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A blend of comfortable playability and warm sonic versatility with presence to spare.
When the ES-175 debuted with a run of 129 in 1949, it nudged aside the ES-150, which had been the guitar of choice for jazz innovators like Charlie Christian and Eddie Durham. The ES-175 also proved a more manageable and less costly alternative to the L-5s thanks to its smaller body size and laminated top.
Due to its enduring appeal – a blend of comfortable playability and warm sonic versatility with presence to spare – the ES-175 has found its way into the hands and hearts of generations of players. Its success leapt across genres to play a role in defining the sound of early rock when Elvis Presley's guitarist Scott Moore acquired his first ES-295 – essentially a model based on the ES-175 but equipped with two P-90 pickups – and accompanied the King on his Sun Records classics. Other great ES-175 players include Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, Howard Roberts, Keith Richards, and Yes' Steve Howe.
Body and Hardware
The ES-175 was the first Gibson electric guitar to feature a Florentine cutaway beneath the neck, giving easy access to all 20 frets. It also had a carved rosewood bridge. For it's first four years the model came with one single-coil P-90 pickup. In the early '50s, more and more models were produced and sold, indicating the ES-175's rapid rise in popularity.
In 1953, a two-pickup model was introduced, available in either sunburst or natural finish. The guitar received an update in 1957 when its design incorporated two humbucking pickups.
Near-perfect Recreation
The modern recreation of this great guitar made by Gibson's Memphis Custom Shop craftspeople owes its lineage to the ES-175 of '57. The body is a comfortable 16-inches wide, 20-inches long and 3-inches deep with a curly laminated maple top, back, and rims. There's multi-ply binding on top and single-ply on the back, with nickel hardware including a ABR-1 bridge and a trapeze tailpiece.
The Custom Shop ES-175's one-piece mahogany neck supports the same 20-fret rosewood fingerboard that the guitar's always offered, with beautiful pearl split parallelogram inlays, single-ply binding and the distinctive, comfortable classic ES-175 neck profile. Scale length is 24 3/4-inches with an 1 11/16-inch width at the nut. The tuners are vintage tulip style.
The pickups are Gibson's versatile workhorses: '57 Classic humbuckers – controlled by two volume and two tone pots and a three-way selector switch. The ES-175 ships with Gibson Brite Wire .010 strings in a black levant case. And before each one leaves the Memphis shop it is examined and dressed by one of the company's state-of-the-art Pleck machines, providing high-tech assurance of optimum playability.
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