NGD! Gibson ES139 - I have to eat crow

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Neutered male
First, please note this thread in which I proclaim I will ignore anything Gibson. I found it on page 2 of a google search for "Gibson ES 139".

http://markweinguitarlessons.com/forums/threads/es-139.48551/

My exact quote was:
USian Pie said:
Worthwhile concept but it's a Gibson and I'm therefore obligated to ignore it.
Click to expand...

So here's what came home with me Friday night:
photo (58).JPG


What happened?

Well, there was this Gretsch Electromatic G5620T I loved last week for $849:

http://markweinguitarlessons.com/forums/threads/gretsch-g5620t.61465/

The Gibson ES-139 pictured above was $899. I played it in the morning, went home, thought about it, and decided I would be an idiot if I didn't spend $50 more to get a US-made semihollow Gibson. I went back and bought it that night.

It still needs some setup work. I replaced the 9s with 10s and it immediately sounded better. I think the action can come down some more. The intonation still needs some tweaking, too.

The pickups sound better than I expected. I'm not a big fan of PAF-style humbuckers but the bridge pickup has a nice chirpy quality. The neck pickup is a little too bassy but not terrible. The neck is the chunkiest thing I have on a guitar that doesn't have 12 strings.

But, yeah, I think it's going to be with me a long time.
 
Don't feel bad. I've been ragging on Gibson for years and I still went out and bought two. I'm pretty sure they did a Jedi mind trick on me. Lovely guitar you've got there. Congrats.
 
It is nice when you can admit that your thinking has changed and you step out of character. I can't count how many time I complained here and on other boards about acoustics with black-box electronics and cutaways; now I own two and love them.

Congratulations on finding a guitar you love.
 
VERY nice! Congrats! I kind of miss my ES-137. If my 1954 Country Club hadn't come along, I might still have it. Have fun with your new guitar! :)
 
Thanks everyone! Just a few comments on this guitar and how it compared to the Gretsch:

Honestly, the Gretsch G5620 played a lot better than the ES-139 and sounded a little bit better. The store with the Gretsch prides themselves on doing great setups to new guitars and they had it playing like a dream. I think I preferred the pickups in the Gretsch, too. The neck pickup was definitely better.

Quality-wise, I could not feel any big difference between them. That says something good about the Gretsch. The electronic components in the Gibson are supposed to be CTS pots and orange drop capacitors and that matters to me -- I freakin' hate cheap pots.

The neck/fingerboard binding on the Gibson is really nice.

I like the simple 1 vol/1 tone/switch layout. If it's cheap, fine. It's what I would do if I was designing the guitar for myself.

I would not have bought the Gibson if it wasn't within $50 of the Gretsch. GC/MF was trying to sell them for $1599 before. As with most things Gibson, I can get more guitar at the same price elsewhere. At $899, though, it became a great deal.

So why the big mark-down? I spent a good part of Friday researching that.

First, it's a semihollow with no f-holes. It doesn't have a classic semihollow look. Hanging in the store, it's not obvious what it is. It looks like an oversized Les Paul with a weird cutaway and a cheap control layout.

The second problem is Guitar Center and Gibson basically marketed it as an oversized Les Paul. They described it as a "rock and roll machine" with a "familiar Les Paul" shape. Then they said it had a superior semihollow tone and lighter weight. That was a bad move. Les Paul buyers don't want semihollow, don't want a bigger body size, and are justifiably suspicious of lighter weight. This guitar does not compete against "rock and roll machines", it competes against jazz machines for guys who don't want to go full archtop. I think somebody in the Marketing Department decided "Jazz guys who don't want an archtop" was too small a target demographic.

I like to think I'm benefiting from a Guitar Center/Gibson marketing debacle here.

Finally, it was a $1600 Gibson sold with a gig bag. Seriously -- no hard shell case. That's a huge "WTF". Thanks to the weird body size (bigger than a Les Paul, smaller than an ES-137), there are no hard shell cases made for it. On the forums, it looks like at least one person had success using an Epiphone case for an ES-339 so I might give that a try.
 
USian Pie said:
On the forums, it looks like at least one person had success using an Epiphone case for an ES-339 so I might give that a try.
Click to expand...

I found this when I was looking for a case for my 83 Ibanez Artist and the 339 case turned out to be a perfect fit. Hope it works out for you.


 
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