The Gibson ES-125 is an archtop

Archtop guitar

An archtop guitar is a steel-stringed acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with blues and jazz players.Typically, an archtop guitar has:* 6 strings...

, hollow body electric guitar model that was produced by the Gibson Guitar Corporation

Gibson Guitar Corporation

The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

.

Model history

Introduced in 1941 as the successor to the ES-100, the ES-125 was an entry-level archtop electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

. It had one P-90

P-90

The P-90 is a single coil electric guitar pickup produced by Gibson since 1946. Having a more complex architecture and larger dimensions than Fender's single coils, it is occasionally mistaken for a humbucker.- History :...

 single-coil pickup in the neck position, and a volume control and tone control. The pre-war model, discontinued in 1942, had a smaller 14.5" body. When reintroduced in 1946 it had the larger 16.25" wide body that the ES-150 had. The unbound rosewood

Rosewood

Rosewood refers to any of a number of richly hued timbers, often brownish with darker veining, but found in many different hues. All rosewoods are strong and heavy, taking an excellent polish, being suitable for guitars, marimbas, turnery , handles, furniture, luxury flooring, etc.In general,...

 fingerboard initially sported pearl trapezoid

Trapezoid

In Euclidean geometry, a convex quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides is referred to as a trapezoid in American English and as a trapezium in English outside North America. A trapezoid with vertices ABCD is denoted...

 inlays; later, it would have dot inlays.

In the mid-1950's, the ES-125T was introduced, which was an entry-level thinline archtop electric guitar based on the original ES-125. It would later add options for double P-90 pickups and a sharp cutaway, referred to as a florentine cutaway, similar to the ES-175

Gibson ES-175

The Gibson ES-175 is an electric guitar manufactured by the Gibson Guitar Corporation, currently still in production. It is a 24 3/4" scale full hollow body guitar with a trapeze tailpiece and Tune-O-Matic bridge...

. Both the thinline and the regular models would be discontinued by the 1970s.

Notable ES-125 players

Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke

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Devon Sproule

Devon Sproule

Devon Sproule is a musician based for many years in Charlottesville, Virginia. She married musician and singer-songwriter Paul Curreri in 2005. She shared the prestigious ASCAP Foundation Sammy Cahn Award for 2009 with Oren Lavie...

Pete Doherty

Pete Doherty

Peter Doherty is an English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist. He is best known musically for being co-frontman of The Libertines, which he reformed with Carl Barât in 2010. His other musical project is indie band Babyshambles...

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan

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Jeff Mangum

Jeff Mangum

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Marc Ribot

Marc Ribot

Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...

Richard Reagh

Wes Montgomery

Wes Montgomery

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George Thorogood

George Thorogood

George Thorogood is an American blues rock vocalist/guitarist from Wilmington, Delaware, United States, known for his hit song "Bad to the Bone" as well as for covers of blues standards such as Hank Williams' "Move It On Over" and John Lee Hooker's "House Rent Boogie/One Bourbon, One Scotch, One...

Izzy Stradlin

Izzy Stradlin

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Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent)

Robert Levon Been

Robert Levon Been

Robert Levon Been is an American indie rock bass guitarist, guitarist, and singer. He is currently a member of Los Angeles-based band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and was, for a time, a bass player in The Beggars. He is the son of the late Michael Been of The Call...

1946

• 16 1/4" wide
• Approximately 3.5" thick body
• Scale length 24 3/4
• Nut width ?
• One non-adjustable P-90
  P-90
  The P-90 is a single coil electric guitar pickup produced by Gibson since 1946. Having a more complex architecture and larger dimensions than Fender's single coils, it is occasionally mistaken for a humbucker.- History :...
  
  pickup with "dog ears"
• Pickup in neck position
• Tortoise grain pickguard
• Trapeze tailpiece with raised diamonds
• Single bound top and back
• Pearloid trapezoid fingerboard inlays
• Silkscreen logo
• Sunburst finish

Pickups and Components

The ES-125 was equipped with one P90 pickup. The original had 6 Alnico slug pole pieces. In 1950 the P90 transitioned to 6 adjustable poles between two Alnico 5 bar magnets.

The model used for the ES-125 has a string spacing on the neck pickup of 1 15/16" from high E to low E. The ES-125 also used a tapered dogear cover for their neck position pickups with a thickness of 4/16" on the treble side and 5/16" on the bass side. Since the fingerboard sits flush to the body (as opposed to an ES-175) the ES-125 requires a shorter neck pickup than a typical dogear. This pickup is, however, not as short as those found on an ES-330TD which has the pickup mounted flush to the end of the fingerboard.

Coils were wound to approximately 10,000 wraps although DC resistance of these pickups can vary greatly

Volume and tone controls were 500k Audio taper pots. A treble bypass cap value of .022 microfarads was used for the tone circuit. D (Double Pickup) models included a 3 position toggle switch to select each pickup individually or both pickups simultaneously.

Models

• ES-125T (T = Thinline)
• ES-125TC (C = Cutaway)
• ES-125TCD (D = Double p90 pickups) versions available starting in 1956 and 1960, respectively.