f you like your guitars to have some patina, vibe and character then this is one that has the afore mentioned in bucket loads…

Hardly a closet queen, this is an original 1959 Gibson ES-330 TDN finished in original and very rare blonde with brown case (that has been painted black). It is a big neck 1959 and must have been amongst some of the first ES-330’s in blonde to leave Kalamazoo.

As you can see from the pictures, it has been played a lot and by the look of it in many smokey bars, if it could speak it would probably have a tale or two to tell. It has been refretted (of course) but the nut looks like it may be original. There is no FON number that we can make out as there is smatterings of old black or grey paint inside the F hole. We have once seen this before and it has been theorised that it was there to help reduce reflections from flash guns back in the 60’s.

It is a big neck, the pots date to the 38th week of 1959 and it has all the usual ‘59 adornments such as Catalin tip, bonnet knobs etc so we would be very surprised if the FON number did not begin with an ‘S’.

There are wear marks and various dings all over (see pictures). The back of the neck has had pretty much all of the clearcoat played off it over the years. There are some wear spots on the back and on the forearm position on the front but although the guitar has seen plenty of life, it has not been abused, there are no breaks or repairs anywhere and the finish is all intact with no over spray or touch ups anywhere.

It amazingly still plays really well. There is surprisingly little wear on the fingerboard, the frets are in decent shape and the P-90’s with their original windings sound totally classic and once you plug it is you can see why this guitar has been enjoyed and used so much.

It’s not very often you see these blonde early ES-330’s and at the moment we have two! If you do not fancy our cleanish 1960 with the slightly smaller neck then this dirtyish blonde 1959 may well be right up your alley…