Back to the Future Guitars

Moviefreak said:
Where are you lucky to be looking? Unless they are the "Santana" cheapo model, I've never seen one that low.
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The CE-22 that the blue one marty played are usually around $600-$1200. They are the equivalent of a LP studio, no fuss no muss on them. That color however may have only been a mix they kept in a can or so in the 80's. A PRS expert can probably tell you exactly what color it was and how long they used the color. If you wanted to be a clever jerk, just buy a cheap CE-22 ($600-800) and have it painted dark metallic blue.

I am one of those people that wants serialized proof from the factory. Searching for that takes years as most of you know.
 
I'm really surprised with everyone who uses Aliexpress for the MAG replicas that no one has posted the ES-345 knockoffs they have on there. There's several different versions. The closest I have found is the black one here. I am sure you can ask the seller about getting the guitar finished in red instead and depending the seller they get it done at the factory. China is notorious for having Gibson knockoffs. They will have the Gibson logo on them and all. I wouldn't recommend getting this as a guitar to play but definitely something to hang on the wall as a prop. :)

NO case new arrival ES 345 Stereo guitar electric guitar with Bigsby tremlo-in Guitar from Sports & Entertainment on Aliexpress.com
 
Spyhunter2k said:
Lastly, was there ever a consensus on the color of the pickups? I could have sworn they were gold, but after studying those pics Renesix posted, some clearly seem to show silver pickups. It actually looks like the 6 screws are gold, but the pickup covers were silver. I can't find any replacement pickups that come that way, though, silver with gold screws, so it's a puzzle. In the pics where the pickups look gold, that could easily be explained by the yellowish tinge being caused by a reflection of the warm yellow overhead lighting.
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They're gold. Or at least they were. The gold on those pickups wears off really easily depending on how much you play it and how acidic your sweat is. That would be why screws are gold and the pickup looks silver.

MOD EDIT: Please do not post ebay links, thanks.
 
Annddd...now I am having one made from a reputable seller on aliexpress. Stay tuned as everyone sees how mine turns out. I have told him what I want it to be and he said he will make it to my requirements so stay tuned :)
 
Here is the starting of my McFly ES-345 replica. It still doesn't have a solid inlay at the 12th fret but I can live with that for 317.00 shipped







 
Interested to see how this turns out. I actually play guitar so the ES-335 PRO from Epiphone fit the bill for me just fine, and as a special edition had upgraded electrics. I still need to take a picture of it and post it.

On the color of the pickups, I just don't buy that they were originally gold, and it was worn off. On the pics posted several pages back, the pickups are silver all over, not just in places where there would have been contact/friction with hands. The Bigsby is obviously gold, though.
 
Roland said:
Does anyone know where I could buy a cherry red Epiphone ES-345? It seems to be out of stock anywhere.
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See post #24. The Epiphone ES-345s were a limited edition, and have been out-of-stock for a couple years now. I just bought an ES-335 Special Edition, which looks just like an ES-345 but without the black Varitone dial on the front, and with block inlays instead of the parallelograms. However, it too has been discontinued as of November of last year.

Here are Epihone's current offerings: Archtop. Unfortunately, at the moment you are limited to the "Dot" model (a "normal" ES-335) and would have to upgrade it, though some parts almost can't be upgraded, like adding the thicker cream binding to the guitar body and neck.

Or you could find a used Epihone ES-345 on Ebay, but they RARELY come up, and even they weren't exact copies of the '63 Gibson ES-345s. For example, the binding color on the neck and bodies was white on the Epihone ES-345s but cream on the original Gibsons.

Or, you could do what's being done above and contact a Chinese seller and have them replicate one for you. My issue is that I actually play and wanted mine to sound good. I've heard mixed reviews about Gibson cloned guitars from China.

If you just want a wall hangar, you could get a $230 Oscar Schmidt OE30CH off Ebay and add some parallelogram stickers to it (also on Ebay), along with a Licensed Bigbsy (made offshore, as opposed to a US-made Bigsby which would cost about half-again as much as the guitar did and so not make much sense in my opinion). Some people say that with proper setup, these cheap guitars can actually be made to sound good.
 
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Thx much. It's looking good so far. A couple points though. It looks like they're putting white binding inside the f-holes, like several replicas do, when the original Gibson and Epiphone repros had no binding and were simply stained red (Gibson) painted black (Epiphone) on the f-hole edges.

Also, though the binding on the Epiphone ES-345 repros from a couple years back had white binding, the original Gibsons had cream.
 
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Spyhunter2k said:
Interested to see how this turns out. I actually play guitar so the ES-335 PRO from Epiphone fit the bill for me just fine, and as a special edition had upgraded electrics. I still need to take a picture of it and post it.

On the color of the pickups, I just don't buy that they were originally gold, and it was worn off. On the pics posted several pages back, the pickups are silver all over, not just in places where there would have been contact/friction with hands. The Bigsby is obviously gold, though.
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They were gold. That's why the screws are gold. Look up pictures of old Les Paul Customs. Specifically Black Beauties. They all came with gold hardware and you'll see a lot of the ones that were played a lot have most of the gold worn off. Here's one example:

DSC01912.jpg
 
I see what you mean. Hmmm, well seeing as Marty was supposed to be playing a brand new guitar (actually that model wasn't released until the the late 50s I think), it's strange in BTTF-world that the pickups had every bit of the gold worn off due to many years of playing, when in 1955 the guitar wouldn't have had enough time on it to do that.

What likely happened was the owner or propmasters didn't want to mess with a valuable antique guitar by putting new gold-plated pickups on it in order to retro it's appearance back to when it was new. But then they created a confusing situation of showing a supposedly new guitar with parts that showed years of aging. To make it make sense in BTTF universe, I'll pretend that it wasn't an antique guitar (as it really was at the time of filming), and that it actually came with silver pickups (though with gold screws).

To really be film-accurate, I guess you would have to start with gold pickups and wear off all of the plating so that they looked silver, leaving the solid gold screws behind. That said, it would be much easier to start with silver pickups and then swap out the screws for gold ones to mimic the look.

I wonder if Epiphone or Gibson would just sell a set of gold screws so that I wouldn't have to buy a complete gold pickup set...
 
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Here is the Chibson Les Paul I got from Aliexpress to test out their quality. The finish on this thing is beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice and the headstock has a pearl inlay not white like the pictures would indicate.All and all it wasn't too bad right out of the case. I had to raise the bridge and pickup heights. Still going to switch out pickups eventually.













Also here is some updated pics of my McFly ES-345 from the same seller





 
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