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Is the Gibson ES-137 good for jazz?

What kind of tone does it have w/ flatwounds?

Apart from the usual quality of tone and construction that one would expect from a Gibson guitar, the ES-137 has the distinction of being the more versatile brother of the ES-135 by virtue of the tone selector knob that the 135 does not. It is, in fact, the same type of selector that B.B. King’s Lucille has, a feature he copped from the 137.

The 137′s large Florentine cutaway was primarily designed for Gibson’s jazz guitar customers. As one of the first electric Spanish–the ES abbreviation–guitars they made, Gibson was focusing on a way to amplify the volume of guitars that typically played more quietly (having already solved the problem in blues music, more or less, with the SJ-200 acoustic). As a result, the humbucker was added for the initial robustness, the tone selector once it had been invented. Having a thinner body than the older, more expensive ES-175, its tones are less round, having less room to resonate. What it lacks in tone (which is very little) it picks up again in resonance (though again very little); the trade, then, is more or less equal.

All in all, the ES-137 is not the immediately traditional “jazz box” once would think of in terms of electric-acoustic guitars. However, its tone is more than satisfactory, its smaller dimensions an easier guitar to get control of, especially of played standing, as it can be held more against the profile of the body.

In terms of the flatwound strings, the ES-137 has more than enough choice and initial tone–via the selectors, which between the pickup switch and tone knob yield 18 different voicings–to get just about anything you could want, be it jazz or otherwise.

The bottom line: it’s a pricey, beautiful piece of luthiery that is actually somewhat underrated in that it is a player’s guitar not for the novice.

Gibson ES-137 Custom Review & Demo