bobalu

Follow up to my April 19th post #15 above - the 235 fit's nicely in an ES-339 hardshell case, perfectly actually.

I have one of these and absolutely love it, but I love large necks which, in general, are not too common as the majority seem to prefer the slim taper 60's. I tried to get use to the slim taper but ended up selling the Gibson's and Epiphone LP's that I had with that neck shape. Just couldn't do it, they cramped my hand after any length of playing. Anyhow, if you are a fan of thinner necks, I think this will feel huge to you, and not very comfortable. It is one of the largest necks I've encountered. The build is top notch with ebony fretboard and quality tuners + Gibson P90's but it's a heavy guitar (does not bother me). Try one out yourself if you can, but the neck really is quite baseball bat in size.

Just bought a 235 in the sunburst and I concur with most of Static's comments here - a wonderful versatile guitar for sure. I have not had any problem getting some nice "standard" jazz tones through my Princeton Reverb re-issue (12" Canibis Rex) and have not found bass response to be an issue (stock strings still on it). Just my own perspective here. Anyhow, I love the 50's type rounded neck and the response of the tone controls. Gibson confirmed to me that they do not make a hardshell case for this guitar. I'm checking out options now as the soft gig bag is not going to cut it for me in the long run (will keep you posted on what I find). Perfectly comfortable body size compared to my 335 (with 57 Classics) and certainly enough difference in sound to justify owning both . Absolutely worth trying out if you need an axe to cover a lot of ground sonic wise.

Resurrected this 2016 post to confirm that, despite new management at Gibson, absolutely nothing has changed with respect to QC in 2019. I looked through 7 or 8 of the new ES-235's before I found one that was acceptable to me (and I'm not really THAT picky!). Of all the sloppy work that comes out of Gibson, I have to say that I just can't believe they still have problems with the headstock inlays. It's just such an obvious visual representation of your product, and the OP's pictured in this thread plus several I have gone through in the shops look like the inlay was done with a pocket knife on someones front porch. Notwithstanding the above, I eventually found an ES-235 that played beautifully and sounded amazing, and they have a silk screen on the headstock so no inlay hacking job to worry about! But -they don't make a hard shell case for it (comes with a gig bag). Hope Gibson is around in 2020................ (not holding my breath though).