Blonde dot-neck ES-335 with Custom Made Neck

Here is a dot neck 335 project I recently completed. I got this from my good friend Bill Stapleton. Gibson made some great flamey ES 335s back in the 1980s when they first reissued the dotnecks. This one was hard to play because it was missing its neck! We made a replacement out of a straight grained piece of Honduras mahogany and attached a wonderfully grained Brazilian rosewood board featuring original material dot markers and correct color binding. It features a proper holly headstock overlay with period correct pearl inlays.

I’ve always dug 335s with bigsbys and custom made plaques, so I decided to pimp this one out. The plaque is from Montreux and the bigsby B7 is a new one that I aged to match the overall vibe of the guitar. Most of the parts are original late 50s (knobs, tuners, M69 rings, truss rod cover, strap buttons, switch tip) and the pickups are Sheptone PAF tributes. I’m having a lot of fun with this one.