The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

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Larry Mal
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:34 am

I really, really want an ES-175, and I might treat myself once the ES-335 is paid off.

I also want a Les Paul Recording, so that might be in competition.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by MrFingers » Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:28 pm

Larry Mal wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:34 am
I really, really want an ES-175, and I might treat myself once the ES-335 is paid off.
You could have gone for the ES-150DC, and have both?

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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:35 pm

MrFingers wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:28 pm
Larry Mal wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:34 am
I really, really want an ES-175, and I might treat myself once the ES-335 is paid off.
You could have gone for the ES-150DC, and have both?
Can't argue with that!
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Embenny » Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:03 pm

Someone local just made me a trade offer involving a 1995 ES-335. I know nothing beyond what Reverb tells me. How much are these things really worth to those who GAS for them, psychologically-manipulated or otherwise?

I'm 335-curious but don't want to take a bath if I don't bond with it. It sounds like Larry's convinced I could snag a recently-built one for $2k. Reverb prices are, naturally, 60% higher, at least on 90's ones.

I've been slowly wading into Gibson waters but it's weird knowing nothing about value. In the Fender world, I can glance at just about any guitar and know whether it's a decent deal or not.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Larry Mal » Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:47 pm

mbene085 wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:03 pm
Someone local just made me a trade offer involving a 1995 ES-335. I know nothing beyond what Reverb tells me. How much are these things really worth to those who GAS for them, psychologically-manipulated or otherwise?

I'm 335-curious but don't want to take a bath if I don't bond with it. It sounds like Larry's convinced I could snag a recently-built one for $2k. Reverb prices are, naturally, 60% higher, at least on 90's ones.

I've been slowly wading into Gibson waters but it's weird knowing nothing about value. In the Fender world, I can glance at just about any guitar and know whether it's a decent deal or not.
Well, I would put the value of that (if it's in good shape) at around $2300 or so.

I had been finding them pretty regular for $2k, as I've exhaustively talked about on this thread, and in an effort to help our brother out I looked again recently. The prices do seem to have gone up.

What is the trade for?
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Embenny » Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:11 pm

Larry Mal wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:47 pm
Well, I would put the value of that (if it's in good shape) at around $2300 or so.

I had been finding them pretty regular for $2k, as I've exhaustively talked about on this thread, and in an effort to help our brother out I looked again recently. The prices do seem to have gone up.

What is the trade for?
I don't want to incur the Wrath of Larry...

They offered it for a certain Pelham Blue Gibson, and my cursed Eastwood.

I'd be happy to be rid of the Eastwood at this point, but I'm not super jazzed about the offer overall. It was a spontaneous offer from the other guy and he seemed really convinced that his 335 was worth a lot more than I believed it to be.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by marqueemoon » Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:32 pm

I had 345 for a long time and just never bonded with it. Awkward ergonomics, and the skinny nut didn’t help.

Also I much prefer P90s.

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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jul 17, 2021 8:59 am

mbene085 wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:11 pm


I don't want to incur the Wrath of Larry...

They offered it for a certain Pelham Blue Gibson, and my cursed Eastwood.

I'd be happy to be rid of the Eastwood at this point, but I'm not super jazzed about the offer overall. It was a spontaneous offer from the other guy and he seemed really convinced that his 335 was worth a lot more than I believed it to be.
I actually got a trade offer for an ES-335 for my Firebird, which would have been much in my favor financially speaking.

I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it now, either, if I had to pick one to go it would still be the ES-335.

That's just me, though.

Regardless, I feel like you are in a position where you know you like your Firebird, and you don't know if you will like the ES experience. I would probably recommend you find another way to find out if you even like the ES type guitar without sacrificing something you know you like a lot.

Of course, if your feelings have changed about the Firebird, then full speed ahead, although I'm not thinking it's an incredible deal for you, the value seems more or less equal. That Pelham blue Firebird will probably retain pretty high value moving forward, even if Gibson puts out that color, yours is made to the proper Firebird specs in some ways that I don't think Gibson will come back to.

However, I feel that you really want to be rid of that Eastwood and moving that adds some value to the transaction in and of itself.

It's hard to say- what exactly is the ES?
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Embenny » Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:17 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Sat Jul 17, 2021 8:59 am
I actually got a trade offer for an ES-335 for my Firebird, which would have been much in my favor financially speaking.

I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it now, either, if I had to pick one to go it would still be the ES-335.

That's just me, though.

Regardless, I feel like you are in a position where you know you like your Firebird, and you don't know if you will like the ES experience. I would probably recommend you find another way to find out if you even like the ES type guitar without sacrificing something you know you like a lot.

Of course, if your feelings have changed about the Firebird, then full speed ahead, although I'm not thinking it's an incredible deal for you, the value seems more or less equal. That Pelham blue Firebird will probably retain pretty high value moving forward, even if Gibson puts out that color, yours is made to the proper Firebird specs in some ways that I don't think Gibson will come back to.

However, I feel that you really want to be rid of that Eastwood and moving that adds some value to the transaction in and of itself.

It's hard to say- what exactly is the ES?
Yeah, that's the thing. It's a '95 sunburst dot 335, which is an unknown quantity to me. That wouldn't be on the top of my list of 335s I'd seek out.

It would help me be rid of the Eastwood, and would save me the trouble of the pickup swap and shielding job I haven't gotten around to yet, but like you, I'm pretty sure I just like Firebirds more than 335s, though I haven't lived with a 335 yet, so who knows?

I only discovered that I like any Gibsons at all through unexpected trades, so the question is whether my dislike of my Eastwood (which has proven challenging to dispose of locally) is greater than my preference for Firebirds over 335s.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:30 am

mbene085 wrote:
Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:17 am


Yeah, that's the thing. It's a '95 sunburst dot 335, which is an unknown quantity to me. That wouldn't be on the top of my list of 335s I'd seek out.
A Dot is what I have, and it's I guess the entry level to the ES-335, but the only difference as far as I know is that it has dot inlays instead of blocks or parallelograms. You will still have the binding that you want, and whatever the rest of the guitar has would be whatever that era's ES-335s came with.

Now, that can be something worth looking into. Gibson has kind of recently rediscovered the benefits of low wind PAF pickups (along with the rest of the world), but the mid-90s was a less enlightened time and while I'm sure the guitar is made very well, I would want to make sure that it didn't come with the 498r/500t pickups in there or something.

This '93 Dot has '57 Classics, though, which are fairly low wind in the overall scheme of things and are good pickups.

Otherwise, the 90's is held as a very good era of Gibson by internet wisdom, they still were in the initial bloom of the Henry J years and had a lot to prove. I took apart my early 90's Studio and a 2010 one that I gave to my father in law, and I can say that Gibson had been cutting corners with shielding and shit in the later guitar.

In short, it's probably a great guitar. Gibson seems to always really care a lot about the ES-335s, or more likely it's just that the ES-335s are harder to make than a Les Paul or SG, so only the more experienced workers make them anyway.

You can watch this video here where they walk a guy through how they make the guitars, in particular make it to the middle of it and you'll see that there is a pretty complicated process for wrapping the binding to the guitar. That will probably illustrate what I'm talking about pretty well.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Embenny » Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:42 am

That's all great info, Larry, thanks.

I was checking out some 90s 335 demos on YouTube, and they don't seem to sound overwound.

My travels did take me to this video of the Epiphone "inspired by Gibson" 335.

Those things are like $800 CAD new, are gorgeous, and frankly sound a little brighter/underwound in comparison.

Epiphone is really stepping up their game.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:37 am

mbene085 wrote:
Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:42 am
That's all great info, Larry, thanks.

I was checking out some 90s 335 demos on YouTube, and they don't seem to sound overwound.

My travels did take me to this video of the Epiphone "inspired by Gibson" 335.

Those things are like $800 CAD new, are gorgeous, and frankly sound a little brighter/underwound in comparison.

Epiphone is really stepping up their game.
Right, and that was kind of my thought there. Get an Epiphone, which I think this tread has established are great guitars that are almost or as good as Gibsons anyway, then see how you get on with the ES form factor.

That's what I did with my Casino, and while I didn't love that, it let me know that the large expense of the ES-330 would not be for nothing.

Or it may be that the Epiphone does everything you can imagine this kind of guitar doing.

Then again... you know, let's beat the shit out of this subject on all sides, if you know you are going to have a Gibson then why waste your time buying and losing money on an Epiphone, you know?
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Embenny » Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:39 pm

Well, it looks like I own a 335, now.

Met up with the guy and it was just a straight up nicer-playing guitar than that Firebird. No idea if it's a keeper, but the cursed Eastwood is no longer my problem and I got two guitars out the door with only one coming back, so overall it feels like progress.

Going to take some time to get to know it. I've never owned a PAF-equipped Gibson before. This time last year, I had never even owned a Gibson at all. It's sort of comically large on me, though less so than the Gretsch 6120 I briefly had. It definitely plays great and feels very alive acoustically, which is nice. I've heard those new Epiphones just feel and sound like a solid body guitar, so that (and the 26 years of patina on the finish and hardware) would be the main difference. Not sure how much that really matters, since I have some very acoustically-vibrant solid body guitars.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by Larry Mal » Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:32 pm

Congratulations! I expect you'll keep it. Frankly, while the PAF pickup thing might seem kind of done to death, at the same time it's just a great sound that works. And I am of the camp that feels that an ES-335 is as versatile as any other guitar and can handle pretty much any sound that isn't a middle position Strat sound or something.

That is to say, I feel like an ES-335 will do all the things that a Les Paul or an SG will do and more, and can even cover some of the ground that a Telecaster can, if the pickups are good low wind PAFs.

I'll be interested to hear how you get on with it in the upcoming weeks.
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Re: The Psychology of GASing for a Gibson (es-335)

Post by sal paradise » Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:54 pm

I saw Rufio playing with 335s back in the early 2000s. That was high gain, lots of muting & picking - the sound was crisp & clear with no feedback issues. Always wanted one since then. I bought an epi dot but it sounded trash and was so big on me. Hopefully one day I can get a 339 left handed for a sensible price.
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