Joe Bonamassa - The 1961 Gibson ES-335 - video Dailymotion

TALES FROM NERDVILLE by Joe Bonamassa TOOLS OF THE TRADE, PART 2

Transcript

00:00Hey everybody, Joe Bonamassa here in the apartment disturbing the neighbors once again.

00:15Healing up from a little bit of neck surgery so if my face looks a little out of proportion

00:20that'll that'll clear up in a couple of weeks. Today I want to talk about the 335.

00:25This happens to be a 1961 dot neck 335. Why do they call it a dot neck?

00:31It's because it's got dots indicating the frets. 12th fret, you know, whatever.

00:37And after about 61, 62, mid 62, they went to block markers and cherry red.

00:46And that's what is mostly associated with Air Clapton and Cream.

00:50Cherry red with the block markers. But these are cool.

00:52BB King played one, you know, good enough for BB, good enough for me.

00:55So today I'm going to go through a little bit of what makes a 335 different from,

01:01let's say, a Les Paul or a Firebird or any of the other great Gibson guitars.

01:06So check it out. So here we go. The 1961 ES-335.

01:12You can really hear the acoustic quality of the instrument coming through even when plugged in.

01:16So check this out.

01:18Here's the front pickup.

01:43Here's the front pickup.

01:44Here are both pickups combined.

02:02One for BB.

02:29So whenever I'm choosing an instrument for a song, I mean, every time we revisit our blues catalog,

02:36which is pretty vast at this point.

02:38We've done a bunch of tribute shows and played a lot of trad blues over the years.

02:42Every time I want to figure out what's the best guitar for a trad blues song,

02:5199% of the times I'm grabbing an ES-335.

02:54It just works. It fits in the track if you're in the studio.

02:57And live it just bellows and really creates that vibe and takes you there both as a player and sonically.

03:05You know what I mean? Like sometimes you look down and you're like, this is what I want to be playing.

03:09And you're hearing it and sound makes you play.

03:12So the 335, any year, again, it doesn't have to be a vintage one, is a great asset and a great tool to anybody

03:20who has a very vast variety of music and styles that they have to pull off on any given Sunday.