TYPE
Electric Hollow Body Archtop guitar
FEATURES
Spruce and maple body, mahogany neck
Rosewood fretboard
Inclined pickup of 7 inches
INFORMATION
Launched in the mid-1940s, the ES-300 was an electric guitar that was nothing like existing electric guitars. It has a strikingly long and diagonally positioned pickup, but it differs little from its predecessor the ES-250, both with a 43cm/17 inch wide body, maple back and L-5-style tailpiece. The ES-300 was Gibson’s first pre-war electric guitar and was presented at the Chicago Musical Instrument Trade Show in July 1940.
The secret of the ES-300 was its new remarkable pickup. It was designed by Walter Fuller who used a new alloy Alnico for the magnets.
1940 ES-300
17″ wide, large 6.25″ long slate-mounted oblong pickup with adjustable poles, jack on side, L-5 style plate tailpiece with center insert missing, triple bound top and back, maple neck, double parallelogram fingerboard inlays, crown peghead inlay, pearl logo, sunburst or natural finish.
1941 ES-300
smaller slat-mounted pickup, trapeze tailpiece with pointed ends and raised arrows. Production halted in 1942.
1946 ES-300
P-90 pickup in the neck position, laminated beveled-edge pickguard, bound peghead, and fingerboard.
1948 ES-300
2 P-90 pickups, 2 volume knobs on the lower treble bout, master tone knob on the upper treble bout.
ES-300 discontinued 1952.
