(10 Pages) Imagine it’s 1949 and you’ve got what would be around $4,250 in today’s money (I didnt even know that was possible back then) on your hand. What would you do? Buy an Gibson ES-350?
Page 1: Gibson ES-350 1949
Page 2:
@gonfm77 playing a 1949 ES-350
Page 3: Gibson 1949 Catalog page with prices
Page 4: Graph showing the shipped guitars
Page 4-8: more pictures showing the beautiful guitar
Page 9-10: two Gibson adverts - early and later one
Big thanks to my friend
@gonfm77 for the photos and video - he’s playing a 1949 model set up and in scene by his amazing talented daughter
@abrilguitars who works on these guitars with passion. I took the original 1949 catalog to match. According to the available data, only 1,056 ES-350s were ever made. I’ve included a graph in the post to show that.
I’ve been seriously into ES Guitars lately and after covering the more famous models, I had to dig into this one too. I’ve got a soft spot for big guitars and honestly, I think the importance of the ES-350 is super underrated.
It wasn’t the first electric, or the first guitar with an cutaway but in my opinion, it sits right at a key turning point in guitar history - a bridge between pre war archtops and the modern electric era.
The ES-350 came out in 1947, made in Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory. It was basically a refreshed ES-300 with a Venetian cutaway. That small tweak made a big difference - players loved it, and by 1951 it had overtaken the ES-300. By 1953, it had fully replaced it. The cutaway obviously wasn’t just for looks, it made upper fret access way easier, which jazz players appreciated. Legends like Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel adopted it. By 1955, the thinner ES-350T came along and quickly became the new favorite, completely taking over by ’56. Early versions had one p90, volume and one tone knob and no selector switch. When the second pickup was added, each got its own volume, and they shared a tone control. The threeway selector switch didn’t show up until 1952. Toward the end of the model’s run, some had a 22-fret fingerboard instead of the usual 20.
