“It was the first production guitar with three pickups. Gibson only made 22 that year – one became the instrument T-Bone Walker used”: How the Gibson ES-5 paved the way for a new wave of electric blues (and maybe even the Strat, too)

The Gibson ES-5 was essentially an ES-350 with a third pickup, and Patent Applied For humbuckers replaced the P-90s in 1957.

These are both three-pickup Gibson ES-5 models – the earlier example isn’t technically a Switchmaster for the very obvious reason that it doesn’t have a switch.

Gibson introduced the three-pickup ES-5 in 1949 and described it as ‘the supreme electronic version of the famed Gibson L-5’. It’s widely accepted that the ES-5 was the first production guitar with three pickups. Gibson only made 22 examples that year and one of them was to become the instrument that T-Bone Walker used throughout the 1950s and 1960s.