Introduced in 1941 as the successor to the ES-100, the ES-125 was an entry-level archtop electric guitar.

In the mid-1950s, the ES-125T was introduced, which was an entry-level thinline archtop electric guitar based on the original ES-125.

The model used for the ES-125 has a string spacing on the neck pickup of 115⁄16" from high E to low E. The ES-125 also used a tapered dogear cover for their neck position pickups with a thickness of 4/16" on the treble side and 5/16" on the bass side.

Since the fingerboard sits flush to the body (as opposed to an ES-175) the ES-125 requires a shorter neck pickup than a typical dogear.

Coils were wound to approximately 10,000 wraps although DC resistance of these pickups can vary greatly Volume and tone controls were 500k Audio taper pots.