Gibson ES 355

Richierich !!! is the name Bwana Hail from Zanzibar East Africa where Freddie Mercury comes from currently residing in Sydney Australia.

Play a ES 355 Gibson Stereo/mono . Currently use this for my Chuck Berry Show for the past 5 years.Have a Cherry Lucille,as well and An Identical model to Chuck Berry. Its simply Brilliant and its a 1968. I have had it since 2006.. But the lucille Cherry are both fantastic. Currently play on 2 fender twin 1970 amplifiers.Check my You Tube Richierich asChuck!!!Excellent for Blues Rock and Roll !.country, and Jazz. The neck,sound is second to none

Take care, Talk soon RichieRich!!!

I ordered an ES-355 (via a USA dealer) direct from the Gibson custom shop and can tell you it is one of the most immaculately finished guitars I have ever seen and it plays really well out of the box. The model I went for has a bigsby tremolo and the gold hard-ware gleams with pure class, as does the rich antique red finish (not like that insipid pale cherry stain that production line 335s now have). Lovely smooth cool ebony fingerboard and the block inlays are beautiful. Soundwise the guitar's mellow yet slightly nasal tone is like a cross between a jazzer's L5 and a vintage Les Paul and it sings evenly through the whole range. They don't muck around at the top of the custom shop range, but obviously these guitars aren't cheap. Being a professional player, I have owned many Gibson guitars, nearly all custom shop models and this is as good as I have seen. A word of advice though and I've seen it time and again: if you want the good stuff, buy in the USA and take your time to source it. A world class instrument.

Can't live without my Gibson Es 355. It's expensive but has incredible tone & slick action / light touch. Wonderful range of rich jazz and blues sounds looks incredible: the real-deal blues-jazz semi-acoustic

After stripping the scratch plate down, guitar strap holders, plug nut, toggle switch and cleaning all brass fittings with appropriate polish the brass was sparkling to match the gold hardware. The bleed on the binding was cleaned off.

All of the laquered areas that were mottled were smoothed with down carefully with 'T' cut polish, then finished off with the supplied Gibson polish. This included the neck sides, headstock edges and join areas. The frets were polished with mild metal polish to a gleaming shine and the fretboard cleaned over with conditioner. The guitar was easy to set up and did not lose its orignal intonation settings, it now feels part of me. This is a beautiful guitar and the mellow sounds had my girlfriend falling softly to sleep. These 355's have a distinct tonal quality which identifies them from other guitars. In contrast, a blast of rock and roll is just as easy to get into, this guitar pulls no punches, it just takes over and you are off, get the right drummer and bass player and the world is yours! Never had so much fun. If you can afford it, get one, if you can not afford one, still get one, you'll never regret the day you did!

We appear to get Gibson rejects in this country at the high end, similar Lucille and Epiphones seen at the supplier at the same time had a better finish than the custom ones so do not feel dissapointed that they are a rarity in this country, we are better off without them if they are being produced like this. It has taken three years to eventually get to see a fairly decent one sent over to this country and when we did it fell short of expectation. The Epiphone Sheraton/Gibson 335/ Lucille are the alternatives so we may as well give these serious thought, especially as they cost a third of a 355. At least if they get knocked or damaged we do not have to worry about replacing them. We are still interested in purchasing a 355 because they are so attractive but not until we see one that has been made with care. We are talking about the ES Custom Shop 355 not the recent 2006 limited edition, which is cheaper. Gibson UK, Europe and USA are aware of these comments but they consider that I am a 'difficult' customer instead of trying to solve the problems in production. We still have the photographs as proof! With rubbish like this who needs them!