Ruby! - Epiphone ES-335 Inspired by Gibson – Cherry

Epiphone ES-335 Semi-Hollow Electric Guitar in Cherry

Meet Ruby, an Epiphone ES-335 from the Inspired by Gibson range, finished in classic Cherry with a beautifully figured laminated maple top.

Ruby came to The Stray Chord after being gifted, placed in an attic and largely forgotten. Despite seeing very little use, storage had left her with a dry fingerboard, unfinished and uneven frets, grime and a hazy finish.

Following extensive fretwork, restoration and a full professional setup, Ruby was brought back to the condition she deserved and successfully rehomed for £310.

About Ruby

The ES-335 is one of the most recognisable electric guitar designs ever made, combining elements of both hollow-body and solid-body construction.

Ruby's body is constructed from five-ply layered maple around a solid maple centre block. This helps provide the warmth and acoustic character associated with semi-hollow guitars while adding sustain, definition and resistance to feedback.

Her Cherry finish is particularly attractive thanks to the figuring visible through the translucent red top, which became considerably more apparent once years of storage haze had been removed.

A pair of Epiphone Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers gives the ES-335 an extremely broad tonal range, covering warm jazz and blues sounds through to driven classic rock. The traditional four-control layout provides independent volume and tone controls for each pickup alongside a three-way pickup selector.

The pickups feed through CTS potentiometers, while Epiphone's LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece anchor directly over the guitar's solid centre block.

Combined with a comfortable rounded-C neck profile, Ruby is very much a player's ES-335 rather than merely a pretty guitar.

Restoration & setup

Ruby arrived looking considerably less glamorous than she does in these photographs. During her rehabilitation at The Stray Chord she received:

• Frets fully levelled, crowned and polished
• Sharp fret ends dressed and rounded
• Fingerboard edges carefully rolled
• Indian laurel fingerboard thoroughly cleaned and conditioned
• Neck relief adjusted
• Bridge and action professionally set
• Full intonation
• Pickup heights balanced
• Electronics and CTS pots cleaned and checked
• Body thoroughly cleaned
• Three-stage correction and polishing of the hazed Cherry finish
• Final professional setup and playability check

The result was a dramatically cleaner instrument with smooth fretwork, comfortable action and a deep, mirror-like Cherry finish that properly showed off the figuring underneath.

Specifications

Ruby's adoption

🌹 REHOMED 🌹

Ruby has now found the home she deserved and is no longer available for adoption.

She remains here as part of The Stray Chord Rehomed Archive, documenting the instruments that have passed through our workshop and providing a useful reference for players researching the Epiphone ES-335.

Rescue • Restore • Rehome

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