ES-345

Premium jazz flatwound when ES-345 goes full hollowbody jazz territory.

Chromes flatwound for ES-345 stereo recording work — zero string noise.

XL's focused mids control feedback on the fully-hollow ES-345.

Universal ES-345 starting point — works for blues, jazz, and fusion routing.

Skinny Top Heavy Bottom 10-52 on the Gibson ES-345 is the closest off-the-shelf approximation of B.B. King's signature SEG-BBS gauge — King ran a Gibson signature set spec'd at .010/.013/.017p/.032w/.045w/.054w on his beloved Lucille (which graduated through ES-335 → ES-345 → ES-355 family). The hybrid logic — light top (.010-.017) for vibrato + heavy bottom (.032-.054) for fundamental — is a perfect match for STHB 10-52 within StringTune's catalog. As B.B.

King once told a young Billy Gibbons (per Guitar World): "He told him he used much lighter strings" — when Gibbons was struggling with heavy gauges thinking he needed mass for tone. Conventional wisdom: every ES-345 thread defaults to 11-49 jazz-blues medium for big archtop midrange. Mismatch logic: BB's hybrid lets him bend the high E up 1.5 steps without finger fatigue (the secret to his vocal-bend phrasing on 'The Thrill Is Gone' / 'Sweet Sixteen') while the heavy bottom keeps his rhythm chord voicings grounded.

Best for ES-345 players chasing King's vocal-bend lyrical playing; skip if you prefer matched-gauge 11-49 medium for traditional jazz-archtop tone.