Guitars

Gibson ES-335 with P-90s: The Rare One, Reviewed After Years of Ownership

By Mike · Published July 14, 2026

Everyone knows the ES-335. Almost nobody knows this version of it, and that’s exactly why it’s worth writing about: an ES-335 with factory dogear P-90s instead of humbuckers is one of the quiet rarities in Gibson’s catalog, made in occasional Custom Shop and limited runs rather than as a standing model. I’ve owned this 2013 Custom Shop example (Vintage Sunburst, VOS nitro finish) for years, and this is the review I couldn’t find when I bought it.

The guitar in question. Most people do a double-take at the pickups before they say anything.

Disclosure: as of this writing, this exact guitar is listed for sale (collection downsizing, not disappointment), so read knowing the author has both years of experience with it and a mild conflict of interest. The observations below are the same ones I’d give a friend.

What it is

Structurally it’s the eternal recipe: laminated maple body with the solid maple center block, rounded C neck, rosewood board, 22 medium jumbos on a 12-inch radius, ABR-1 and stopbar. This one runs light for a 335 at about 7.8 pounds, which your back notices at gig three. The VOS treatment gives it that lightly-aged sheen rather than showroom gloss.

The whole story is the pickups: dogear P-90s in a body designed around humbuckers.

What P-90s do to a 335

A standard 335 is smooth, vocal, a little polite; it wants to be a lead voice. Put P-90s in that semi-hollow structure and the guitar gets louder in personality: clean tones turn big, woody, and articulate, with the kind of note edges that make chord voicings readable in a dense mix. Push the amp and you get the P-90 specialty, that gritty vintage growl that sits exactly between single-coil snap and humbucker weight. It’s the sound of a lot of early rock and roll and jump blues records, wearing the body of the most versatile guitar Gibson ever designed.

The tradeoffs are the honest P-90 tradeoffs. Sixty-cycle hum is real; single-coil physics don’t care what body they’re mounted in, and high-gain players near neon signs will suffer. And you lose the classic humbucker 335 voice entirely, which is the reason this variant is rare: most players who want a 335 want that sound. This guitar is for the player who finds it slightly too polite.

Living with it

Years in, the things that matter: it stays in tune like a fixed-bridge Gibson should, the neck is the Custom Shop rounded C that fills the hand without club-ness, and it responds to volume-knob work the way P-90 guitars famously do, cleaning from growl to chime without touching the amp. Through a Deluxe Reverb-style amp at the edge of breakup (ours, you may have met), it’s frankly the best rhythm guitar sound I’ve owned. Jazz players will find the neck P-90 does the warm thing without the mud humbucker necks drift into.

Who it’s for: the rhythm-forward rock, roots, blues, and alt player who wants one guitar with an enormous clean-to-mean range and a voice their bandmates don’t have. Who it’s not for: metal (hum, feedback at volume, wrong flavor), and anyone whose 335 dreams specifically sound like B.B. or Larry Carlton, because that’s the humbucker version.

The market reality

Because these appear in scattered runs, prices float on rarity: used examples typically land in the mid-$3,000s against $4,000+ for comparable clean humbucker Custom Shop 335s, which makes the P-90 version a slightly contrarian value. If you’re hunting one, the used gear inspection rules apply, plus one specific check: dogear P-90 height is set by shims rather than screws, so bring your ears and make sure the string-to-string balance was set up by someone who cared.

If your amp sees more edge-of-breakup than scooped gain, and your 335 curiosity has always come with a “but slightly rawer” footnote, this is one of the few guitars that’s exactly that. It took me years to find one; it’ll take you a search alert and some patience.