The Gibson ES-345 is a guitar manufactured by the

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

. The guitar was produced from 1959 to 1981. It was designed as a jazz guitar and an upscale version of the

ES-335 The Gibson ES-335 is a semi-hollow body semi-acoustic guitar introduced by the Gibson Guitar Corporation as part of its ES (Electric Spanish) series in 1958. It has a solid maple wood block running through the center of its body with hollow upper ...

History

The 345 was developed in 1958 as an upscale version of the

Gibson ES-335 The Gibson ES-335 is a semi-hollow body semi-acoustic guitar introduced by the Gibson Guitar Corporation as part of its Gibson ES Series, ES (Electric Spanish) series 1958 in music, in 1958. It has a solid maple wood block running through the cente ...

. Gibson released the ES-345T in the spring of 1959. The Gibson ES-345T had a price of $345 in the standard sunburst finish. From the guitar's 1959 introduction through 1979, 10,560 ES-345s were shipped. Gibson designed the guitar to create a guitar which could be used to produce jazz but with a maple block running through the guitar to allow the versatility of a solid body electric guitar. Gibson released the guitar in three finishes, Cherry, Natural and Sunburst. The sunburst finish was called the ES-345TD, the cherry finish was called the ES-345TDC and the natural finish was called the ES-345TDN.

Specifications

1958 saw the introduction of Gibson's new thinline series of guitars. The ES-335, 345 and 355, all came with a semi-hollow body: the wood of the top and back was maple and there was a maple center block inside the guitars which ran the length of the body all the way to the mahogany neck, with a rosewood fingerboard. The neck of the guitar has double-parallelogram fretboard inlays. The guitar also featured a stereo pickup configuration and Varitone circuit. The varitone's positions were not properly defined by Gibson which left players to try describing the sounds of the varitone dial positions as: squishy, underwater, and guitar-in-a-box. What the variotone did is allow users to switch to predefined frequency scoops which kept highs and lows. Gibson also manufactured a

Gibson ES-355 The Gibson ES-355 is the top of the line semi-hollow body Thinline Dual Pickup Stereo Varitone (TDSV) manufactured by the Gibson Guitar Company. The guitar is a stereo guitar with a varitone circuit and it was manufactured from 1958 to 1984. In ...

TD-SV which was a fancier version of the ES-345TD. Both the ES-345TD/SV and the ES-355TD-SV did not become as popular as the simple ES-335. One reason was that the ES-345 and the ES-355 each required a 'Y' cable and a TRS jack to separate the pickup signals. The much simpler mono ES-335 did not require any special equipment. The original ES-345 came with nickel parts covered in gold and

PAF (pickup) A P.A.F., or simply PAF ("Patent Applied For"), is an early model of the humbucker guitar pickup invented by Seth Lover in 1955, so named for the "Patent Applied For" decal placed on the baseplate of each pickup. Gibson used the P.A.F. on guit ...

s. In 1959 and 1960 the pickguard was long, extending all the way to the bridge but it was shortened in 1961. From 1959-1963 Gibson had a

Stoptail bridge A stoptail bridge (sometimes also called a stopbar bridge) used on a solid body electric guitar or archtop guitar is a specialized kind of fixed hard-tail bridge. Hard-tail bridged guitars use different bridges from those guitars fitted with ...

but beginning in 1964 they began installing a gold trapeze tailpiece on the ES-345s. It was not until 1982 that Gibson went back to the

on the ES-345. Some of the first Gibson ES-345s also shipped with a

Bigsby vibrato tailpiece The Bigsby vibrato tailpiece (or Bigsby for short) is a type of vibrato systems for guitar, mechanical vibrato device for electric guitar designed by Paul Bigsby and produced by the Bigsby Electric Guitar Company (currently an independently oper ...

Notable players

Elvin Bishop Elvin Richard Bishop (born October 21, 1942) is an American blues and rock music singer, guitarist, bandleader, and songwriter. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 2015, and in ...

George Harrison George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Culture ...

Steve Howe Stephen James Howe (born 8 April 1947) is an English musician, best known as the guitarist and backing vocalist in the progressive rock band Yes (band), Yes across three stints since 1970. Born in Holloway, London, Holloway, North London, Howe d ...

, main guitar on the 1972 album ''

Close to the Edge ''Close to the Edge'' is the fifth studio album by English progressive rock band Yes, released in the UK on 8 September 1972 and in the US on 13 September 1972, by Atlantic Records. It is their last album until '' Union'' (1991) to feature ori ...

''. *

Hiroki Kamemoto is a Japanese musician, best known as lead guitarist of the rock band Glim Spanky since 2007. Formed while the members were in high school, the group made their major label debut in 2014 and consists of Kamemoto and vocalist and rhythm guitari ...

Jorma Kaukonen Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen Jr. (; ; born December 23, 1940) is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist. Kaukonen performed with Jefferson Airplane, and still performs regularly on tour with Hot Tuna, which started as a side project with bassist ...

B.B. King Riley B. King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015), known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, sh ...

Freddie King Freddie King (born Fred Christian; September 3, 1934December 28, 1976), also billed as Freddy King, was an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar" (along with Albert King a ...

Marty McFly Marty McFly is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Back to the Future (franchise), ''Back to the Future'' franchise. He is a high school student living in the fictional town of Hill Valley (Back to the Future), Hill Valley, California ...

* John McLaughlin bought in 1978, his 1976 instrument has been modified with a scalloped fingerboard and the Bigsby trem *

Bill Nelson Clarence William Nelson II (born September 29, 1942) is an American politician, attorney, and former astronaut who served from 2001 to 2019 as a United States Senate, United States senator from Florida and from 2021 to 2025 as the Administrator ...

Harry Vanda Johannes Hendrikus Jacob van den Berg (born 22 March 1946), better known as Harry Vanda, is a Dutch-Australian musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as lead guitarist of the 1960s Australian rock band the Easybeats who wi ...

Bob Weir Robert Hall Weir ( ; né Parber, born October 16, 1947) is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the group disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with the Other Ones, later known as the Dead ...

acquired an ES-345TDC in 1967, and from 1971 until early 1973 it was his primary guitar. * Bob Welch used a Gibson ES-345 and a heavily modified

Fender Stratocaster The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of double- cutaway electric guitar designed between 1952 and 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corpora ...

on their 1971 album,

Future Games ''Future Games'' is the fifth studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 3 September 1971. It was recorded in the summer of 1971 at Advision Studios in London and was the first album to feature Christine McVie as a ful ...

References

External links

Video - Scott Sharrard of the Gregg Allman Band on The Gibson Varitone ES-345
{{Gibson Guitar Corporation ES-345 Semi-acoustic guitars 1958 musical instruments 1959 in music Discontinued products