PLAY IT LOUD
Orville Gibson worked in a shoe store, his brother Orzo was an upholsterer, and Kalamazoo, Michigan was the place in the late 1870s. Orville got his kicks from making guitars and mandolins out of old pieces of furniture, even getting a little international notoriety when he made a violin out of wood taken from the Old Town Hall in Boston.
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PLAY IT LOUD
by Guitar Arnie
Some New Tricks From An Old Dog
Orville Gibson worked in a shoe store, his brother Orzo was an upholsterer, and Kalamazoo, Michigan was the place in the late 1870s. Orville got his kicks from making guitars and mandolins out of old pieces of furniture, even getting a little international notoriety when he made a violin out of wood taken from the Old Town Hall in Boston. By 1902 he had backing from local Kalamazoo businessmen and had started the Gibson guitar company.
Gibson has come a long way since then, contributing any number of fine guitars to the procession of musicians who’ve come and gone in this century. Of course most of us are familiar with the more recent Gibson efforts; guitars like the Firebird, Flying V, and Les Paul. Real fanatics may also know about the Regal, the ES-300, and the ES-150. But unless you’re lucky enough to stumble across one of these vintage Gibsons in a dusty attic or out-of-theway pawn shop, you’re going to have to be contented with-a new Gibson.
Luckily, Gibson has kept-up with the times and is .presently making newer versions of the same fine guitars that Orville cut by hand out of the living room furniture. In fact they’ve just introduced a whole new batch of guitars, a number of which I have the feeling are going to be collectors items in the future just as the Les Paul and Flying V are today.
The first of these is the Les Paul Signature guitar and Les Paul Signature bass. These are not copies of the old Les Paul Gibsons, but of entirely new design. They have excellent electronics, featuring a low impedance pick-up with threepoint adjustable mounting rings. There is a three-position tone switch which allows you to match your guitar with your amp down to the last harmonic. The guitar also has a phase switch so you can put the signal out of phase when you want to for, hard, meaty tones. Both the guitar and bass have semi-hollow, thin-line bodies with laminated mahogany necks and Gibson’s tune-o-matic bridges. They’re simple, clean guitars, with no frills, but a full range of controls.
Another new electric from Gibson is their L6-S. It’s a solid body electric with super humbucking pick-ups which give about four times the sensitivity of normal pick-ups with no electronic “noise” to mess up this extra power. The L6-S ha*s a pick-up selector switch with six different positions for the two pick-ups plus a unit which allows you to select, the pick-up coils so that you can set the phasing any way you want. The body is made of solid maple and the neck and body have been carefully balanced to provide ease of playing. The body design, a single cutaway, is slightly wider and squarer than the traditional Gibson design, and it looks good. I have a feeling that the L6-S is going to be a real winner for Gibson... tne kind of guitar that musicians ten years from now will dream about owning.
If you’re interested in the kind of sounds vou can get from a hollow body electric, you should give the new Gibson Howard Roberts guitar a play. This is a jazz guitar, but don’t let that put you off. It’s an excellent instrument, especially for studio work where you want to get unusual tones and soundings. This guitar has one pick-up, mounted between the end of the neck and the round sound hole, which doesn’t inhibit the natural vibrations of the guitar box body, and gives you warm* mellow sounds. The Roberts also has a midrange control so you can switch from the normally mellow tones to hard, funky sounds. The workmanship is excellent, featuring a maple body with multiple binding, an old* style Gibson peghead design with ornate inlay, and inlaid tailpiece, and all the fixings.
The final new Gibson isn’t an electric. It’s a big-bodied acoustic which they’re calling the Gospel guitar. The top is solid spruce, the neck is maple, and the whole unit is designed to give a good rhythm sound for folk artists. Gibsbn has a talent for making these kind of ‘rock’ acoustic guitars. They are solidly constructed, have good finger action, and look as good as they sound.
Guitar Notes: Gretsch is now importing an Italian electric pian'o that sounds like either a piano, harpsichord, or steel guitar, wieghs only twenty pounds, and has a 61 note keyboard... ElectroVoice is manufacturing a line of 17 microphones for Kiistom which will be known as the SRO line... Martin’s Sigma guitar line has some nice, and not terribly expensive, models if you’re looking for an acoustic steel-string..
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