History
The 345 was developed in 1958 as an upscale version of the Gibson ES-335. Gibson announced the ES-345 as the ES-345T in May 1959. The Gibson ES-345T had a price of $345 in the standard sunburst finish. [1] [2] From the guitar's 1959 introduction through 1979, 10,560 ES-345s were shipped. [3] Gibson designed the guitar to create a guitar which could be used to play jazz, as would be typical of an Electric Spanish guitar, but with a maple block running through the guitar to allow the versatility of a solid body electric guitar. [4]
Gibson produced the guitar in three finishes, Cherry, Natural and Sunburst, with each finish reflected in its model name — the cheapest, Sunburst, was the default ES-345TD, the Cherry finish was denoted as ES-345TDC and the natural finish as ES-345TDN. [2]
Specifications
1958 saw the introduction of Gibson's new thinline series of guitars in the ES-335 and 355, both of which came with a semi-hollow body. The bodies were made of laminated maple with spruce bracing, and a solid maple center block - designed to prevent unwanted feedback from the pickups - extending from the base of the body (where the strap button is mounted) all the way to the mahogany neck, along with a rosewood fingerboard. [3]
The fretboard of the guitar has what are known as "split parallelogram" inlays. The guitar also features a stereo pickup configuration and 6-position Varitone circuit on certain models. [2] The varitone's positions were not properly defined by Gibson, which left players describing the various sounds of the varitone dial positions as "squishy", "underwater", and "guitar-in-a-box". What the varitone does is run the signal from the pickups through any number of chokes installed in the guitar, which produces pre-set frequency scoops in the sound of the guitar whilst also keeping highs and lows. [5]
At the same time, Gibson also manufactured a variant of the ES-355, with the model suffix 'TD-SV', which was, in effect, a fancier version of both the 335 and 345. However, both the 345 and 355TD-SV did not become as popular as the simpler ES-335 model. One reason was that both the ES-345 and the ES-355 each required a 'Y' cable and a TRS jack to separate the pickup signals, whereas the much simpler mono ES-335 did not require any special equipment to function properly. The original ES-345 came with gold-plated nickel parts and PAF humbuckers. [2] Early models from 1959 and 1960 featured long pickguards, which extended all the way to the bridge, but it was shortened in 1961 on all models. [4]
During the early years of manufacture, Gibson installed a Stoptail bridge on models without a vibrato unit, but beginning in 1964 they began to transition into installing gold trapeze tailpieces on ES-345s. It was not until 1982 that Gibson transitioned back to stoptail bridges on the ES-345. [6] Some of the first Gibson ES-345s also shipped with a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. [7]
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