Some days ago I bought a Gibson book. I buy lots of guitar books.
Gibson Guitars - Ted McCarty's Golden Era 1948 - 1966
It's a strange book and I don't know what to think about it yet. It has interviews with former Gibson emplyees which aren't always that good-interesting, and it also has background stories which leave gaps. But there still is a lot of information in it.
As the title says it's more a McCarty biography and it also is about his years at Wurlitzer (before Gibson) and Bigsby and PRS after he left Gibson.
But some interesting facts:
- Seymour Duncan states in his forword Seth Lover designed the EB0 bass pick up. Did we knew that for sure?
- There's a lot about one Larry Allers. Though McCarty signed al the patent sheets, this book makes clear Allers designed the Les Paul, SG and EB2 bass almost on his own. This allers guy is a real unsung hero and we should errupt a statue for him!!
- Bass. Some quotes.
McCarty always thought the bas viol was the true musical bass. While he was quick to react to Fender's slab solidbody, he all but ignored Leo Fender's electric bass. Asked about Gibson basses McCarty would launch into a discussion of Epiphone's doghouse bass viol and his concern was to avoid competiting with Epiphone. He made several offers to buy the Epiphone bass viol technology.
The book states there were all kind of LP spin offs, but no bass, cos Les Paul's bass player used a bass viol.
Gibson treated the electric bass as a spin-off instrument that would be fashioned after its guitar bodies.
If McCarty was directly involved in instruments like the LP and ES-335, the results were superior. If he wasn't heavily involved, as with amplifiers and bass guitars, the results were more average. Even with the ntroducion of the EB-2, it was Allers, not McCarty, who led the design and signed the patent.
- There's also an interesting part about the Firebird and Thunderbird and how McCarty asked Ray Dietrich to design it. It was Dietrich´s idea to make it neck through, while all other Gibsons had set necks. The book states the changed to non reversed bodies, cos neck through was very expensive to produce and the neck-headstcok joint was too weak in the original design. Engineers got fed up with it and production had to speed up and costs had to be lowered.
So nothing about Fender law suits...
- Kalamazoo had a very large Dutch population, and the book is full of Dutch names like the famous Jim Deurloo and John Huis, but also van Noorloos, Hoogenboom, Bos and Doorenbos. Those former Dutch people would turn their grave if they new all Gibson basses would end up in a German collection.
