Tag: feature

The year 1968 was not a good one for American manu-facturers of stringed instruments.M.C.A. closed the original Danelectro, and what was left of Kay and Valco was locked in a tailspin. Valco bought the remnants of Kay in ’67, and attempted to combine the brand with their own products, but to no avail.

This Truetone model (Western Auto house brand) confirms the exist-ence of such instruments. The strap buttons and rocker switches (pickup off/on and tone) are from Valco, while the rest of it appears to be from Kay, like the dinky wood bridge and cheapo vibrato. Even the red-and-black color scheme was seen on many other Kays of the era. The pickguard is a three-layer black/white/black unit… from Kay or Valco?

The neck appears to be Valco – note the “dragon snout” headstock, and zero fret. Adding to the intrigue is the bell-shaped truss rod cover (a Kay design) as well as the oddball “one-dot, two-dot” fret-board inlay. And for what it’s worth, the neck joint is the three-bolt Kay-type.

However, for all the speculation, this is basically a “floor sweep” instrument. Even Gibson and Fender have issued “floor sweep” guitars (the Swinger/Musiclander and the Firebird II are handy examples). But what’s so desirable about an instrument that, while rare or short-lived, was made to use up extraneous parts?

Other examples of “floor sweep”/ parts guitars dot American guitar chronology. For instance, leftover Danelectro parts often showed up on instruments carrying other brand names. The Bakersfield, California, area has a history of brands made from parts bought from failed builders. When one of the Standel guitar production facilities closed, former Mosrite employee Bill Gruggett bought vibratos from it to use on his instruments. Plus, some Mosrites appear to have been assembled in a slap-dash manner.

Speaking of Mosrite, any Acoustic -branded “Black Widow” that was supposedly made by Semie Moseley should be verified, as these were also made by a Far East manufacturer. The domestic-made examples have bridges and tailpieces that were exactly the same found on Mosrite instruments. Imported examples had different hardware, but there are imported Acoustic Black Widows labeled as having been made “…by Semie Moseley of Mosrite fame” (or words to that effect).

Anyway, Truetone-by-Kay/Valco guitars and basses might be unique, but how often are they are hyped as “experimental” or “custom-made?” Groan…

This article originally appeared in VG‘s November 2003 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Its official name – Les Paul model – doesn’t do it justice. After all, Gibson has made over a hundred different Les Paul models through the years. But call it by its nickname – “goldtop” – and everyone knows you’re talking about Gibson’s first solidbody electric guitar.

Like many important guitar stories, the goldtop story was not documented very well, and writers didn’t start tapping the memories of the two primary figures in its development, Gibson president Ted McCarty and Les Paul himself, until more than 30 years after the fact. Ted and Les had been close in the 1950s but not so close from the ’60s onward. Not surprisingly, two stories emerged. Ted said Gibson came up with all the design features then sought Les’ endorsement, which resulted in the finish color and the tailpiece. Les said he and M.H. Berlin (head of Chicago Musical Instrument Co., Gibson’s parent) came up with the design and Ted delivered it. The two stories seem mutually exclusive, but if you allow a margin of error for memories, omissions and egos, both accounts are true.

Gibson reacted immediately to Leo Fender’s introduction of the Esquire in the summer of 1950, and by the end of the year, Gibson’s Hollywood rep, Clarence Havenga, had a prototype solidbody in hand. In the meantime, McCarty was trying to lure Les away from his arsenal of customized Epiphones. Les had just set himself apart from other guitarists in the world with two multi-tracked instrumental hits, “Brazil” and “Lover.” In 1950, he added his wife, Mary Ford, to his act, and his fortunes increased exponentially; in 1951, their recording of “How High the Moon” spent nine weeks at number one on the pop charts.

At some point, Les met with M.H. Berlin, and it was Berlin, a violin collector, who specified the carved top (Les preferred a flat top). During the prototype stage, Gibson settled on the maple top cap and mahogany body. McCarty explained that the maple cap was for sustain, the mahogany back for lighter weight. However, since greater sustain was always one of Les’ goals, it would not be surprising if Les had some input into the maple/mahogany body.

A maple-top prototype guitar does exist, but its most interesting feature is its neck joint. The neckset angle is relatively flat, like that of the first production models, but the entire neck is set higher above the body, so the strings would be high enough to pass over a bar bridge like the one on Les’ trapeze-style combination bridge/tailpiece (a later prototype of the Les Paul Junior also has this high-set neck). Gibson was familiar with Les’ tailpiece, as there is one installed on the modified Epiphone Mary Ford is playing on the sheet music of their 1950 hit “Mockin’ Bird Hill.”

There was a misconnection between the maple-top prototype and the final version, however. Gibson set the neck deeper into the body, for better stability, but inexplicably failed to compensate for the lowered string height. When McCarty presented the guitar to Les at the Delaware Water Gap, a resort where he and Mary were performing, it had Les’ tailpiece but was virtually unplayable.

The crossbar that served as a bridge on Les’ tailpiece was about 1/2″ thick and it sat on height adjustment nuts. The neckset angle of the prototype (assuming it was the same as subsequent production examples) only allowed for a bridge height of 3/8″. Even with the bar laying flat on the top of the guitar, the action was probably a full 1/16″ higher at the 12th fret than Les was accustomed to.

Les, unfazed by the lack of woodworking tools, heated up the blade of a screwdriver over the burner of a stove and gouged out the top of the guitar so the crossbar of the tailpiece could be lowered. Now, with a playable instrument, Les signed what would become the most lucrative endorsement deal in the history of musical instruments.

In addition to the tailpiece design, Les asked for the point of the cutaway to be rounded off a bit, and he thought the gold would look good on the new model after seeing the finish on an ES-175 he’d ordered for a friend in 1951.

When the new Les Paul model shipped in March, 1952, the neckset angle hadn’t changed. Gibson’s solution was simply to flip the tailpiece over so the strings wrapped under the bar. The high bar forced most players to alter their right-hand motion, and made muting the strings with the heel of the right hand awkward, if not impossible.

Les was bound by the terms of his contract to play a Gibson, but it would appear he didn’t like much of anything about his own model. He replaced the tailpiece with a standard Gibson unit and a presumably homemade bar bridge. He also installed DeArmond pickups and repurposed one of the control knob holes for a jack. When the Les Paul Custom was introduced in 1954, he had several made for his own personal use with a flat top.

In the meantime, Gibson implemented its own changes. The earliest examples had an unbound fingerboard, which was consistent with other Gibsons that had only single-ply binding on the top; however, the gold finish gave the Les Paul model an expensive look, so Gibson quickly gave it fingerboard binding.

Inexplicably, Gibson waited well over a year to fix the neckset/tailpiece issue. In 1954, the company changed the neckset angle to introduce a new bridge/tailpiece that was essentially a bar anchored on studs mounted directly into the top of the guitar. It wasn’t perfect (for intonation adjustment, it wasn’t even as good as the three-saddle system that Fender had been using since 1950), but the strings now wrapped over the bar, and the stud-mounted bridge provided better sustain than the trapeze.

When Gibson expanded the line to include the lower-priced Junior and fancier Custom in ’54, the Custom sported a new “Tune-O-Matic” bridge designed by Ted McCarty and had adjustments for each individual string length. Again in an inexplicable delay, it was late ’55 before the goldtop received the upgrade.

The next change was the last and most important: double-coil humbucking pickups, which replaced the original “soapbar” covered P-90s in mid 1957. In ’58, with sales falling, Gibson changed the finish to Cherry Sunburst and the name to Les Paul Standard. With that, the goldtop era ended.

The goldtop’s importance – like Les Paul’s – is tricky to assess. The guitar was a moderate commercial success, but not in the way anyone would have predicted. The first guitarists who embraced it were bluesmen such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker – stylistic opposites of Les. Then, as now, virtually no guitarist bought a Les Paul because he wanted to play like Les. In fact, Les’ popularity waned faster in the mid ’50s than sales of the goldtop.

The historic importance of the goldtop as Gibson’s first electric solidbody is obvious. Often overlooked in the cosmetic dazzle of the “‘bursts” is the fact that the culmination of electric soldibody guitar design, signaled by the arrival of humbucking pickups, occurred with the ’57 goldtop. The goldtop may not be the most highly sought vintage Gibson electric, but as the vehicle for the introduction and development of the Gibson solidbody as we know it today, it remains Gibson’s most important electric model.

For more on the Gibson Les Paul, read Gibson Electrics: The Classic Years, by A.R. Duchossoir, The Early Years of the Les Paul Legacy: 1915-1963 by Robb Lawrence. Other sources include the author’s personal interviews with Les Paul and Ted McCarty.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s March 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

ike de Velta on Original 1953 Les Paul gold top

The early/mid 1970s were the “glory days” for imported copies of classic American-made guitars and basses.

Back then, the “vintage” vibe as it related to American-made electric guitars was in its infancy. Still, much like today, few players could afford the real deal. Accordingly, brands such as Ibanez, Aria, and Electra proffered guitars and basses that were cosmetically very close to Gibson and Fender models from the 1950s and ’60s. Litigation ensued, and not surprisingly, some copy guitars from the ’70s have been hyped in the used/vintage market as “lawsuit models.” Often, imported “copy guitars” had bolt-on necks (where the original models had set necks) or they melded cosmetics from more than one model. One example was an early-’70s Aria copy of a Gibson Firebird, with a “non-reverse” body attached to a neck with a quasi-reverse headstock and upside-down tuners. Emboldened by the sales of their instruments, importers soon brought copies of even more classic models, made with greater attention to detail. These sometimes included copies of guitars originally made in minute quantities.

In the mid ’70s, Ibanez went after the ultimate American rarities when it introduced copies of Gibson’s “modernistic” trio of electric guitars from the late ’50s; its Rocket Roll model was a copy of the Flying V, the Destroyer channeled the Explorer, and the Futura was a nod to the patented (but never produced) Moderne. Among other details, these instruments attempted to reproduce the translucent natural finish on the bodies of the Gibson guitars’ limba wood, an African species that resembled mahogany. The bodies on most Ibanez korinas looked like ash, but were actually a type of mahogany known as “sen.”

The success of the Ibanez retro trio motivated the company to create two basses that gave a serious nod to late-’50s Gibsons, but weren’t copies per se; the Rocket Roll Bass was inspired by the Flying V and actually preceded Gibson’s Flying V bass, which went into production in 1981. On the other hand, Gibson did make at least one Explorer bass as a custom order in the early ’60s, using parts from other models.

The Ibanez Destroyer Bass is also relatively rare. While the model appears on a 1977 U.S. price list as “2459B Destroyer Bass, Long Scale… $450,” a search of American catalogs from the era did not turn up a photo of the Destroyer Bass. What’s more, many ’70s Ibanez catalogs of replica models have few, if any, specifications, and are basically photo galleries (same goes for other copy brands of that time, such as Electra).

However, Ibanez collector John Shanley, who is also webmaster of the Ibanez Collectors World website, noted that an image of the Destroyer Bass was published in a 1977 German catalog, which indicates that certain models were made for Europe. Vintage-instrument authority and VG contributor Michael Wright describes the inconsistent marketing of Ibanez models in the U.S. and Europe as “not uncommon,” and it isn’t surprising when one considers the diversity of the company’s copy lineup at the time.

But the Destroyer Bass wasn’t a blatant copy of the Explorer bass; it did not have the Kalamazoo creation’s short scale or banjo-style tuners, a la Gibson’s first electric bass (the violin-shaped EB) and other Gibsons of the era. But, like its Gibson inspiration, the Ibanez does have a scimitar/banana-shaped headstock and a serial number embossed on the back of the headstock that indicates a manufacture date of August, 1977. Its machine heads are standard Ibanez part number 303 Artist units, and its set neck has a 20-fret rosewood fingerboard with dot markers and a scale length of 331/2″. The yellow-tinted sen body does indeed recall Gibson’s korina, and does look like ash. And like the Explorer, it has a single-ply white pickguard.

Other differences include the Destroyer’s electronics – a split-single-coil Fender Precision-style pickup in the neck position and a Jazz-style pickup at the bridge (Ibanez 2365-50 and 2365-60 Super Bass units). In bass parlance, this configuration later became known as the “P/J” layout, and preceded Fender’s adaptation by about a decade. The barrel-shaped knobs control a master tone and two volume pots, and the three-point suspension bridge matches the bridge on mid-’70s Gibson models such as the Ripper and RD Bass.

The Destroyer Bass is relatively balanced given its shape, and plays similar to a Gibson Thunderbird. In all, it’s a unique example from the heyday of upper-tier import copies from three decades ago.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s April ’07 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.