![1946 gibson es 125 1946 gibson es 125](https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--LHDqRZsn--/f_auto,t_large/v1568924816/mzaynqku3eew7qusvdp5.png)
Granted, the essence of the ES-150 – the “Charlie Christian” pickup – was better than most of the competition, but the guitar itself was a tentative, low-risk entry into the market. Gibson’s top acoustic archtops at the time were 17″ and 18″ wide and had fancier inlays than the ES-150’s pearl dots. From the back it looked cheaper – like an outdated L-50 with a flat back. Without the pickup, it looked like it had started as an L-50, with a 16-inch body width and dot inlays. Gibson’s first standard-style or “Spanish” electric, the ES-150 of 1936, was a plain and inexpensive instrument. Then, as now, the ES-5 is easily identifiable by its three pickups, but that is only one of many elements that, when taken together, made a statement to the guitar world that Gibson recognized the electric guitar as an established part of our musical culture and, moreover, that Gibson was fully committed to the electric guitar. The culmination of this effort was the be-all, end-all of electric guitar design in 1949 – the ES-5. But when production resumed in 1946, Gibson made up for the lost time with a flurry of innovations. Gibson, like all American guitarmakers, had to shut down electric guitar production for three years during World War II. Photo: Billy Mitchell, courtesy Gruhn Guitars. D (Double Pickup) models included a 3 position toggle switch to select each pickup individually or both pickups simultaneously.1950 Gibson ES-5. 022 microfarads was used for the tone circuit. Volume and tone controls were 500k Audio taper pots. This pickup is, however, not as short as those found on an ES-330TD which has the pickup mounted flush to the end of the fingerboard.Ĭoils were wound to approximately 10,000 wraps although DC resistance of these pickups can vary greatly Since the fingerboard sits flush to the body (as opposed to an ES-175) the ES-125 requires a shorter neck pickup than a typical dogear. The ES-125 also used a tapered dogear cover for their neck position pickups with a thickness of 4/16" on the treble side and 5/16" on the bass side. The model used for the ES-125 has a string spacing on the neck pickup of 1 15⁄ 16" from high E to low E. In 1950 the P90 transitioned to 6 adjustable poles between two Alnico 5 bar magnets.
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The original had 6 Alnico slug pole pieces. The ES-125 was equipped with one P90 pickup. One non-adjustable P-90 pickup with "dog ears".Both the thinline and the regular models would be discontinued by the 1970s. It would later add options for double P-90 pickups and a sharp cutaway, referred to as a florentine cutaway, similar to the ES-175. In the mid-1950s, the ES-125T was introduced, which was an entry-level thinline archtop electric guitar based on the original ES-125. The unbound rosewood fingerboard initially sported pearl trapezoid inlays later, it would have dot inlays. When reintroduced in 1946 it had the larger 16.25" wide body that the ES-150 had. The pre-war model, discontinued in 1942, had a smaller 14.5" body. It had one P-90 single-coil pickup in the neck position, a single volume control and a single tone control.
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Introduced in 1941 as the successor to the ES-100, the ES-125 was an entry-level archtop electric guitar.