Gibson USA
The home of Gibson electric
guitars today is "Gibson USA," built in 1974 in Nashville
specifically for the production of Gibson's Les Paul guitars. Although the
entire guitar industry went through a slump in the late '70s, the spirit of
innovation remained strong at Gibson. In response to a growing demand for
vintage styling’s, Gibson tapped its rich history and
reissued the dot-neck version of the ES-335 in 1981 and the flametop sunburst
Les Paul in 1982. At the same time, two legendary guitarists joined Gibson-
B.B. King in 1980 with the Lucille model and Chet Atkins in 1982 with his new
concept of a solidbody acoustic guitar. Gibson world headquarters moved to Nashville in 1984 with the
closing of the Kalamazoo plant. The financially troubled company was rescued
in January 1986 by Henry Juszkiewicz and David Berryman, and the new owners
quickly restored Gibson's reputation for quality as well as its
profitability. Today's Gibson electric guitars represent the history as well as
the future of the electric guitar. The models whose designs have become
classics-the ES-175, ES-335, Flying V, Explorer, Firebird, SGs and Les Pauls-are a testament to Gibson's
wide appeal, spanning more than four decades of music styles. Gibson's close
relationship with musicians is manifest in endorsement models from King,
Atkins and jazz greats Howard Roberts and Herb Ellis, plus new Les Pauls made
to the personal specifications of rock stars Jimmy Page and Joe Perry. In
1994, Gibson's Centennial year, the new Nighthawk model won an industry award
for design, setting the stage for a second hundred
years of Gibson quality and innovation. |
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The First Gibson Electrics
By the time Gibson began work on its first electric guitar, the
company had a 40-year tradition of quality and innovation to uphold. The
first Gibson electric had to be nothing less than the best electric guitar
the world had ever seen. In the spring of 1935, Gibson enlisted musician Alvino Rey to help develop a prototype pickup
with engineers at the Lyon
& Healy company in Chicago.
Later that year, research was moved in-house, where Gibson employee Walter
Fuller came up with the final design. Gibson introduced the
distinctive hexagonal pickup on a lap steel model in late 1935. The pickup
was installed on an F-hole arch top guitar, dubbed the ES-150 ES for Electric
Spanish), and the first one shipped from the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo,
Michigan, on May 20, 1936. Was the ES-150 the best electric guitar that
guitarists in 1936 had ever seen? Jazz musician Charlie Christian, who would
establish the electric guitar as an instrument with its own unique voice,
thought so. Sixty years later, the Gibson ES-150 is still known as the
Charlie Christian model, and some jazz players consider the ES-150's
"Charlie Christian" pickup to be the best jazz pickup ever made. The ES-150's success was a double-edged sword, establishing
Gibson as the foremost maker of electric guitars but at the same time
challenging Gibson to top this monumental achievement. After a production
break for World War II, Gibson did just that. |
The Golden Age of Innovation
In the years after World War II, the electric guitar came of age
and Gibson entered a golden of age of innovation. The P-90 pickup, introduced in 1946,
gave guitarists new power and versatility. Under the aggressive leadership of
company president Ted McCarty, Gibson debuted two new concepts in 1949 with
the ES-5, the first three-pickup guitar, and the ES-175, the first guitar with a
sharply pointed cutaway bout. The advent of the solidbody electric guitar posed a new
challenge for Gibson. Like the ES-150 in 1936, Gibson's first solidbody
electric had to uphold Gibson tradition while going a step beyond all other
guitars of its kind. A carved contoured top harkened back to the very first Orville Gibson instruments of the late 1800s, and a
gold finish signified a value above all others. With the endorsement of the
most popular guitarist of the time, Gibson introduced the Les Paul Model in
1952. The Les Paul quickly grew into a family of four models-the Junior, Special, Standard and Custom - all of which would become Gibson
classics. Gibson's top models sported McCarty's new tune-o-matic bridge, which was
introduced on the Les Paul
Custom in 1954 and is still the
standard Gibson electric guitar bridge. In 1958 McCarty debuted
not one, but two radical new ideas-a semi-hollow body electric and a group of
exotic, futuristic solidbodies. The ES-335 was an instant success, combining
traditional arch top styling with modern, solidbody construction. The Flying V, Explorer and Modern proved to be decades ahead of their
time. Gibson pushed on into the 1960s with two more
bold, modern solidbody lines-the double-cutaway SG models of '61 and the
reverse-body Firebirds of '63. By the time the McCarty era
ended in 1965, a foundation of classic models had been laid that would carry
Gibson through the rest of the century. |
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