The Gibson ES-330 has garnered a reputation for its distinctive sound, comfortable playability, and classic aesthetics, making it a favorite among musicians seeking a versatile, vintage-inspired ES™-style electric guitar. A close cousin of the Epiphone Casino™, the ES-330 shares a similar lightweight, fully hollow thinline body made of 3-ply maple/poplar/maple. It is supremely resonant and warm-sounding due to its hollow body, trapeze tailpiece, and deep-set neck that creates an optimized bridge location. The mahogany neck has a comfortable Rounded “C” profile and features a rosewood fretboard with acrylic small block inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets. The 12” fretboard radius is equally comfortable whether you’re playing clean and jangly chords at the first fret or searing lead lines with heavy string bends up high. The trapeze tailpiece adds to the visual and sonic appeal of the ES-330, while the fully adjustable ABR-1 bridge ensures spot-on intonation. The Vintage Deluxe tuners feature white buttons for even more visual flair and, along with the Graph Tech® nut, help keep this thinline hollowbody solidly in tune.
The ES-330 is powered by a pair of Dogear P-90 pickups that are hand-wired to 500k potentiometers and Orange Drop® capacitors for bright and clear clean tones and wonderfully nasty, snarling tones when overdriven. Feedback? Sure–any fully hollow guitar can be prone to feedback and probably isn’t the first choice for ultra-high gain and volume situations, but the ES-330 can be surprisingly easy to control when you apply some gain, and with some judicious palm and fretting hand muting, it will sing and sustain in a unique and musical way that most other guitars can’t match. For blues, Americana, 60s pop, country, jazz, rock, and more, the ES-330 is a great choice. The ES-330 is not only a fantastic-sounding electric guitar for stage and studio use but is also equally enjoyable as a songwriting tool and is considered by many to be the ideal “couch guitar” since it can be enjoyed just as well when unplugged and played acoustically. We’re proud to bring the ES-330 back to the Gibson catalog so players can once again have the opportunity to discover the magic of this distinctive-sounding, vintage-inspired classic.
