“A lot of people don’t give these guitars any credit because of the short scale and narrow neck... It’s one of the nicest-sounding guitars for jazz”: Debuting in 1955, the Gibson Byrdland was the user-friendly archtop players were waiting for

1957 Gibson Byrdland: A classic example of the blond thinline archtop that paved the way for the ES-335. .

The Goldtop Les Paul and the Les Paul Custom were a significant new direction for a traditional archtop guitar manufacturer like Gibson. The winds of change would soon blow through the company’s hollowbody range, and Gibson asked Nashville studio players Billy Byrd and Hank Garland to collaborate on some new ideas.

“The idea was to provide archtop players with models that felt more compact and comfortable to play, and the resulting ‘thinline’ model was given a name that honored their contributions.