Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Ricara wrote:For all of the Epiphone experts out there, JustBassics noted that the ES-335 neck joined the body two frets higher than the Casino. Presumably this was due to the internal construction of the '335, but does anybody know if the ES-330 was like the Casino in this regard or like the ES-335?

Also, Casino owners, do you have any problems with unwanted feedback?

Thanks,
Charlie

Depends on which Casino you get. The standard MIC Casinos always bug me because the neck joins at the 17th fret, not the 16th like the ones the Beatles used. That means the pickups and bridge are shifted higher and the whole guitar looks different.

The ES-335 neck joins at the 19th fret, which I would wager is for accessibility rather than any construction concerns.

dpowell wrote:The standard MIC Casinos always bug me because the neck joins at the 17th fret, not the 16th like the ones the Beatles used. That means the pickups and bridge are shifted higher and the whole guitar looks different.

The ES-335 neck joins at the 19th fret, which I would wager is for accessibility rather than any construction concerns.

I guess I'm confused. All the Gibsons of that era had 22 frets. Then, with a few exceptions, the neck pickup would be snug up against the neck, and the bridge pickup would be close up to the bridge. (The only exception was the early SG "Les Pauls" that had a gap between the neck and the pickup in order to have a relatively strong neck joint.)

So that means that the relative position of the neck, pickups, and bridge were constant on all of the guitars. The only difference was where the body attached. Of course, everything affects the sound of a guitar, but it seems to me that where the body attached would have much less affect than the position of the pickups.

I would assume that the ES-335's solid center section allowed the neck to join the body with several frets more clear compared to the ES-330/Casino. The ultimate expression of this were the "neck through body" construction styles used on the early Gibson Firebirds and (I believe) some of the Ric basses. This allowed extremely good access to the higher frets. But even here the relative position of the pickups was unchanged, right? Or am I missing something...

You may be right, I'm not a luthier but it's only two little frets.

There are several ways to attach the body to the neck on a guitar outside of the method used (glue-in, straight-thru, etc). If you treat the neck, pickups, and bridge as a unit and move them back and forth in relation to the body and the F-holes on the body, then this is what the different location of the neck to body joint does. The vintage Casino neck to body location is better for the guitar acoustically as the f-holes are located in a more resonent place. This is if you compare it to a 335. There is a Gibson video that Dave Hunter did that talked about it briefly. It is a VERY good video, along with the Fender one, and the general one that has some RICS in it.

Greg

Thats a great article in VG.

I don't typically have any trouble with feedback and, based on playing mine, a friend bought one and used it to record his last home studio CD. It sounded great. All in all a more versatile guitar than you might imagine.