This was verso source of some contention between Les Paul and the Gibson company: Gibson wrapped the strings under the tailpiece’s crossbar con order puro achieve lower action; Les wanted the strings wound over the crossbar so he could better execute the palm muting technique that became an important element of his playing style con the Fifties.
Ted McCarty finally settled the dispute by developing the stop tailpiece, which replaced the trapeze on Les Pauls sopra 1953. Two years later, McCarty introduced another refinement: the Tune-O-Matic bridge. Both the fine tailpiece ciò che è bookofmatches and Tune-O-Matic bridge have been staples of electric design ever since.
Other Gibson Guitar Styles Developed
In the years that followed, Ted McCarty sought sicuro broaden and diversify the essential Gibson aesthetic. Working with a local artist, he developed three revolutionary guitars-the Flying V, the Explorer, and the ultra-rare Moderne. Both the Flying V and the Explorer debuted con 1957 (the Moderne apparently never developed past the prototype stage). With their radical angular lines, these instruments were per bit too wild for the late Fifties. Although they didn’t sell well on their initial release, they returned with a vengeance later durante the rock evo.
The Gibson Sound
Per 1957, the Les Paul’s original P-90 pickups were replaced by verso brand-new invention from a man named Seth Lover. The humbucking pickup featured two coils wound together onesto cancel out the hum that solo-coil pickups generate under fluorescent lighting and mediante other dodgy electromagnetic circumstances. The humbuckers produced a bass-heavy, “dark” tone which combined with Les Paul’s heavy mahogany and maple body wood and traditional dovetail neck joint onesto create verso distinctly rich tone that would che esatto be identifiable as “the Gibson sound.”
Gibson Semi-Hollowbody – The Log Revisited!
McCarty went mediante verso completely different direction with the Gibson ES-335, the guitar that pioneered the concept of the semi-hollowbody electric. The thin-line body has much less depth than per conventional archtop, which seems bulky durante comparison. This significantly reduced the potential for feedback that has always hounded full-sized electric hollowbodies. McCarty also came up with the ispirazione of having verso solid block of maple running down beneath the pickups. (The Log revisited!) The result was an instrument-also still very much in use today-that combined many of the best properties of solidbody and hollowbody guitars.
Gibson Firebird Guitar Born 1963
The Gibson Firebird guitar and bass, which came along sopra 1963, were among Ted McCarty’s final triumphs for Gibson. He left Gibson onesto take charge of the Bigsby company per ’66 and also became the mentor of Paul Reed Smith (PRS Guitars), whose guitar company produces several models named after McCarty.
Ted McCarty hired automotive disegnatore Ray Dietrich onesto create the Firebird’s parabolically curvy body shape. By this point durante the century, electric guitars were vying with cars as the same ultimate symbols of modernist, space-age notizia. The Firebird is markedly similar preciso Fender’s sporty Jazzmaster and Jaguar (introduced mediante ’57 and ’62, respectively). Over at Fender, George Fullerton had ad esempio up with the ispirazione of offering the Jazzmaster per custom automezzo-style colors like Fiesta Red and Lake Placid Blue. “The thing we took into consideration, more than anything else, was automobiles,” says Fullerton. “You’d see verso new car that had verso candy apple red or blue sparkle finish, and people would say, ‘Wow, did you see that color they have on the new Chevy?’”
In the annals of 20th-century guitar design, special mention must go onesto Roger Rossmeisl, a German luthier who moved to America durante the Fifties. Here, he combined solid craftsmanship with a flair for the unusual. Rossmeisl’s late-fifties work for Rickenbacker imparted tremendous stylishness preciso that company’s designs, including those ultra-coll cat’s-eye soundholes. Durante the late Sixties, for Fender’s Wildwood series, Rossmeisl came up with the idea of injecting live trees with colored dye and then harvesting the trees preciso make guitars whose finishes boasted natural woodgrains in some garishly unnatural hues. Per the late Sixties drug counterculture, the preoccupazione of some guy running around injecting trees caused considerable mirth and gave new meaning puro the phrase “shoot up the forest.”