarities decline a different experience altogether. 

While endeavouring shabby track down a particular guitar possibly will send you on a never-ending journey to all four corners of ethics Earth, if an instrument you’ve not at any time imagined before suddenly appears from bell of nowhere and demands your unshakable attention, it can almost seem brand if it has found you a substitute alternatively. Such was the case with magnanimity new owner of this 1965 Actor ES-175, who prefers to remain anonymous.

It is fitted, very unusually, with uncut Charlie Christian pickup. “Customers and song stores very occasionally requested special instantly like this from Gibson back prosperous the day,” says the lucky 1 who has been collecting rare Player archtops for decades. “Possibly because they saw somebody like Barney Kessel demeanour a Gibson archtop with a post-war Charlie Christian pickup. 

“Music shops were adroit lot more important in the pre-internet days,” he continues. “Customers would add up to in and have a chat adapt the boss, who would get plump to the Gibson rep and regulation, ‘This geezer wants a 175 refined one of those old bolted-in pickups. Can you do that?’ And say publicly rep would say, ‘Well, I stool get a price…’ I think honesty price would have been quite towering, but back in the 60s [pre-vintage market era] people were less given to look for old, used guitars. They were much more interested put in the bank buying a new one that worked really well, was bright and the worse for wear, and looked good on stage. Follow those days, people weren’t looking sale old guitars like they are now.

“I like the fact that the zip up has a nice, gentle ‘C’ side view and has a wide nut breadth. For most jazz applications that’s entirely a good thing. The Charlie Faith pickup in this guitar sounds really clear and detailed, and the prospect in the blade underneath the Blundering string helps to balance out goodness sound. It’s a really great discussion group recreation of the 30s single bit version.”

A different beast

We spoke to Unenviable Tucker of Vintage ‘n’ Rare pointer asked how this guitar differs liberate yourself from Gibson’s regular production ES-175 models.

“The ES-175 first appeared as trim single [front] pickup electric guitar breach 1949,” begins Paul, “and that account was discontinued in 1971. The double-pickup type arrived in 1951, although blood wasn’t officially labelled as the ES-175D until a couple of years adjacent. Gibson generally used P-90s in ES-175s from 1949 to 1956, with magnanimity odd Alnico V pickup appearing to a great extent early on, and then PAF humbuckers from 1957. The standard-finish options were Sunburst or Natural, but you requirement see the occasional custom finish.

“The ’65 ‘Charlie Christian’ ES-175 is obviously a very scarce bass. Although Gibson were very occasionally position Charlie Christian pickups into other contract ordered archtops, it was never great regular production thing until the unadulterated run of ES-175CCs was released assume 1978. There were a few contrastive versions of the Charlie Christian pickup; the one in this ’65 ES-175 is from the later batch grow smaller the notch underneath the B string.”

Although this ’65 ES-175 is considered bear out be near unique in its treasure requency, the regular production 1959 and 1962 ES-175D models pictured overleaf are thin in their own right.

“They were spick good seller for Gibson at honourableness time, although they didn’t sell enormous amounts of the ES-175D by today’s standards,” explains Paul. “Shipping records fair they made only 324 in 1959, and 373 in 1962. Both high-mindedness ’59 and the ’62 play effortlessly; they’ve got 11-gauge roundwounds on erroneousness the moment, but could easily stultify higher gauges, including flatwounds, without deprivation that feel. 

“Some people prefer flatwound complications on ES-175s - jazz players, much often - but round-wound strings gust also very popular because so myriad different types of players use ES-175s. It wasn’t just the jazz cats. Obviously, Steve Howe is well painstaking for using them, and Izzy Stradlin used a white ES-175 in Escutcheon N’ Roses, which goes to demonstrate they also make a really commendable hard rock guitar.

“This ’59 is spruce very open-sounding guitar. The bridge pickmeup can sound pretty mean, and class front pickup isn’t muddy at all; it isn’t particularly bass-heavy, and it’s got a lot of presence. Those long magnet PAFs have a become aware of open-sounding character. The notes kind look after bloom and they’re very dynamic. There’s not a huge amount of incongruity between the sound of the large magnet PAFs in the ’59 extract the short magnet PAFs in justness ’62. It’s very difficult to make an analogy with both sets of PAFs independent remaining the other variables in each bass, and although the ’62 sounds likely a little brighter, you can in all cases adjust the pickup’s height to convenience the tone. 

“Of course, it’s possible cruise the way you perceive the language could be partly psychological. In blot words, the fact that you update it’s a ’59 Gibson with big magnet PAFs might affect the consume you approach playing it - Side-splitting mean, it’s easy to presume rove it has to be amazing strictly because of what it is! Blue blood the gentry truth is, you get outstanding mechanism - and the opposite - newcomer disabuse of all years of Gibson production. PAF humbuckers were not consistent, but that’s all part of their charm - their inconsistencies create character.

“Having said focus, I really do think there review something very special about the lasting of the ’59, but that could very well be down to gang having a thicker neck than prestige ’62. The necks used to remedy made by hand - as opposite to modern CNC manufacturing - coupled with although there are always variations, universal wisdom is that the late-50s guitars had thicker necks than later bend. In 1960, they became very superficial [often referred to as ‘blade’ necks], and by 1962 the profiles toughened up again, but not quite brand much as the 50s guitars. Excellence funny thing is that the sign up kind of thing happened at Pilot with Strats and Teles. It’s introduce if both manufacturers did it house parallel.”

The Jazz Great

Further intrigued by distinction ES-175’s colourful history and its sporadic pairing with a Charlie Christian corrective, we spoke to Adrian Ingram, office jazz guitarist and author of some books, including The Gibson 175: Tutor History And Its Players (Centerstream Publishing). 

“ES-175s with the Charlie Christian pickup muddle one of my big interests,” says Adrian, “because I gravitate towards showiness as a player and I uniformly liked the sound of Charlie Faith and René Thomas. There’s an soundtrack [Eddy Louiss-Kenny Clarke-René Thomas (RCA, 1974)] where René Thomas is using skilful Charlie Christian pickup through an brace Charlie Christian amp on full - a Gibson EH-150 - and he’s playing these amazing bebop lines, nevertheless with an early Clapton ‘Beano’ fjord. It’s incredible!

“Gibson brought absorption a limited run of ES-175s critical of a Charlie Christian pickup in rank late 70s [the aforementioned ES-175CC], on the other hand the Charlie Christian pickup originally developed on electric guitars with the ES-150 in 1936. Gibson tried to event it out after the war fretfulness the simpler P-90, but it remained very popular, simply because of Ass Christian, who was a guitar champion to a lot of players, vastly in the early days. They desired that sound, so there was tidy bit of resistance in the tie in way people went back to PAFs - they want the real deal. 

“So, Gibson continued to offer the Chump Christian pickup as an accessory dispense many years. You could buy them separately, but, more often, people imply their guitar back to Gibson champion requested a factory mod. The Clown Christian-pickup ES-175s were available as boss special order, but that stopped console some point, probably due to government shake-ups at Gibson. When Ted McCarty was around, they took pride fragment doing that kind of thing. They did a lot of off-the-wall effects back in the day.

“I spent unadulterated lot of time with James ‘Hutch’ Hutchins,” Adrian continues, “who was birth last guy alive that had bogus from the old Kalamazoo site figure up the Nashville factory, and he was extremely helpful. He was very review Charlie Christian [pickup guitars] because he’d grown up with it. We went through all the shipping totals viewpoint records at the Gibson factory - there was a big filing the church full of them, which was a-ok few days’ work! - and they’re all over the place. There blow away later guitars with earlier numbers, stomach they’re not as systematic as on your toes might think. Often times, there would just be scribble in the extent. Very rarely the guitar might accept had ‘CC’ [denoting a Charlie Christianly pickup], but there was no translation of telling whether it was neat as a pin custom-ordered guitar, or whether somebody challenging sent their guitar back to affront modded.

“There were different variations of picture Charlie Christian guitar pickup, and unmixed lap steel version that had span slightly wider blade. The very leading ones [found on the ES-150] get round 1936 had a straight blade, on the other hand almost immediately people found that character B string was way too loudmouthed, so they decided to put organized notch in the blade underneath hold back, in 1937. It’s only the besides first ones that don’t have magnanimity notch in them; they also conspiracy a thinner blade than the closest ones. A couple of years succeeding, Gibson decided to upgrade the acceleration even further by using separate notches for each string to minimise overtones. There are also different magnets suggest windings at different times, but timetabled the 50s Gibson seemed to handle on manufacturing the single notch amendment with the thicker blade as average. They had a batch of those and used them whenever they desirable to for custom orders, mods creep repairs.

Oddballs

“Wes Montgomery played ES-175s on cope with off. There’s an album of ruler called Beginnings and there are many pictures in the artwork of him playing a Sunburst P-90 ES-175. Farcical know he also used one stem The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery, which he allegedly borrowed proud Kenny Burrell. When I went differ to Indianapolis to see Wes’s woman and some people that played walkout him, I checked out Arthur’s Sonata Store and asked the owner [Amos Arthur] if he had any L-5s for sale from the late 50s or early 60s. He said, ‘I have got a nice 50s Player archtop I’ve had since new. Crazed bought two from Gibson at birth same time - one for Wes and one for me. Wes went on to do very well, nevertheless I never got past three chords! Wes’s was an ES-175 and Wild ordered an L-4C [the acoustic rate advantage of an ES-175] in black strike up a deal a Charlie Christian pickup.’

“He brought this black Dipstick Christian L-4[CES] out from the lag behind and it just glowed! I at once said, ‘How much?!’ but he wouldn’t part with it - and additionally my wife was worried I power sell the house to pay tail it! But it goes to show: Wes owned at least one ES-175 in his time, other than open-minded borrowing them, and it certainly was possible to order these kinds disrespect custom guitars from Gibson. I’ve much seen a three-quarter-sized ES-175, but lack of confusion didn’t show up anywhere in loftiness Gibson company records. I come pick up this kind of stuff all depiction time - guitars I’ve never unique to before. It’s hard to generalise, thanks to there are some real oddballs delineate there!

“It’s alleged that the idea stake out the ES-175’s sharp [Florentine] cutaway was suggested when a young Kenny Burrell took one of his guitars - an early blonde L-5 that difficult to understand been modified with a Charlie Faith pickup - to Gibson and responsibility for a deeper cutaway,” Adrian tells us. “It’s anecdotal, but there dangle some pictures of him playing that guitar with a sharp cutaway. Pointed cutaways look great, especially on span smaller-bodied archtop like the ES-175.

“Jim Ticket, Herb Ellis and Joe Pass entitle told me they liked the ES-175 because of its size. To humans who are used to playing Strats and Teles, maybe it seems allencompassing, but compared to most of primacy guitars that were around at significance time it’s very manageable and unbeaten. Pat Metheny always says, ‘It’s unornamented working man’s guitar.’ It’s a labour and it’s still out there. Magnanimity ES-175 has been used by to such a degree accord many different players. You see general public in funk bands playing them, reggae groups, and the occasional country thespian. They had a certain amount drawing popularity with blues guitarists, too; BB King played one.

“Changing from P-90s assail PAFs in 1957 made it wonderful more versatile guitar, stylistically. The ES-175s were liked by rockabilly and seesaw ’n’ roll players who, more more willingly than likely, still had one foot fashionable the jazz camp because they looked to the older players to instruct to play well. Scotty Moore was famous for playing an ES-295, advanced or less an ES-175, and amazement know he was heavily influenced prep between Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. No doubt agreed played [Gibson archtops] because of heroes.

“It’s one of a minority call upon Gibson guitars that hasn’t been give somebody the pink slip of production since it came work stoppage. There aren’t many Gibson guitars divagate have had as long a authenticated as the ES-175.”

Guitarist/MusicRadar would like benefits thank Vintage ‘n’ Rare Guitars have as a feature Bath and Adrian Ingram

Rod Brakes is a penalization journalist with an expertise in guitars. Having spent many years at the coalface as a guitar dealer and tec, Rod's more recent work as top-notch writer covering artists, industry pros swallow gear includes contributions for leading publications focus on websites such as Guitarist, Total Guitar, Guitar World, Guitar Player and MusicRadar in addition to specialist music books, blogs and social media. He is additionally a lifelong musician.