Driving down Highway ES-339
Two ES-339 guitars, Gibson on the left, Epiphone on the right
My local dealer recently advertised a Gibson ES-339 in Blueberry Burst. The price tag was somewhat stunning but I wanted to try one out. I had been hearing that the 339 is very comfortable because of the smaller body size than a 335 and that the smaller body had a bit more snap to the overall sound. I’m a fan of semi-hollow bodies owning a 335, multiple 355s, several PRS Thin Hollowbodies, a really nice Gretsch and my usual grab and go, an Epiphone Sheraton Pro. So in I went and they graciously let me try it out. I used it direct into a Fender Blues Junior with plenty of reverb and it did sound very nice. They offered to let me try it in the studio, but I declined as $4700 was a number I would not pay. As an alternate, they offered an ES-339 in cherry that had been in the store for a while to take to try out.
As you all know, colour and inlays make no difference in sound. The cherry version was lighter than the blue one, but not by much. These are nice simple two pickup guitars, no splits, no taps, really pretty basic. The cherry one is $4K which is MAP everywhere in Canada.
It sounded great into a blackface twin reverb, less great into the Tone King Gremlin which while a great little amp is a bit of work to get the tone right on. I finally went to my ToneMaster Blonde Deluxe Reverb to do some recording tests. As you will see later one, I ran into most of the amps that I have on hand.
It’s a really nice guitar, but $4,000 was not and is not working for me. I noted that the markers and the knobs were not properly aligned and when I went to pull off the neck volume know to properly align it, the rim snapped off in my fingers. Ok, that’s on me, and I will replace it, but it’s the first time that I have ever had the rim of a hat style knob break at the rim, but my trusted guitar tech Kevin advised that I got lucky as he has seen some new Gibsons where the knobs are so tight that if you pull them, they pull the pot through the thin hollow top. Yikes! I will give credit to Gibson for the rest of the guitar. While the top, which is a maple laminate is well finished, no one is going to get exciting about the figuring as it defines bland. The paint is excellent with no marks or drips. The binding is completely clean, with no dye stains as I have seen too many times on Gibson products. Moreover, the expected sharp binding edges had been rounded over, the first time I have seen this on a new bound Gibson in a couple of years. The frets had no sprout and were not pushing on the binding. The tuners are Grover Rotomatics and are smooth and there is no death by tone control until you roll down from 1 to 0. I do not know whose pots they are, as Gibson does not say, but I stuck an endoscope in the f hole and think that they are the small bodied Alpha ones. Gibson makes a point of noting that they use orange drop capacitors and that everything is hand wired, which I think just means no circuit board block. Capacitors are very simple devices and a quality capacitor made to spec should not matter as to whether it is orange drop, or paper in oil or dunked in unicorn spit. No bad noises from the pots or the switch. The neck was excellent and the action was really good. Of course it came strung with whatever barbed wire was in the bin that day, but with any new guitar, I always recommend that the first thing to do is get rid of the factory strings, particularly if the guitar is from either the Gibson or Fender families.
I did like the size though. The pickups are not overly hot, which I prefer and are neck/bridge 57 Classic and 57 Classic+. The Classic is rated at 8K and the plus at 9K and use Alnico II magnets. Overall a really nice instrument in a well built hardshell plush lined case with a strap and other case candy.
However, I still balk at the price. Note that the current US MAP is $3499 for the ES-339 in either cherry or blueberry burst, so I suspect the lower prices that I saw in guitar shops for cherry and black versions were for older stock.
So I did what I have done for the last couple of years particularly when I have encountered more quality issues on new from the factory Gibsons, I checked to see if Epiphone did an ES-339 and they do, in their inspired by Gibson lineup. They are available in a sunburst, a natural, a cherry and Pelham blue metallic. The Epiphone guitars are finished in gloss poly while the Gibson guitars are gloss nitrocellulose lacquer. I do prefer lacquer myself, but the first shock was the the Epiphone ES-339 which is made in the Epiphone factory in China has a MAP of $799 CAD. So I went to check one out.
Epiphone specifies that the instrument uses 500K CTS pots, and you can see this with the endoscope. There is a difference in the jack as well. The Epiphone jack is very precise and snug, locking the cable in with greater efficiency than the Gibson. The Epiphone also comes with Grover Rotomatic tuners. Based on my earlier assumption about the Gibson wiring, I will call the Epiphone hand wired because it looks the same.
Both guitar necks are a C shape and have a 12” radius. The current model year Epiphone guitars come with a Laurel fretboard while the Gibson specifies rosewood. Some subtle checking indicates that both boards are dyed, however, the Epiphone that I got had been hanging for a while and came with a rosewood fingerboard that was darker than the rosewood on the Gibson. Both guitars use GraphTech nuts. The Gibson specifies an aluminum stop tail and ABR-1 bridge, the Epiphone specifies their Locktone versions of the same. In both cases, the saddle notches were clean with no burrs but both benefitted from some lubricant. The nut slots on both were perfectly done. In terms of feel and playability, I couldn’t find any difference.
The Epiphone pickups are their own Alnico Classic Pro which use Alnico V magnets, so they are a bit hotter than the Gibson pickups. But if I’m honest, I really could not hear a significant different through the Twin Reverb. Both selector switches look the same inside the body. I did notice on the blueberry Gibson that the maple centre block did not fully contact the instrument back. I did not find that on the Epiphone or the cherry finish Gibson, so I will call that an anomaly.
The Gibson unit had the factory strings on it, and as it does not belong to me, and played ok, I did not change them. The Epiphone played fine too, but the strings felt rough and there was minor roughness on the fret surfaces. The dealer had told me it had been in store for a while, so I did remove the factory strings, polished the frets, oiled and waxed the fretboard (Music Nomad F-ONE Fretboard Oil followed by a good coat of Monty’s Guitars Montepresso). If I were buying the Gibson, I would do the same. I confess that I don’t understand why in 2023 both organization are still using nickel silver fretwire when stainless steel is now so close in cost and lasts a lifetime. The higher end shops all switched to stainless steel years ago and I find it smoother for bending on, and it doesn’t build up corrosion in the same way.
Once the strings were on and stretched in I plugged the Epiphone into the same Fender Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb that I used for my first recording test with the Gibson. I expected to hear something more from the Gibson given the price difference as in all other aspects of playability and build quality the two guitars are pretty much indistinguishable. I can tell the difference in hand only because the Epiphone has a new set of Curt Mangan 9.5-44 coated strings and the Gibson has the factory strings, which as regulars know, I really do not like. From a recorded perspective, I could not hear any difference.
Audio Samples
For the recorded samples, I ran the guitar straight into the Deluxe Reverb which has a DI out and that went direct via XLR to a Clarett+ 8 Pre interface which feeds Logic Pro. You can decide for yourself if you can hear a difference and which one you prefer. A month after this goes live, I will update the article to say which is which. I used the same cable into Input 1 on the “vibrato” (the tremolo) channel with the Tremolo off but reverb on, because I like reverb. Volume was set the same for both, treble at 6 ½, bass and middle at 5. The Tonemaster offers a pair of IR options both using the in cabinet Celestion Neo Creamback, the first using an SM57 microphone and the second using a Sennheiser MD 421. I used the SM57 option for both guitars. No post processing was done at all and no plugins were used.
I tried to get the volume to match but I don’t think that I matched it exactly. If I did not know which is which, I could not tell and frankly they both sound very nice and very much the same. Which is I think, the point of the exercise. Both are very playable, both are very comfortable and except for the headstock shape and logo, you could not tell which was which from normal viewing distance. Just to reiterate, I did put new strings on the Epiphone (Curt Mangan Coated 9.5-44) but not on the Gibson (factory 10-46). The strings felt very different to me, but the Gibson strings had not died and so I do not believe that any tonal quality was lost. I did use an Ernie Ball string cleaner on them first, followed by a D’Addario dry string sponge to be as fair as possible.
What Did I Learn?
I learned that I liked the slightly smaller body of the ES-339. Not better or worse than a Gibson 335, Gibson 355 or Epiphone Sheraton Pro, just different. Because the body weight is a bit less, the 339 models are a tiny bit more headstock heavy, but as I always use a leather strap and in this case from Walker and Williams on both that was not an issue. I used my current favourite pick which is made from black buffalo horn on both.
I don’t see a 339 as a replacement for a 335 style body, just a different size and weight distribution. I still find my PRS Semi-Hollow bodies more physically comfortable but they are physically different guitars. Because my Gretsch thin hollow body has a Bigsby mounted, it’s weight distribution is different and it sounds different because of the quite different pickups. The Gretsch is much more “blingy” than either 339, but looks are irrelevant to sound and playability.
I found that I preferred both into Fender clean amps over more Marshally or hotter type amps. While the Tone King Gremlin was a challenge, the Tone King Imperial Mark II was quite a pleasure to play into as were either of my AC30s, but set clean and with the Top Boost off on the one that has that. With the right amp, both guitars are pedal friendly and work well with modulation, delay and reverb pedals. I liked both with a versatile overdrive like a Boss BD-2w or a Browne Amplification Protein. As I am less enamoured of fuzz and distortion pedals in general I cared less for that sound, although the Mercury Fuzz from Electrode which is tube based sounded quite decent.
Conclusions
The ES-339 is a nice well balanced guitar. I thank my bud Keith Williams at Five Watt World for the suggestion to try one. I do not need an ES-339 and personally given the recorded or playing indistinguishability, would certainly not spend $4,000 or more on a Gibson version. I have my 63 Reissue ES-335 and four different ES-355s and an ES-339 does not add anything to those, nor does it play or sound better than my Epiphone Sheraton Pro. That’s me. You will have your own opinion as you should but if you are considering an ES-339, I will encourage you to try the Epiphone version. It will save you $3,200 CAD and as you can tell, the two sound very similar. If you are interested, check back in a month where I will add an addendum to tell you which is which in the recording.
As always, thank you for reading and subscribing and if you are not currently subscribed please consider signing up. As always, until next time, peace.
ADDENDUM (thanks to Fra for the reminder)
The second set of tones is the Epiphone and the Gibson is the first.
