Gibson has unveiled a pair of jaw-dropping Custom Shop ES-330s that take the hollowbody back to the Golden Era of electric guitar design, with a 1959 first-year reproduction, and a 1962 model that subtly refreshes the instrument with a SlimTaper neck.
The ES-330 often gets overlooked. Blame the Beatles. But we’ll get to Lennon/McCartney/Harrison in a second. Perhaps it is only the success of Gibson’s semi-hollows that put the ES-330 in the shade. Just as rock was turning up the volume, the fully hollowbodied ES-330 got a reputation for feedback that centreblock-equipped models such as the ES-335 and ES-355 effectively killed.