Gibson ES-150

By the time Gibson began work on its first electric guitar, the company had a 40-year tradition of quality and innovation to uphold. The first Gibson electric had to be nothing less than the best electric guitar the world had ever seen.
In the spring of 1935, Gibson enlisted musician Alvino Rey to help develop a prototype pickup with engineers at the Lyon & Healy company in Chicago. Later that year, research was moved in-house, where Gibson employee Walter Fuller came up with the final design



The Gibson Guitar Corporation's ES-150 guitar is generally recognized as the world's first commercially feasible electric guitar. The ES stands for Electric Spanish, and it was designated 150 because it cost $150 along with an EH-150 amplifier and a cable. After its introduction in 1936, it immediately became popular in jazz orchestras of the period. Unlike the usual unamplified guitars utilized in jazz, it was loud enough to take a more prominent position in ensembles. Jazz guitarist Eddie Durham is usually credited with making the first electric guitar solo in 1938 with the ES-150.Gibson introduced the distinctive hexagonal pickup on a lap steel model in late 1935. The pickup was installed on an F-hole archtop guitar, dubbed the ES-150 (ES for Electric Spanish), and the first one shipped from the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on May 20, 1936.
Was the ES-150 the best electric guitar that guitarists in 1936 had ever seen? Jazz musician Charlie Christian, who would establish the electric guitar as an instrument with its own unique voice, thought so. Sixty years later, the Gibson ES-150 is still known as the Charlie Christian model, and
some jazz players consider the ES-150's
"Charlie Christian" pickup to be the best jazz pickup ever made !!!


The most important player of the ES-150, however, is Charlie Christian. Because of his popularization of the guitar, the instrument's distinctive single-coil pickup, was renamed after him. His warm, flowing solos, and warm sound revolutionized the jazz guitar and, to this day, influence countless players.
After WWII, the ES-150 was re-introduced (production was halted during the war) as a 17" (originally 16") laminated (instead of carved spruce top) hollowbody with a P-90 (replacing the "Charlie Christian" pickup) in the neck position. This model was discontinued in the mid-1950s.
In the late 1960s, Gibson introduced the ES-150DC, which was a significantly different instrument, despite its similar model number. The ES-150DC was a full hollow-body electric guitar with a double-cutaway body similar in appearance to the semi-hollow 335 guitars (except for a greater body thickness). It featured two humbuckers, a rosewood fingerboard with small block inlays, and a master volume knob on the lower cutaway. This model, however,
was not particularly popular, and it was discontinued by Gibson in the mid-70s. The ES-150 (in its original design),