The Gibson CS-336 is a semi-hollowbodyelectric guitarmanufactured by Gibson Guitar Corporation's Custom, Art & Historic Division. Introduced in 2001, the CS-336 was the Custom Shop's first "tonally carved" guitar, meaning that the back, center block, and sides are carved from one single piece of wood. This solid block of wood is mated to a carved maple top. After over 100 years, the CS-336 also represented the realization of company founder Orville Gibson's goal to produce an instrument with one-piece back-and-sides construction. The CS-336 is a scaled-down version of another Gibson guitar, the Gibson ES-335.
Evolution and related models
In 1996, Gibson's Custom Shop introduced the ES-336. The ES-336 had a one-piece mahogany back and a contoured maple top. When the CS-336 was introduced five years later, it added the center block and top bracing as an integral part of the back and top pieces. ES-335: Introduced in 1958 and the key shape basis for all models listed below.
ES-336: Introduced in 1996, this model was replaced by the CS-336 in 2001.
CS-336: the subject of this article; Gibson's first "tonally carved" guitar.
CS-356: constructed in the same manner as the CS-336, with a range of "upscale" appointments such as gold-finished hardware.
ES-339: same shape as the 336 and 356 models, but not a tonally carved instrument - it has the laminated maple top, maple centerblock, and spruce contour bracing construction of an ES-335. This combination makes the ES-339 a lighter and less expensive guitar than the CS-336. The neck profiles on the CS-336 and ES-339 also differ. The ES-339 offers either a 1959 neck profile or a slim 30/60 neck.
CS-336 features
Each CS-336 is adjusted by one of Gibson’s Plek machines before it leaves the Custom Shop. Key features of the CS-336 include:
An overall body size that is 13 inches wide, 16 inches long, and 1 11/16th-inches deep.
Two Gibson ’57 Classic humbucking pickups
Gibson two-tone pot, two-volume pot, a three-way selector switch control configuration and ABR-1 bridge
