What’s Wrong with this Picture?
March 4th, 2021 • ES 335 • No Comments »
This guitar was offered to me as part of a fairly large collection. I made an offer to the seller but was outbid by another dealer. This “59” was part of the deal and I had serious reservations about it from the get go.
So, what’s the difference between a fake and a reproduction 59 dot neck? Mostly, it’s a matter of how you approach it as a seller. When a talented luthier like Ken McKay makes a 335, he puts his own name on the headstock even if it is more like a real vintage 335 than anything Gibson has come up with at this point. Don’t get me wrong, Gibson makes some really good 335’s but they still haven’t nailed the 59. I could go into detail but that’s another post. There are plenty of Asian made “copies” but they are generally laughably easy to spot. This one is a different animal altogether. When a 335 that isn’t made by Gibson is marketed as a real one, then it’s a fake. If a legitimate repro Gibson 335 is marketed as a vintage 335, it’s also a fake. I’m not completely certain what the guitar pictured is but I was sure it wasn’t a real 59. There’s a lot that looks right but there’s also a lot wrong.

The construction is pretty accurate but the ears are a bit narrow. That’s what Gibson’s early attempts at reissue Mickey Mouse ears looked like as well, so the body could actually be made by Gibson. But they went to some length to try to fool the buyer. The orange label looked pretty good but the font was wrong. The neck tenon and routs looked real good. They even stamped a FON number into the body. Nice touch. Wrong font again. And, you wouldn’t know this, but the FON was non existent-there were many numbers that were never used. The placement of the stoptail is a little high but mostly, the controls are where they should be. There is some variation in the real ones so that’s not always a great tell. One of the biggest errors that the builder made was the in the neck. The heel on a real 59 (and also 60-68) is very small and rather flat across the top. This one was just wrong. The headstock inlays were also wrong. The mahogany itself didn’t look quite right either-the grain was too open and it didn’t look to be sawn the same way. Oh, and another huge clue? A 59 ES-335 is always between 1.5″ and 1.65″ deep. Later, the bodies got deeper reaching 1.75″ by 1964. Most of the modern reissues are around that number as well, at least the ones I’ve seen. This was 1.76″ so even if they had absolutely nailed everything else, it would have been clear to me that this wasn’t a real 59. A tenth of an inch isn’t easy to eyeball from a photo but your digital calipers won’t lie.

Where it really went off the rails was the parts. Fake PAFs. The labels looked pretty good but they didn’t black light. No tooling marks on the feet either. And the nickel covers were those “raw” nickel ones that really don’t look like the real thing. But, they went to some length to make it look real. The tuners were repro Klusons but they actually aged a second set of repro Klusons and shrunk and broke the buttons and put them in the case along with a set of used flatwounds and a vintage Gibson string box and some old song chord charts. Nice touch and a big effort but, really, how dumb do we look? The scammer added a few relatively valuable vintage parts on it though. I guess a modicum of legitimacy fools some of the people some of the time. It was housed in a super clean brown Gibson case-a real one from the 50’s. The amber switch tip and knobs were the real thing too. As were the pickup surrounds. Wait, it gets better…These criminals actually went to the trouble to source an old harness (wrong year but it was a 62 and fairly valuable) and drop it in. But it had fake bumblebees (and bumblebees were gone by 62 anyway). The bridge and tailpiece were Gibson repro’s aged poorly. So, someone spent a couple thousand on parts and the case but probably made a huge profit selling this as a real 59.

The dealer that bought the collection saw the problems and asked the seller to take this guitar back. The seller asked if I would go through it and catalog what was wrong and what was right which I agreed to do. I don’t know what he paid but he did mention that it was a great player and had excellent tone. I played it and it was certainly as good as many modern 335’s. I made an offer for the value of the real parts and ended up buying the whole thing. I took the real parts and the good repros and put them away for when I get a guitar that needs them or another project That leaves me with some questionable pickups and the husk. I can’t sell it as anything but an unknown fake but, overall, it’s a pretty decent attempt designed to fool anyone who simply has never laid eyes on the real thing. You want it? email me. Just don’t try to sell it as a real 59.