ES-125 with crown inlays?

[Asperous]

Found this 1946 ES125 on gbase in excellent shape. I've never seen an ES-125 with crown inlays. Is that a thing?

[JimR56]

As the seller's description states, those fretboard inlays are usually referred to as "trapezoid" inlays, not crown inlays (that term is used for another inlay, so it's confusing to refer to the trapezoids as crowns).  Trapezoids were used on 125's until the late 1940's, when they started using dot inlays on that model.

The so-called "crown" inlay is a common headstock inlay.  It's what you see on the headstock of many Gibson intermediate grade models (ES 300, 350, ES5, 175, 295, 335, 345;  L4, L7; Kessel Regular...)

Gibson "Crown" headstock inlay

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Also, my understanding is that the modern "Gibson" head logo on this ES-125 didn't appear until 1947.  But the transition from the script logo to the modern logo has always been slightly blurry, so I suppose 1946 is possible.

[cunningham26]

yea i dont know where they're getting 1946 from since they didnt say there's a FON or something, but non-adjustable p90 and carved back have it early, with that finish probably 40s. 

I don't think i'd speculate that anything is truly '46 unless it had the script logo, no banner. blurry for sure, but '46 seems to have some cache that make them a little more expensive, so i wouldnt claim it unless i was pretty certain. 

[cunningham26]

on second pass my guess is that this is an L50 refined and a p90 added, maybe by gibson, in the 50s