Both big, and blonde, this is a gorgeous Gibson ES-5 "pre-Switchmaster" designation model built circa 1950 (just the second year of production for the model). The fully bound 17" diameter arch top body is constructed with highly flamed maple, having a single Venetian cutaway, and bound F holes.

This example comes to us in very good condition overall with expected wear and slight mysteries present. The body shows uniform finish checking, some cosmetic scratching, wear on lower bout edge, and typical surface cracks around the output jack hole. This guitar is missing its pickguard, but retains original tailpiece. The tuners are era correct, but do have additional holes from being replaced at one point in time. The original dog eared P90's appear original, but it has been altered in its past. The pickups and pots while appearing to be original, are not in "typical" phase. Currently, the outputs measure 5.7k in the neck, 6.8k in the middle, and 7.3k in the bridge. The classic T Bone tone on these guitars would come from the bridge pickup being stock wired out of phase, and used in conjunction with the middle pickup. While this guitar appears to have stock wiring, the middle position is currently wired out of phase - resulting in more quack when used with the neck or bridge combinations. The Neck and Bridge are now hum cancelling by way of being reverse wound & reverse polarity. We've decided to leave this wiring be, as the hum canceling neck and bridge is pretty cool, and the out of phase tone is still accessible from the middle and bridge.

The flamed maple neck is nice, straight, and very playable. The fingerboard appears to be factory done, but it does have a slightly less pointed binding at the fingerboard extension, and while it has the expected pearl block inlays, it is missing the inlay at the first fret. The condition of the frets would indicate that this has been likely regretted. The neck is nice and comfortable, with a C profile measuring .95" thick at the first position, tapering up to 1" at the twelfth before the curvature of the heel. It has a typical 1 11/16" nut width, and the finish shows typical palm wear present on back of neck. The action is nice and low measuring only 4/64" in height at the twelfth fret, that said, the thumb screws at the bridge are quite low, but there is no need to lower them further. It is equipped with period correct gold plated "waffle-back" tuners with tulip buttons, but there is evidence it was at one point outfitted with replacements as there are additional screw holes present. The original strap button was relocated to heel base from heel cap.

Includes recent Gretsch hard case. Weighs 7.25lbs