Zappa.com

Good looking Guitar the gap seems a bit big on the head stock the triangle tail looks the part though
Notice Wally's semi acoustic Fender He's smoking the blues there fair play.

I don't have the case for Freak-out! got the original given to me with empty case
The best i can think of with The ES models is GIBSON had a ES not shaped E body.GIBSON Buy EpiPhone Company and there for had the rights to use the E SHAPE which Got a better sound

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

hoy cleon, I don't know what you mean by the 'E' shape
Gibson came out with the ES- 150 in 1937, and it always stood for Electric Spanish
When Gibson bought Epiphone in 1957, they got the tooling for all their guitars...
but Gibson had already brought out all their jazz models by then
Then Gibson started building Epi's in their own factory.
The Epiphone Casino (John Lennon model) was just a Gibson ES-330 with a different headstock
The Epi Riviera was like a Gibson ES-335...the Sheraton was like a 355, etc
The main difference was they used the mini-humbuckers in the Epiphones
(this accounts for the different sound moreso than the body shape)
Gibson didn't use the minihumbuckers in their own brand until the Les Paul was re-introduced in 1968 as the Deluxe (gold top)
The reason they used the minihumbuckers is because they could fit into the Les Paul
bodies leftover from the 50's which were routed for P90 single coil pickups
(Gibson stopped making Les Pauls between 1960 and 1968)

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"Wanna buy some pencils?...."

Sorry mate i was thinking the e shape was
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_ES-150 not E shape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_ES-335 E shape
the two front sides and the neck look like a E

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

Gibson only started calling them Switchmaster 1955

In 1949 Gibson introduced the gibson es-5 guitar , it was a single cutaway archtop guitar , it had three p-90 pickups, maple body and rosewood fingerboard .

The gibson es-5 was the first production models to incorporate three pickups . Guitar players loved the variation of tone it gave , you could have used any of the three pickups or you could of combined all three .

The three pickups reproduce the full tones and harmonics that many guitar players seek today . ( very similar to the gibson es 350 ), guitar was made in natural and sunburst finishes . Gibson Ended production of the es 5 in 1955 and renamed it the es-5 switchmaster.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3865 ... sones5.jpg

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

yeah..players liked the tone...but they were ultimately unpopular because
the middle pickup interfered with picking technique (especially the humbucker version)
This apparently didn't bother Frank.....but he would've loved the tone variation
I don't suppose we'll ever know how much Frank paid for them...unless Gail remembers
But I suspect he jumped at them 'cos of the sound....and the jazz guys were dumping them around that time
Frank wasn't that wealthy back then...I can't imagine him paying full retail for them

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"Wanna buy some pencils?...."

I think he bought that model 1963 before me meet gail.

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

oh...I thought he'd only rented guitars up until the 'record contract' 1966

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"Wanna buy some pencils?...."

frank bought his and studo z with money from when run home slow resurfaced 1963.
Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster which can be heard on the fisrt 3 albums.

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

just watched zappa paris 80 and the quality on there is so good seen ray white got a black widow acoustic

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

I have a friend that owns a Les Paul that has Ibanez flying finger pick ups on it. Those were the ones that Gibson sued them over.

Personally I'd rather have an Ibanez artist than a Les Paul but in about a week I'm getting an Electra Les Paul custom copy in flame maple my brother got from his neighbor for free.

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Hoy Huck...nice score! the Electra

I think the Electra's were essentially rebadged Ibanez's (or at least from the same factory)

I had a nice one a few years back...it was badged 'Axiom', but it was an Ibanez 'Custom Agent' Les Paul (with Florentine headstock & scratchplate)
I've seen a bunch of different rebadged Ibanez's...different importers just ordered them from the factory with their own brand

It sounds excellent! The action on it has a lot of fret buzz but it's a great guitar for free!

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Maybe the participants of this old thread are no longer hanging around....but anyway, chiming in on the topic of the guitars mentioned here:

Regarding Ike's guitar: it is probably the Byrdland(?) that is seen in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BppOWoK2Fc

Regarding Frank's ES-355: I have always assumed that guitar burned in the 1971 Montreaux concert of "Smoke on the Water" fame. They did lose their equipment in that fire, and the ES-355 was his main guitar leading up to it. I have never seen a picture or Frank with the 355 after 1971 or so.

The guitar Ike's is playing is FZ's switchmaster.


Taken from
http://www.angelfire.com/freak2/arfz/equipment.html


The Barry Miles book says the ES-335 was destroyed 1971,Funny thing i can remember reading in a guitar magazine years ago that FZ was a ES-355 man?!

Edit
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13877

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.