SteveFord

Smell pipe tobacco but no hashish so far. I'll give this some time to come up to room temperature. Hate to disappoint but this is not taken out in the driveway for a change.

It's not the ears, it's the note decay as a previous poster mentioned. Every Gibson I've tried has a fast note decay where the upper end Martins tend to sustain for days. You can hit a harmonic, go get lunch and it'll still be ringing when you come back. Gibsons have their own sound and are certainly handsome instruments. Priced a bit too high, I'd say, although Martin prices have gone through the roof.

Limited run from Gibson, it's more common on Les Pauls.

From poking around it looks like they did a limited run of 335s and a 355 without a Varitone or Lyre tail piece in 2011.

I believe it was in the Entertainment Section or Beauty and Style or something like that. Not quite the breaking story of the day. Kind of like returning frogs to England and the male turns blue, it's in there if you poke around some.

I wouldn't doubt that they only made a few but they'd be valuable only to left handed guitarists. Coming from a dealer's perspective I can understand why they wouldn't be worth more. Most of the customers are right handed.

Reminds me of Tonya Harding. At least they didn't start slugging one another, I guess that counts for something. http://www.cnn.com/style/article/mrs-sri-lanka-crown-intl-hnk-scli/?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

He is not the tx-ogre for nothing, I believe he nailed it.

I'm thinking someone stripped the finish off and then oiled it. Looks nice.

That's quite the review (that background music has gotta go). Like I expected: good sound, light weight, forget playing upper frets, feeds back easily, really handsome. Three grand? I don't know about that part.

Somehow or other I stumbled across that cornpone guy who's dating (or is married to) Gwen Stefani and he was playing one. Blake Shelton, I think that's his name. It looked and sounded really good. He sounded like, well, Blake Shelton singing about little itty bitty squirrels runnin' around or something but the guitar sounded really good.

Yes.

The box is en route - let's hope there's a guitar in there! It's been so long since I've had a guitar with a trapeze tail piece I can't say if I'd like them or not at this stage of the game. I remember thinking how cool they were back in 70s when I owned then-current 335s.

They don't come much whiter than that!

This one was a trade-in at a Sam Ash somewhere in Florida, posted on Reverb. I understand it has tall frets (which I don't care for) and they're prone to finish checking around the neck joint area. This one doesn't appear to have that going on. I don't plan on using the neck as a whammy bar so maybe it'll stay that way. Owners have said they lean closer to a Les Paul sound than a semi-hollow which is fine with me. I can't recall any Les Paul that I didn't like the sound of. I think that new ES330 would probably have been the better choice but it's more expensive and I have enough double cutaway F-hole guitars. Time for something a bit different.

You did good with that one, that stand looks great! Guitar looks pretty good, too.

A 100W Marshall Stack when I was 18 years old. The thought that everyone within a mile could hear me make mistakes made me really practice!

This kind of bring back the old vintage versus new debate which will never be resolved. The only two vintage Gibsons that I owned (an SG-style Les Paul Jr. and that ES-125tdc) were so underwhelming that I gave them away. Sgt. Pepper with his ES-225 found the same thing. I liked the guitars I had back in the 70s and 80s but wouldn't seek them out again. I'm pretty sure I'd be disappointed. I honestly think we are spoiled rotten with the guitars that have come out in the past 20 years. None of my guitars are anything super duper special, they're all just random samplings. They're all consistently good. P.S. That's a lotta albums!

Reminds me of my old Sears suitcase stereo I had as a kid. Unlatch it and there is your turntable/amplifier and pop off the two speakers and it would work for weeks at a time before it would have to go back in for repair which would take several months. I recall it making 3 trips for repair and then it went out to the curb. I'm hoping this 137 is an improvement over an ES-125tdc I had for a while. I thought I'd plug it in and it would sound like George Thorogood. WRONG! It was so bad I gave it away to some girl who didn't know how to play. Here you go, you can keep it...

C'mon, lighten up, you just got that beautiful Stratocaster with a whammy bar.

That sounds right up Pete Townsend's alley. Put your smart phones up on stage and he could smash them with a Stratocaster.

I'm looking forward to seeing it. If you hear a Gibson humbucker sound on one of the later Patti Smith albums it's probably one of these. Lenny opened up the case and went "BONNNNGGGGGG!!!" and when I started laughing he did it again.

No although I did spend some time drooling over the 330s but I decided to go with something a little different. I'd been looking at ES-Les Pauls but decided that they would probably feel too small and I understand they're balsa wood light and like the looks of the ES-175 but think they're really more for the jazz crowd and like the look of the Byrdlands but they're too expensive when I happened to stumble across the ES-137 Custom. This is a 2005 case queen, ebony fret board, cat eye fret markers which I've never had and I've always wanted a Gibson with the split diamond headstock inlay but never had one. This looks pretty interesting... Then I spied the coveted Tone Suck Control and well, there goes my self control out the window. Tone? We don't need no steenkin' tone!!! With any luck, it'll arrive mid to late next week and I'll take some better photos. It's supposedly a tobacco sunburst so we'll see. Looks kind of butterscotch in these photos.

Great story and really a handsome guitar!

Well... I am thinking about a J40 athough they shot out of my price range some time back. Might make for a good retirement present, though.