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ACTIVE PICKUPS AND CONTROLS INDICATED IN ORANGE
Gibson’s premier Electric Spanish guitar, the ES-335 introduced in 1959 is still one of the coolest and most desired guitars
of all time. Equally at home playing jazz, blues, and rock, it is one of the most versatile guitars ever.
The wiring is simple. Two pickups, each with a volume and tone control. A three-way selector that gives you either pickup
alone, or both pickups in parallel. But there are a couple of options, one that is typically referred to as modern wiring, and
another that is typically referred to as vintage wiring. This document details vintage wiring, but we have a similar
document that details modern wiring, which you can find on our website.
The difference between the two is in how the tone controls are wired. The modern wiring exhibits a trait that some people
feel to be a flaw, namely that the guitar loses treble as the volume controls are rolled down. Some people don’t mind the
treble roll-off; others address it with treble-bleed networks (resistor/capacitor networks).
There's no real consensus on this issue, and no wrong or right. In fact, calling the vintage wiring "vintage" may be a bit of
a misnomer, because there seem to be Les Pauls from the '50s that came wired one way, and Les Pauls from the '50s
that came wired the other, so perhaps Gibson wasn't consistent. If you want to read more about this, then have a look at
some of the Internet forum sites and you can get in on the debate.
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ES-335 - VINTAGE WIRING
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