Posted on 10/05/2011 12:25:15 PM PDT by bk1000
Not sure of the rules with this source, so I'm posting the headline and link only.
Jimi had three known 1967 Flying Vs. He painted designs (and words) on one of them with nail polish and played it during his 67/68 European tour (most notably in Germany and France - those are the video clips and still photos that circulate). Jim's half-sister let the Gibson Custom Shop in Memphis borrow it so that Gibson could replicate the designs.
Paul Reed Smith makes incredible guitars, but he still hasn't recovered completely from the Gibson lawsuit. I wish I could find his quote about how much he paid in legal fees to successfully defend PRS - well more than $1 million. Gibson lost, but crippled PRS for a while.
Gibson went through that period where they were the Microsoft of the guitar industry when it came to using lawsuits against small, excellent competitors. I probably shouldn't say "went." Gibson's still pretty quick with a lawsuit.
“Gibson went through that period where they were the Microsoft of the guitar industry when it came to using lawsuits against small, excellent competitors.”
Let’s see.... Tokai (made a near perfect copy of the ‘59 LPS), Ibanez (the original Destroyer was an Explorer copy), PRS (dared to make a single-cutaway axe that bore a superficial resemblance to a Paul). Any I’m missing?
This will blow them out as well:
We think of Rickenbackers as having that jangly clean sound of Roger McGuinn/The Byrds, or Carl Wilson and the Beach Boys - but if heavy metal had its beginnings in Steppenwolf and songs like Born to be Wild, then this Rickenbacker 381v69 is Ground Zero.
It's the only Rick model that has a carved back as well as a carved top, and it'll blow out your amps, too. You just have to get used to the narrow Rickenbacker fretboard.
I'll have to think, but Gibson went beyond guitars (it's suing its insurers from the 5/10 Nashville floods currently, and defending itself on price-fixing charged in California).
Gibson sued Activision over Guitar Hero, claiming patent infringement. Gibson had once patented a video game involving a 'concert experience' where the player wore headphones. To put extra pressure on Activision, Gibson also sued the major retailers of Guitar Hero - to dry up Activision's revenues. Gibson sued Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, K-Mart, and others.
The judge threw out Gibson's suit as frivolous with a pointed sarcastic remarks about Gibson having not invented headphones.
It looks like there are a bunch of FReepers that suffer from the home-wrecking and heartbreaking sickness known as G.A.S. To those who experience this as an unknown phenomenon rejoice! Your demon has a name: Gear Acquisition Syndrome. There is no cure. There are support forums for us GAS sufferers, but they are not always supportive of our political view. Some would even use the power of government to limit your right to use guitars in self defense, and even go so far as to threaten (non-union) guitar manufacturers.
How about we, as Freepers who love guitars and guitar music post to this thread (or we can start fresh) advising other FReepers how we deal with our delicate and often expensive condition? Perhaps even a ping list.
I am having a severe GAS attack even now. It is extreme and is without direction. This could be serious. I am sitting here, white knuckled fighting off the urge for a green sparkle Tele. Almost bought an Evil Robot amp as a diversion, and a friend is saying there is no amp other than a Dr. Z ZWRECK (with the right NOS tubes). Perhaps I should go out and rake leaves. This could be a big one!
Thank you all for your support!
“If you’re buying a guitar for self-defense, I’d suggest an older Gibson Les Paul. Twelve-pounders are common and ones tipping the scales at slightly over thirteen pounds have been reported.”I happen to have one. But since I also have two German shorthair pointers who will devour any intruder for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (they are actually very sweet dogs, they simply don't suffer intruders gladly!), I have no need to use this beauty for any purpose other than playing the blues.The reissue models will also work for this purpose (they have non-chambered bodies, just like the originals) without requiring a third mortgage on your house.
'56 Les Paul reissue in a one-off, limited-edition tobacco burst top. (They only made 150 of these in 2007.)
And don’t hate on Strats. I’m sure I could do plenty of damage with my poplar-bodied MIM Stratocaster if push came to shove.I had an MIM Strat once, when I needed a guitar and couldn't afford anything else. It was an okay guitar but not. even. close. to a Les Paul for playability and tonic depth. I've never played any other Fender guitar that gets anywhere near a Les Paul (I tried a couple of Telecasters once upon a time and they're not even worth using for canoe oars), and thank God I'm lucky enough to own a Les Paul now. Real friends don't let friends play Fender!
(On the other hand, I may despise their guitars but I love Fender amplifiers---I'll swear by them to the day I die!)
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Of course it was luthier! A redneck luthier.
If it had ducttape, it would have been a mexican luthier. That's how you tell. ;)
That's good information. The 12 string is a work of art, as well.
You mean "resonance," because of all that wood. (Sure, go ahead and argue, it won't matter).
The Strat quality is...Strat only. You either hear it or you don't. Nothing else is.
That said, Johnny Winter said, "I love Strats but can't play 'em." They are tricky. I'm forever knocking myself off my neck pickup by bumping the switch. Learning to shift it back in time is something I have had to practice.
Real friends don't let friends play Fender!
This isn't worth dignifying with a comment. Especially in the context of playing the blues.
Glad you own a Les Paul, too.
My best investment was my Seafoam 50's Reissue Strat.
Jimi had three known 1967 Flying Vs. He painted designs (and words) on one of them with nail polish and played it during his 67/68 European tour (most notably in Germany and France - those are the video clips and still photos that circulate). Jim's half-sister let the Gibson Custom Shop in Memphis borrow it so that Gibson could replicate the designs.At least they had an actual guitar to work with to make a reissue of it. When the Custom Shop finally got around to making a reissue of Mike Bloomfield's 1959 Standard, they had to rely on photographs---hundreds, provided by Bloomfield's brother---since that guitar was missing for years, ever since Bloomfield left it in Canada when he had to end a stand prematurely and the club owner kept it as compensation . . .
The Bloomfield Burst, in the aged edition matching the condition of the guitar when last seen in Mike Bloomfield's hands.
The Bloomfield Burst, in the vintage-original-spec finish but still featuring the tell-tale oddities of Bloomfield's original: the mismatched volume and tone knobs, the "Les Paul" signature truss rod cover, the mismatched tailpiece bolts.
Codicil: I got to play a Bloomfield Burst in a shop a few months ago, when shopping for odds and ends . . . and I picked it off the wall not knowing what it actually was. I usually have a thing against signature model guitars (and I've been a major Mike Bloomfield fan since my teen years), they do nothing for me, I have no wish to even think about trying to get mojo that does not really exist, nor do I have any desire to try for any tone other than my own. (Anyone who thinks buying, say, a Hendrix or a Vaughan or a Page or a whomever signature model guitar is going to give them the tones of those players is plain full of it.)
I picked the guitar off the wall thinking it was just an interesting-looking 1959 Les Paul Standard reissue. I plugged it into a Fender Super Reverb amplifier. So help me God this guitar played like butter and cried like a brokenhearted lover in my hands. I played that guitar for about twenty-five minutes before finally returning it to its wall.
Only when hanging it back on the wall did I notice the aforesaid telltale signs that told me what I'd just played plus the Grover kidney-bean tuners installed just as they'd been on Bloomfield's actual guitar, replacing the stock Kluson tuners (you can see the Kluson screw holes on the back of the headstock), and the MB serial number. I damn near collapsed.
I'd just played the only signature model guitar I'd consent to buy if I had the dough-re-mi. Not because of whose signature model it is, but because I got an unusual chance to play it in the next best thing to a blind taste test and liked the instrument for itself. Having tried two other generic 1959 Les Paul Standard reissues right before picking that one off the wall, I can tell you the Bloomfield Burst is better than the, ahem, standard R9.
bk? I'm severely affected by G.A.S., but we'll have to agree to disagree on the other Gibson issues in a friendly way.
Due to a seriously bad decision I made in my youth, I'm an attorney (yes, I apologize), and I had been following the 2009 raid on Gibson, and the civil forfeiture lawsuit (U.S. v. Ebony Wood in Assorted Forms, Case No. 3-10-cv-00747 (U.S. Dist. Ct., Mid. Dist. Tenn)) since before the August 24, 2011 raids on Gibson and the Red Arrow Delivery Service warehouse.
There are sixty-eight pleadings in that case, including some sworn admissions by Gibson, and there's no doubt in my mind that Gibson knew it was doing something illegal in 2009. It simply got caught. The internal Gibson emails and reports are damning.
I've commented on the case, but here's one summary of the 2009 situation with a link to a couple of the key documents: Link.
I don't think the government's case in the 2011 raids is workable, but all of the stories on it leave out details. This explains some of the shady issues with the import of East Indian ebony, but not all.
It is. I don't own a Rickenbacker 360/12 Roger McGuinn, but I own the 360/12/63 George Harrison model. When Rickenbacker made the 12-string for Harrison in 1963, it wasn't in the Rickenbacker catalogue. They just made it for Harrison in Fireglo.
It was such a distinctive sound that everyone else craved one and 360/12s are a big seller for Rick today.
McGuinn heard Harrison's and got a chance to play it. He's quoted as saying that, between going from six to twelve strings, and dealing with the narrow Rick neck, he had to teach himself to play guitar all over again.
But the Rickenbacker 360/12 (in Mapleglo) became synonymous with with McGuinn and The Byrds.
Beautiful guitar, BluesDuke. Beautiful.
The Strat quality is...Strat only. You either hear it or you don't.Believe me, I heard it. And it still doesn't hold a candle to a Les Paul.
That said, Johnny Winter said, "I love Strats but can't play 'em." They are tricky. I'm forever knocking myself off my neck pickup by bumping the switch. Learning to shift it back in time is something I have had to practice."I remember seeing that quote. I was surprised to learn he'd had that problem with the switch, since he wasn't exactly one of those players who was pounding their hands over and down the strings whenever I saw him play. When I had my MIM Strat, I never worried about the switch. Never touched it unless I wanted to. Mine had the so-called H-S-S pickup configuration. Good combination for what it was. When it was stolen, though, I swore I'd return to Gibson by hook or by crook and never look back. I just missed the richer, deeper tone you could get from a Gibson.
Some of my favourite bluesmen have played Fenders. (Magic Sam, Otis Rush once upon a time, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray.) But more of them have played Gibsons in general and Les Pauls in particular. (In Gibson general: B.B. King, Albert King, Otis Rush, Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy [he played a Les Paul SG Custom for awhile in the 1960s; he's pictured with it on the cover of I Was Walking Through the Woods], John Lee Hooker---who veered between Gibsons and Epiphones---T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Winter, Kim Simmonds. In Les Paul particular: Mike Bloomfield, Freddie King [his early King-Federal sides, arguably the man's best music, were played on a '54 goldtop], the Eric Clapton of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton and Fresh Cream, Luther Allison, Guitar Slim, Peter Green, John Lee Hooker [who played a '52 goldtop for a time in the 1950s], Billy Ray Charles, Duane Allman, Alan Wilson, Hubert Sumlin.)
One Gibson I'd be afraid to ask the value of: Big Bill Broonzy's near-mandolin-shaped six-string acoustic. I forget the model name now, but I saw him sitting with that guitar on the booklet cover of his entry in Columbia Legacy's "Roots 'n' Blues" series, Good Time Tonight, and I wonder if any of this model still exist . . .:
Beautiful guitar, BluesDuke. Beautiful.Thank you, friend. I'm the luckiest guy on the planet to own and play her. And when she goes through my Twin Reverb amp (which was, by the way, rebuilt to 1965 specs by the Fender tech with whom I swapped a Hot Rod DeVille to get it), she just chimes the blues . . .
I love the guitar - and particularly the attention to the knobs. I need to find a photo of my The Fool - it's a '61 reissue SG, custom-painted as Eric Clapton had his SG painted when he played in Creem. A Dutch collective called The Fool (which also painted The Beatles' Apple building) painted the guitar based on a painting in George Harrison's house. Turns out that Clapton's guitar is a '64, but Gibson wasn't making a '64 reissue, so I settled on a '61.
Anyway, somewhere along the way, some of the knobs were replaced, so that's the way mine's set up.
Something like this:
The story behind The Fool is fairly interesting, too. I cheated and had mine clearcoated.
Les Pauls are great. I personally think the SG is the best guitar Gibson's ever made (and Gibson had sold more SGs than Les Pauls). I love Telecasters. And Stratocasters. There are certain sounds I can only get from a Country Gentleman (actually, I have an English Gentleman), or a Rickenbacker 360/6. Or how can you play 'Ventures' sound without a Mosrite? And I have a '65 Casino. It's great. But it's not an ES-339 . . . And we haven't gotten out of the 1960s yet.
To me, respectfully, saying one guitar is best is like saying hammers, screwdrivers, drills, and socket wrenches don't hold a candle to hacksaws. They're tools - artistic, beautiful tools. But each has a purpose and a specialty. And God love 'em all.
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