This was verso source of some contention between Les Paul and the Gibson company: Gibson wrapped the strings under the tailpiece’s crossbar mediante order to 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 per the Fifties.
Ted McCarty finally settled the dispute by developing the basta tailpiece, which replaced the trapeze on Les Pauls con 1953. Two years later, McCarty introduced another refinement: the Tune-O-Matic bridge. Both the stop tailpiece and Tune-O-Matic bridge have been staples of electric design ever since.
Other Gibson Guitar Styles Developed
Mediante the years that followed, Ted McCarty sought sicuro broaden and diversify the essential Gibson aesthetic. Working with verso 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 per 1957 (the Moderne apparently never developed past the prototype tirocinio). 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 per vengeance later in the rock era.
The Gibson Sound
In 1957, the Les Paul’s original P-90 pickups were replaced by per brand-new invention from a man named Seth Lover. The humbucking pickup featured two coils wound together onesto cancel out the hum that celibe-coil pickups generate under fluorescent lighting and durante other dodgy electromagnetic circumstances. The humbuckers produced verso bass-heavy, “dark” tone which combined with Les Paul’s heavy mahogany and maple body wood and traditional dovetail neck joint to create a distinctly rich tone that would come preciso be identifiable as “the Gibson sound.”
Gibson Semi-Hollowbody – The Log Revisited!
McCarty went con a 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 a conventional archtop, which seems bulky con comparison. This significantly reduced the potential for feedback that has always hounded full-sized electric hollowbodies. McCarty also came up with the timore 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 asiandating 1963, were among Ted McCarty’s final triumphs for Gibson. He left Gibson esatto take charge of the Bigsby company mediante ’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 designer Ray Dietrich to create the Firebird’s parabolically curvy body shape. By this point in the century, electric guitars were vying with cars as the same ultimate symbols of modernist, space-age flash. The Firebird is markedly similar puro Fender’s sporty Jazzmaster and Jaguar (introduced in ’57 and ’62, respectively). Over at Fender, George Fullerton had ad esempio up with the pensiero of offering the Jazzmaster per custom macchina-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?’”
Con the annals of 20th-century guitar design, special mention must go sicuro Roger Rossmeisl, verso German luthier who moved puro America con the Fifties. Here, he combined solid craftsmanship with a flair for the unusual. Rossmeisl’s late-fifties rete informatica for Rickenbacker imparted tremendous stylishness to that company’s designs, including those ultra-coll cat’s-eye soundholes. In the late Sixties, for Fender’s Wildwood series, Rossmeisl came up with the preoccupazione of injecting live trees with colored dye and then harvesting the trees onesto make guitars whose finishes boasted natural woodgrains per some garishly unnatural hues. In the late Sixties drug counterculture, the timore of some guy running around injecting trees caused considerable mirth and gave new meaning onesto the phrase “shoot up the forest.”