Body & Construction
- Body Type: Semi-hollow body
- Top Wood: Laminated Maple
- Back & Sides: Laminated Maple
- Cutaway: Florentine (sharp) cutaway
Neck & Fingerboard
- Neck Wood: Maple
- Fingerboard: Ebony
- Fingerboard Binding: Ivoroid
- Inlays: Pearloid dots
- Scale Length: 24 3/4 inches (628.7 mm)
- Nut Width: 1 11/16 inches (42.9 mm)
Hardware & Electronics
- Hardware Finish: Gold-plated
- Tuners: Gibson/Schaller
- Bridge: Tune-O-Matic bridge
- Tailpiece: Six-finger tailpiece with fine tuners
- Pickups: Gibson 490R+T humbuckers
- Controls: Individual volume and tone for each pickup, plus a pickup selector switch
The Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion III was introduced in 1991 and combined a number of signature features from some of Gibson's most successful models. The deep Florentine cutaway body extended the reach of the ES-175 with a neck that joins the body at the 16th fret. The intermediate 2 5/16" body depth is unique in the line, and represents a comfortable compromise between the full-sized archtops and the slimline ES-335 family. And like the latter model, the Fusion offers superior feedback resistance with an internal sound block that increases sustain. This edition featured significant upgrades such as gold hardware, a bound fingerboard, and an adjustable finger tailpiece borrowed from the Le Grande archtop model. A now collectable model, having ended production 2009, the Howard Roberts Fusion III is known for being a versatile and playable archtop equally suited for jazz and blues.