Gibson ES-300 Arch Top Hollow Body Electric Guitar (1941)
1
/
of
15
Couldn't load pickup availability
Item #11856
Gibson ES-300 Model Arch Top Hollow Body Electric Guitar (1941), made in Kalamazoo, Michigan, serial # 97472, natural lacquer finish, maple back and sides, spruce top; laminated maple neck with rosewood fingerboard, period brown hard shell case.
This well aged but lovely instrument is a Gibson ES-300 from 1941, the company's top of the line electric Spanish guitar at the time. By 1940 Gibson engineers began replacing the bar magnet pickup they had been using for the past 5 years with a flurry of new designs, one of which is featured on this instrument. Unfortunately that pickup was just then being played into immortality by Charlie Christian (whose name it has borne since) so in hindsight this move has seemed like an historical mistake. The pickups Gibson introduced in 1940-41 were more modern and efficient, but never caught on with players and none were brought back to market after WWII.
The initial ES-300 introduced in 1940 was a perhaps an over engineered solution to the initial reaction many players had to the electric guitar -- it sounded too different from the acoustic, with an unwelcome twanginess or woofiness. Of course, soon enough in the post-WWII era the world happily embraced the electric sound, but in 1939 it was still controversial and many players (and the bandleaders paying guitar players) felt it was too "far out" of the character of the instrument.
Gibson's first ES-300 was fitted with an enormous pickup with a very long coil diagonally spanning the entire face of the instrument under the strings. The idea was to pick up the notes in a comparative harmonic frequency range to where they sounded. Unfortunately this cumbersome idea looked and sounded odd to players used to the electric guitar, while failing to convert acoustic purists. The first ES-300 was replaced in a matter of months by this more conventional version, with a more practical shorter version of the same pickup mounted at an angle by the bridge giving a more concentrated and twangier tone, oddly prefiguring Leo Fender's Telecaster!
The pickup itself ES-300 is a unique unit, a rounded-end coil housed in a tortoise celluloid shell, with height adjustment screws at each end and individually adjustable pole pieces, an idea just poached from Epiphone. Interestingly enough in 1940 Epiphone built all their electrics with the single pickup in the bridge position, and it looks like Gibson was suddenly imitating their closest competitor. The ES-300 pickup was only used on this model and contemporary high-end lap steels. It is the ancestor of the familiar post-war P-90 used by Gibson for decades, but has different construction with its coil fully enclosed in Celluloid.
Apart from this signature pickup, the 1941 ES-300 is a fairly conventional Gibson arch top, most similar to the acoustic L-7. It is a classy and high-quality guitar, the finest dedicated electric of its day. A lovely natural finish highlights the spruce top; the figured maple back and sides are showcased by the ambered natural lacquer, with all edges bound in white Celluloid.
The 3-piece laminated maple neck has a fairly chunky round-backed profile, topped by a bound rosewood fingerboard with split parallelogram inlay. The scale length is Gibson's longest at 25 1/2" giving the guitar an extra resonance factor. The bound headstock carries a pearl script Gibson logo and the "crown" inlay that went on to grace many postwar Gibson classics. The tuners are early openback individual Klusons with metal buttons; the adjustable rosewood bridge, trapeze tailpiece, radio style knobs and bound tortoise celluloid pickguard are typical Gibson appointments of the time.
The factory order number stamped on the lower back is 4096G-5 indicating this guitar was built in 1941, while the serial number suggests it was shipped in early 1942, one of the last electrics to leave Kalamazoo before wartime restrictions ended their development for several years. As a result this second ES-300 had a sadly short shelf life of less than two years. Exact figures are hard to come by but it appears only 200 or fewer were ever shipped.
The combination of the fully hollow with the fat-sounding single coil pickup mounted by the bridge gives the guitar a very unique tone, fiercer than many but more feedback resistant than most similar early hollowbody guitars. Even 80+ years later there has never been another Gibson electric like this one, a full-body archtop with a raunchy soul!
Overall length is 42 in. (106.7 cm.), 17 in. (43.2 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 3 3/8 in. (8.6 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 25 1/2 in. (648 mm.). Width of nut is 1 11/16 in. (43 mm.).
This guitar remains in played-in but original condition, with some general wear but largely original. The finish shows general wear and ageing, with some darkening to the lacquer and heavy checking to the top in particular. There are dings, dents, scratches overall, some darkened over the years. There are some veneer checks on the back and sides but no notable cracks or structural repairs. The back of the neck is comparatively clean.
The hardware appears all original except for the bridge, which is an older Gibson piece but looks to be from the 1950s. Both the original faux tortoise pickup and pickguard are free of the common celluloid distress often found on these. The plating has some typical clouding but no heavy wear. The neck has been reset with some minor scarring around the heel, which shows old finish work; the lacquer on the instrument is otherwise original.
The guitar has been neatly refretted with the correct style wire and plays extremely well. The sound is brighter and hotter than many pre-war electrics; the pickup has some of the character of its P-90 descendants and the overall effect is not unlike an arch-top Les Paul Junior! This rare ES-300 is a lovely instrument, a really cool player as well as a fascinating piece of early Gibson electric guitar history, housed in a well-worn but still solidly preserved deluxe L-5 OHSC. Overall Very Good + Condition.
View full details
This well aged but lovely instrument is a Gibson ES-300 from 1941, the company's top of the line electric Spanish guitar at the time. By 1940 Gibson engineers began replacing the bar magnet pickup they had been using for the past 5 years with a flurry of new designs, one of which is featured on this instrument. Unfortunately that pickup was just then being played into immortality by Charlie Christian (whose name it has borne since) so in hindsight this move has seemed like an historical mistake. The pickups Gibson introduced in 1940-41 were more modern and efficient, but never caught on with players and none were brought back to market after WWII.
The initial ES-300 introduced in 1940 was a perhaps an over engineered solution to the initial reaction many players had to the electric guitar -- it sounded too different from the acoustic, with an unwelcome twanginess or woofiness. Of course, soon enough in the post-WWII era the world happily embraced the electric sound, but in 1939 it was still controversial and many players (and the bandleaders paying guitar players) felt it was too "far out" of the character of the instrument.
Gibson's first ES-300 was fitted with an enormous pickup with a very long coil diagonally spanning the entire face of the instrument under the strings. The idea was to pick up the notes in a comparative harmonic frequency range to where they sounded. Unfortunately this cumbersome idea looked and sounded odd to players used to the electric guitar, while failing to convert acoustic purists. The first ES-300 was replaced in a matter of months by this more conventional version, with a more practical shorter version of the same pickup mounted at an angle by the bridge giving a more concentrated and twangier tone, oddly prefiguring Leo Fender's Telecaster!
The pickup itself ES-300 is a unique unit, a rounded-end coil housed in a tortoise celluloid shell, with height adjustment screws at each end and individually adjustable pole pieces, an idea just poached from Epiphone. Interestingly enough in 1940 Epiphone built all their electrics with the single pickup in the bridge position, and it looks like Gibson was suddenly imitating their closest competitor. The ES-300 pickup was only used on this model and contemporary high-end lap steels. It is the ancestor of the familiar post-war P-90 used by Gibson for decades, but has different construction with its coil fully enclosed in Celluloid.
Apart from this signature pickup, the 1941 ES-300 is a fairly conventional Gibson arch top, most similar to the acoustic L-7. It is a classy and high-quality guitar, the finest dedicated electric of its day. A lovely natural finish highlights the spruce top; the figured maple back and sides are showcased by the ambered natural lacquer, with all edges bound in white Celluloid.
The 3-piece laminated maple neck has a fairly chunky round-backed profile, topped by a bound rosewood fingerboard with split parallelogram inlay. The scale length is Gibson's longest at 25 1/2" giving the guitar an extra resonance factor. The bound headstock carries a pearl script Gibson logo and the "crown" inlay that went on to grace many postwar Gibson classics. The tuners are early openback individual Klusons with metal buttons; the adjustable rosewood bridge, trapeze tailpiece, radio style knobs and bound tortoise celluloid pickguard are typical Gibson appointments of the time.
The factory order number stamped on the lower back is 4096G-5 indicating this guitar was built in 1941, while the serial number suggests it was shipped in early 1942, one of the last electrics to leave Kalamazoo before wartime restrictions ended their development for several years. As a result this second ES-300 had a sadly short shelf life of less than two years. Exact figures are hard to come by but it appears only 200 or fewer were ever shipped.
The combination of the fully hollow with the fat-sounding single coil pickup mounted by the bridge gives the guitar a very unique tone, fiercer than many but more feedback resistant than most similar early hollowbody guitars. Even 80+ years later there has never been another Gibson electric like this one, a full-body archtop with a raunchy soul!
Overall length is 42 in. (106.7 cm.), 17 in. (43.2 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 3 3/8 in. (8.6 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 25 1/2 in. (648 mm.). Width of nut is 1 11/16 in. (43 mm.).
This guitar remains in played-in but original condition, with some general wear but largely original. The finish shows general wear and ageing, with some darkening to the lacquer and heavy checking to the top in particular. There are dings, dents, scratches overall, some darkened over the years. There are some veneer checks on the back and sides but no notable cracks or structural repairs. The back of the neck is comparatively clean.
The hardware appears all original except for the bridge, which is an older Gibson piece but looks to be from the 1950s. Both the original faux tortoise pickup and pickguard are free of the common celluloid distress often found on these. The plating has some typical clouding but no heavy wear. The neck has been reset with some minor scarring around the heel, which shows old finish work; the lacquer on the instrument is otherwise original.
The guitar has been neatly refretted with the correct style wire and plays extremely well. The sound is brighter and hotter than many pre-war electrics; the pickup has some of the character of its P-90 descendants and the overall effect is not unlike an arch-top Les Paul Junior! This rare ES-300 is a lovely instrument, a really cool player as well as a fascinating piece of early Gibson electric guitar history, housed in a well-worn but still solidly preserved deluxe L-5 OHSC. Overall Very Good + Condition.
