By Walter Carter

Adventures in Archives, No. 4

Lost (Happily) in the Fifties

I was afraid of this. My plan was to take a liesurely stroll through the Gibson shipping ledgers, starting in 1936 and working slowly forward. I knew if I took off on some impulsive side trip, I might never get back on track. But after only two columns from '36, the allure of a possible '57 sunburst Les Paul Standard was too strong. I told myself, just one time. I won't get hooked. Right.

I never did find what would have been the first sunburst Les Paul, I found so many other interesting leads to follow up that I won't be getting back to 1936 this month. No matter. If I have to be stuck in time in the Gibson archives, 1957-58 is a good place to be--the time of the first Flying Vs, ES-335s and doublenecks. Here are some of the things that kept me lost in the '50s.

* On Dec. 2, 1957, the ledger book shows Gibson sent 68 units of part #605-22 to Valco. These parts are identified as guitar bodies. Valco, located in Chicago, was the parent company of National guitars. It's not uncommon to find Nationals with a body made by Gibson or by Harmony, another Chicago maker. Gibson was located in Kalamazoo, of course, but the parent company, Chicago Musical Instrument, was long-established in Chicago. Chicago makers were apparently pretty chummy. You see the occasional National from the early '50s with what looks like a J-200 body; and National's Bel-Air looked a lot like Gibson's ES-175. A look inside one of these models usually reveals a Gibson work-order number. The fact that Gibson sent bodies to Valco is not surprising. This shipment shows that it wasn't just one or two bodies at a time.

*In searching for a sunburst Les Paul, I found a cherry Les Paul that was part of an extraordinary group of instruments shipped to CMI (Gibson's parent company, which included the sales force) on. Feb. 21, 1958. The cherry-top Les Paul, as cool as it is, pales in comparison to some of the other instruments in this shipment, among them a "Flying V in Korena," an ES-335T, an EB-2 bass and a "Dbl neck Mandolin."

First the V: Andre Duchossoir notes in his book Gibson Electrics: The Classic Years that there are prototypes of the V in 1957, but this is the first one to appear in the books. (The first shipment to a dealer was exactly two months later.) But there was a curious entry on December 4, 1957, to San Antonio Music. It just said "Korena." No case shipped with the guitar. No clue as to whether it was a guitar or the Korina-body Skylark lap steel, which had been introduced in 1956. Other entries clearly spell out Skylark, so this may well be a prototype V.

The ES-335: This ES-335 of Feb. 21, 1958 is the earliest to come to light. If I had been looking for 335s, I would have looked in the books that list A-series numbers, which were used only on instruments that received the orange oval labels--mid-to-high end models, including the ES-335. That's what Andre did, and he found the first batch on Apr. 21. This one on Feb. 21, a full two months earlier, has no serial number listed, which would explain why it's not in the A-series book.

The designation ES-335T sets off an alert signal in the mind of the Gibson fanatic, who knows that the model name for the 335 is ES-335TD. The D stands for double-pickup, the T for thin body. In the case of the ES-175 or the later ES-330, there were single- and double-pickup versions, and the lack of a D meant a single-pickup guitar. Was this first ES-335 a single-pickup example?

Probably not. The batch of Apr. 21 are all desginated with just the T and no D. When ES-345s and ES-355s appear they, too, have no D. Looking ahead in the A-series book, I find the first appearance of a D, an ES-335TD on Apr. 29, 1960. On Jan. 3, 1961, the T and the D are dropped from the ES-335, 345 and 355.

Looking for the end of the A-numbers (A-36147, an L-5CES on Feb. 21, 1961), I turn too far in the book and stumble on a small group of 1961 numbers I hadn't known were there. This list includes "old" and "new" (SG-style) Les Pauls and a stray Flying V shipped in mid-1962. I know there's some great stuff here, but I'll have to come back later.

Back to Feb. 21, 1958, to the EB-2: The EB-2 is a bass built on the ES-335 body, and this one, like the ES-335T, is entered without a serial number. It's first appearance in the A-series book is not until June 27, which would suggest that it came after the ES-335. But it appears that Gibson president Ted McCarty, who designed the ES-335, had a companion bass in mind--and in the prototype stage--concurrent with the guitar version.

On to the "Dbl. neck Mandolin": I've never seen a doubleneck Gibson mandolin, and I doubt that this is one. This was the first year of doubleneck guitars. The EDS-1275, which Gibson still makes, would become the most common doubleneck, with 6-string and 12-string guitar necks. The EMS-1235 had a standard 6-string guitar neck and a short-scale 6-string guitar neck--not a mandolin neck--but it was referred to in catalogs as a "Double Mandolin." That's probably what this instrument is.

Is it the first? That takes some more searching backwards through the book, where I find all kinds of things--red lines under special guitars, Epiphone basses entered in green ink, a banjo with Scruggs tuners--that I had intended to get into in this session. And there's still that just-discovered group of 1961 numbers to get into. Looks like I'll never get back to 1936.

Walter Carter is Gibson's acting historian. Through his work at Gibson as well as his library of published work, Carter has earned a worldwide reputation as an authority on fretted instruments.