Superb Vintage 66 Gibson ES175 (Florentine cut!)

A beautiful vintage 1966 Gibson ES175 is up for grabs on eBay. Reserve has not been met yet (at USD1,525 as of writing) but so far it is a decent price.


I especially love the color of this guitar. The sunburst has been extremely well done, to my taste. The trapeze tailpiece adds a lot of charm too. And I really like the florentine cutaway - a shape that has grown on me since I posted about the Gibson limited run series Les Paul florentine.

Other characteristics of the ES-175 which sets it apart (and make it a bit better / more stylish than the ES-335 IMO) are:

• The pickup switch's positioned at the top, like a Les Paul
• The jack output positioned on the side at the bottom (like a LP) not on the front
• The parallelogram inlays

This is a '66 model, so featuring two humbuckers. When the ES 175 first launched, in 1949, it had only one single-coil P-90. Starting in 53, it featured two P90's (see some more on eBay). And it's in 1957 that Gibson switched the 175 to a 2-humbucker configuration, like the model at hand.

It probably makes sense to bid on this one up to $3,500 since it is in good condition and the Custom Shop ES175 re-issue sells north of $3,800. Funnily, the denomination 175 came from the original price tag of the first ES, which was $175.00.