Review: Gibson ES-135 Archtop Electric
The Gibson ES-135 is an archtop model that has its roots in the old “student model” ES-125. An extra P-90 pickup was added to the thin body 125, and a sharp cutaway was incorporated.
Which aside from the ES-175, made it one of the coolest, yet decently priced archtops around. It would have remained a pleasant memory except that George Thorogood used one on his early tours, and it's been upgraded and supported since.
First, we do have to back up a bit to the 60s, where we will see why the ES-135 didn't stay a pure hollowbody. The key thing to remember in any field, genre, or market, is that nothing happens in a vacuum. The key difference in the 135 was the addition of an ES-335-type block in the center of the body.
The reason was to reduce feedback. The other reason? Companies like Guild took the ES-135 shape, gave it a slimmer look, and thus began the Starfire series which eventually evolved into a direct competitor the the ES-335.
In other words, everybody else was doing it, and in the guitar business, no one gives up market share to anyone...period. If people clamored for Yellow Submarine ES-175s, Gibson would make 'em. They might be wincing when no one is looking, but they would make 'em.
So, Thorogood uses an ES-135 en route to owning a pure white ES-175, and the ES-135 line is revived with P-100 pickups instead of 90's, and with a light wood (like balsa) sound block inside. Still a light guitar, and still very cool looking.
The ES-135 has a clean look, it's not ornate like so many jazz guitars. The implied message, the money went into the guitar, not the ornaments. It has a very sweet, yet still woody tone on the front pickup. It's not warm in the sense of the old P-90, which had a livelier tone, but more like a clearer humbucker (users of 490 series humbuckers take note).
Personally, even though I love P-90s, I find the tone of the P-100 neck to my liking, and quite versatile. The Bridge 100 is another story. It's nice and powerful, and loud (it's like 3 ohms more powerful than the neck), but won't have that thick scream that Pete Townsend of the Who got on “Live At Leeds” the ultimate P-90 album.
It has the traditional tunomatic/tailpiece arrangement of the old ES series, and the neck, fretboard, and frets are well-matched. It's an easy guitar to play and it will pull music out of you. This particular guitar was discontinued some years back, and a fire sale ensued. From a nice 1600.00 jazzer, it became a 999.00 bargain and that price drop still hasn't recovered yet. It's still the perceived original street price.
The reason for all that was the introduction of the ES-137. Essentially the same guitar, but with a heavy wood core inside and lots of fancy stuff to make it look more expensive. It also became a lot more similar to the ES-335 sound (which some critics called an “improvement”) and a much heavier guitar.
I once commented that time can change a guitar's context and value (like in the case of the DeArmonds). In this case, all of the change has seemed to enhance the ES-135's desirability. These come up rarely on boards like Craigslist and tend to go quickly.
The reason is simple. It's the closest you're going to get to a pure retro archtop that looks like a 175. There's no other look like it, and it's no accident that the number of Gibson models with sharp cutaways is small.
I've been offered custom teles, stat plus's, you name it for my old trusty and cool Ebony ES-135, and it's never been a temptation to deal with it. As the years pass, I notice more looking for one as opposed to getting a 137.
It may take a while for people to realize it, but for all the effort by companies to create another ES-175, Gibson may have done it by accident with its ES-135. It was a clean, no-nonsense jazz box, state-of-the-art for its time, and reasonably priced. Its look was cool, retro yet modern looking, and people who owned one loved it. Yep, just like the early ES-175s.
- Al Handa
2007
Note: This review first appeared on the ePinions.com site in 2007. This and other reviews were short takes that accompanied the link to a business that sold the guitar. As a rule, the guitar had to be at least examined and played by the reviewer (and ideally owned). In my case, a severe case of GAS made it possible to have at least owned the reviewed instrument for a short while. I'm reprinting these as having another source on a guitar never hurts, even if the reviews aren't definitive. Other than minor corrections, these short takes are unchanged from the original text. I figure that it might be helpful to keep the older perspective.
