pb-272
Member
- Messages
- 122
I’ve been hunting for a unique and glorious ES 335 for a while now, running the digital racks all over the world. In my travels I decided I didn’t want a red/cherry version, or a black one- I wanted something a little different. I’m not a relic fan but I kept coming back to this Pelham Blue Light-aged Murphy Lab edition in a store in Germany. I actually bought the guitar through reverb, then got cold feet called the store and cancelled the order and got a refund. The idea of a relic just put me off. Then I had this terrible sense of remorse and FOMO and called the dealer and repurchased the guitar!
Thank goodness I did.
This guitar is wonderful. The colour is superb, the relic job adds something I just can’t explain. It makes you want to play the absolute cr?p out of it. The execution of the checking is brilliant- it looks like a beautiful old guitar and plays like a modern masterpiece.
The neck feels wide and thin to me, the finish texture on the neck provides a useful ‘guide’ for the left hand.
The setup is the best in any guitar I’ve purchased, the action super low with no buzzing.
This is an elite-level instrument and I absolutely love it EXCEPT….
The Custombuckers…they are A3 magnets. I find them way to polite and lacking in harmonic content and grunt. I lined them up against a few of my favourite guitars and I found them bland and quite muddy for low output PUs. This is my second experience with Custombuckers - they didn’t last a week in my R9.
After some research and a chat to Wolfe I installed Wolfetone Marshallheads (A5) front and rear and coil splits.
This guitar is now an absolute all rounder. I can get freaking awesome single coil sounds that border on P90 territory, the full grunt of a HB bridge, and a neck pickup that can handle sweet clean tones at 7, and Slash solos at 10.
I love this thing.
Here is a quick photo I took on the fly- I’ll upload better ones later.
Thank goodness I did.
This guitar is wonderful. The colour is superb, the relic job adds something I just can’t explain. It makes you want to play the absolute cr?p out of it. The execution of the checking is brilliant- it looks like a beautiful old guitar and plays like a modern masterpiece.
The neck feels wide and thin to me, the finish texture on the neck provides a useful ‘guide’ for the left hand.
The setup is the best in any guitar I’ve purchased, the action super low with no buzzing.
This is an elite-level instrument and I absolutely love it EXCEPT….
The Custombuckers…they are A3 magnets. I find them way to polite and lacking in harmonic content and grunt. I lined them up against a few of my favourite guitars and I found them bland and quite muddy for low output PUs. This is my second experience with Custombuckers - they didn’t last a week in my R9.
After some research and a chat to Wolfe I installed Wolfetone Marshallheads (A5) front and rear and coil splits.
This guitar is now an absolute all rounder. I can get freaking awesome single coil sounds that border on P90 territory, the full grunt of a HB bridge, and a neck pickup that can handle sweet clean tones at 7, and Slash solos at 10.
I love this thing.
Here is a quick photo I took on the fly- I’ll upload better ones later.
Last edited:
I did also try a couple of other ES-335 models, and e.g. the '59 I tried was dark and honky. Too much so, for my liking, same pickups.
