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FREE TONY BACON: FLYING V, EXPLORER, FIREBIRD - AN ODD-SHAPED HISTORY OF GIBSONS WEIRD ELECTRIC GUITARS PDF Tony Bacon | 160 pages | 09 Jun 2011 | Hal Leonard Corporation | 9781617130083 | English | Milwaukee, United States Read Flying V, Explorer, Firebird Online by Tony Bacon | Books By Tony Bacon. California, The owner of the music store turns the key and opens the door to admit his famous visitor, who has been waiting outside for him to arrive, keen to replace a stolen guitar. Dave Davies of The Kinks moves quickly to the rack of guitars inside. He picks up an SG and plugs it in. He turns up the volume, then turns up his nose. He reaches for a Strat, tries it, and declares it too pretty. Some heaving and grunting later, they open a case to reveal something different. The old Flying V is finally set to make its new mark. When histories of the Gibson company reachsuddenly they go widescreen. In that epoch-making year, Gibson salesmen found Explorer had a long line of spectacular new models to shout about. To a greater or lesser extent, all would become classics over the coming years — and today some of them qualify as the most revered electric guitars ever made. There had always been an unwritten law that the body of a guitar must follow a traditional shape. After these two new models appeared, anything seemed possible. Some musicians, too, would gradually discover their particular charms. This was the shape the instrument had enjoyed for a long time, since its roots in earlier centuries. Every guitar more or less copied the template. Gibson, too, obediently traced the classic template. Orville H. Gibson, born in in upstate New York near the Canadian border, began making stringed musical instruments in Kalamazoo, Michigan, by the s. He set himself up properly as a manufacturer of musical instruments in that city around Orville certainly followed the conventional template as Explorer as the body shape of his guitars went, but also he took a refreshingly unconventional approach to the construction of his mandolin-family instruments and oval-soundhole guitars. He hand-carved the tops and backs, and he cut the sides from solid wood, rather than use the conventional method of heating and bending. He was also unusual in not using internal bracing, which he thought degraded volume and Explorer. Orville understood that the look of his instruments was important, too, and would often have the bodies decorated with beautiful inlaid pickguards and a distinctive crescent-and-star logo on the headstock. The mandolin was the most popular, and Gibson would soon find itself among the most celebrated of mandolin makers, thanks largely to its influential F-5 model, introduced in Orville left the Gibson company in He received a regular royalty for the following five years and then a monthly income until his Tony Bacon: Flying V in A year earlier, the firm had moved to new premises on Parsons Street, Kalamazoo, which it occupied until Once Orville left Gibson, the new managers and workers gradually changed his original methods of construction, not only to make production more efficient but also to improve the instruments. More people began to take up the guitar during the late 20s and 30s, and makers worked hard to gain attention by showing themselves to be inventive and forward-thinking. This, too, had the conventional waisted body shape but with the added novelty of a pair of f-shaped soundholes, known as f-holes, in the top. The L-5 defined the look Tony Bacon: Flying V sound of the early archtop acoustic guitar. Musicians took to the model and its siblings and used them in a variety of musical styles, none more appealing than the so-called parlour jazz epitomised by the work of Eddie Lang. Gibson began to alter the traditional body for the first time, developing a series of pioneering models with a body cutaway, breaking the timeless outline. Imaginative guitarists openly welcomed the artistic potential of the cutaway and began to investigate the dusty end of the fingerboard. The made a particular impact with electric guitarists in jazz, including Jim Hall and Joe Pass, and, later, Pat Metheny. The L-5, too, had its fans over the years, including the jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery and country-jazzer Hank Garland. McCarty had been expecting to start a new job as assistant treasurer for a candy company, Brach, but a new offer came in from Maurice Berlin at CMI. Two years later, inBerlin promoted the year-old McCarty to the top Firebird - an Odd-Shaped History of Gibsons Weird Electric Guitars and made him president at Gibson. So I chose a man, John Huis, who had been with Gibson a great many years. He was a foreman at that time, in the finishing department, and I made him superintendent, and he and I worked together. We decided that every day we would go through the factory and find one operation that we thought could be improved. Managers at all the big guitar manufacturers in the USA, including Gibson, would routinely assess the new models that their rivals introduced. This was usually no more sophisticated a task than wandering over to a booth at one of the regular trade-show gatherings to casually spy on an opponent, or checking out the ads and news announcements of competing firms in the trade press. But as the new decade dawned, some unexpected events meant that more specific action was necessary. An ad inside by the California-based Fender Fine Electric Instruments revealed a ripple of individuality from a company that so far had made little impression. Among the expected steel guitars and small amplifiers was a rather thin-looking cutaway electric guitar of otherwise regular shape — although the headstock, with all six tuners on one side, looked rather different. Esquire was the tagline next to the picture of the instrument, and then some further Explorer The newest thing in Spanish guitars — fine action, new tone, perfect intonation. It was the first of its kind to be sold commercially, and it would change guitars, guitar-playing, and music. But not immediately. Gibson, like its rivals, had its ear to the ground and could not let this new idea slip by unchallenged. Without too much delay, McCarty set a team to work on a Gibson solidbody, and it took them about a year to develop satisfactory prototypes. Gibson launched its solidbody Les Paul Model, known today as the Tony Bacon: Flying V, in If the materials Gibson used for the body were new — a solid mahogany base with a carved maple cap on top — then the general outline remained firmly traditional, following Explorer established Firebird - an Odd-Shaped History of Gibsons Weird Electric Guitars shape used by more or less every maker. Since then, of Tony Bacon: Flying V, the Les Paul in its various guises has become a world-beater. Berry chose a brand new natural-finish EST to fuel his startling hybrid of boogie, country, and blues. It was around this time that Seth Lover developed humbucking pickups in the Gibson workshops. Lover was a Firebird - an Odd-Shaped History of Gibsons Weird Electric Guitars and electronics expert and had worked for Gibson in the 40s and early 50s, in between jobs for the US Navy. He joined Gibson permanently inand in the electronics department, run by Walt Fuller, the industrious Lover first developed the Alnico pickup. But he soon set to work on a more important design. The design principle, too, is reasonably simple. A humbucking pickup employs two coils with opposite Explorer polarity, wired together so that they are electrically out-of-phase. The result is a pickup that is less prone to picking up extraneous noise, and one that in the process gives a wonderful clear tone. Gibson began to use the new humbuckers in the early months of and started to replace the P single-coil pickups on the Les Paul Goldtop and Custom during that year. The Custom was promoted from two Ps to three humbuckers, and the Explorer pickups would be used for both the Flying V and the Explorer when they appeared shortly thereafter. Players gradually came to appreciate that humbuckers provided a marvellous tone, and today many guitarists and collectors covet in particular the earliest type, known as a PAF because it had a Firebird - an Odd-Shaped History of Gibsons Weird Electric Guitars label bearing the words Patent Applied For attached to the underside. Lover was not the first to come up with the idea of humbucking pickups, as he discovered when he came to patent the design as assignor to Gibson. The patent attorneys made reference to no fewer than six previous efforts. The earliest, dating fromwas Armand F. Lover and Gibson applied for their patent in Juneand it was eventually issued in July — which explains that PAF label. Or does it? The PAF labels appeared on pickups on guitars dated up to — well after the patent was issued. Lover explained this. I think that was the reason they carried on with the PAF label for quite a while. Upload Sign In Join. Find your Tony Bacon: Flying V favorite book Become a member today and read free for 30 days Start your free 30 days. Home Books Pop Culture. Create a List. Download to App. Length: pages 3 hours. Description Lavishly illustrated with color photos throughout. Start your free trial. Page 1 of 1. Explorer An Odd-Shaped History of Gibsons Weird Electric Guitars Firebird Flying V Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

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