Ax of the Month

The R9

The upgraded Reissue of 1992 was still essentially a Classic with different pickups and a better top. By delineating tops into various grades (Classic, Plus and Reissue), Gibson had established a value on a curly top. In late 1991 the difference between a Classic and a Classic Plus was $400, and in early 1992, a price reduction on the Plus narrowed the difference to only $200. The difference in price between the Classic Plus and the Flametop Reissue was $2,200. Obviously it would take more than a nicer top on a Reissue to justify the huge price differential. It would take nothing short of a replica of an original sunburst Les Paul, and Gibson put together a team to take the Reissue "all the way" back to 1959.

Today, Gibson's Custom Shop is a stand alone division (officially either the Custom, Art, Historic division or the Custom Manufacturing division) with its own building, its own staff, responsible for the models in the Historic Collection as well as "Custom" production models, such as the ES-336 or the Leland Sklar Bass. In the early 1990s, however, the Custom Shop "staff" didn't really exist. It was an undefined group within the regular production facility at Gibson's Nashville division, aka "Gibson USA" or simply "the plant." Members of this Custom Shop group were called upon as needed to fulfill custom orders for dealers.

Tom Murphy, who had been with Gibson since 1989 and was working on improving Les Pauls, was tapped to head the group that would develop the "replica." Murphy describes his role variously as "crusader" and "babysitter." "I'd talk about the Reissue and people would walk off," he recalled. "But I'd take it home and sleep on it."

Gibson owned no original 1959 Les Pauls, so the company borrowed one from Nashville dealer Crawford White. Engineer Matthew Klein created a digital "map" so that every nuance of the body shape could be matched and maintained. Two more '59s were extensively measured in the shop, and Murphy estimates he inspected and measured another 25 at guitar shows. Just as Tim Shaw had found in his research into original PAFs, the Reissue team found great variance in the original guitar measurements, and the final product would be a best average of the various examples.

The team went the extra mile in replicating the originals, even in areas most guitar players would never know. The originals had a longer neck tenon (the part that fits into the body) which may make a slight difference in the stability of the neck. The originals had a control cavity floor that was routed parallel to the curved top of the guitar (rather than parallel to the flat back of the guitar), so that it was deeper at one end, which made no difference in sound or performance. The originals had a 1/2-inch square channel routed between the control cavity and the pickup cavity (production models have a 3/4-inch square channel). The originals had rounded fingerboard edges and more rounded body edges. Everything was faithfully replicated.

The Control Cavity of an original
'59 Les Paul Standard

Keith Medley, who left Gibson in 1993 to make guitars on his own and who has since returned to Gibson's R&D department, hand-made protoypes #1 and #2 with Murphy. The Replica, as the guitar world called it, or the R9 as the Custom Shop people called it, debuted at the January 1993 NAMM show in Anaheim. And a new era began.

Or did it? It appears that for once in Gibson history, there is a clear-cut line of delineation. Reissue through 1992; R9 beginning in 1993. But that would be too easy. The introduction indeed marks the beginning of a new period for the Reissue, but it's a period of mystery and mystique.

When the R9 debuted in 1993, it was still coming off the regular production line. Tom Murphy painted the finish on the first 25 sunbursts and the first 15 goldtops (considerable research had gone into replicating the original goldtop finish also). Then he monitored production but did no more finish work through the end of 1993.

In late 1993 Gibson separated the Custom Shop from the plant and gave it divisional status, complete with its own facility three doors down from the plant. Murphy made the move into the new division, and from the beginning of 1994 until Nov. 2 of that year (his last day at Gibson), he put the finish, the silkscreen logo and the serial number on every sunburst and goldtop Reissue.

The "deep dish" top, which according to Murphy is more accurately described as "the flat-bellied dimpled top," was problematic. The multi-station top carvers that Gibson uses for production guitars have a master wheel that follows a template or form for the top. The wheel was too large to conform to the Reissue curve. "The wheel wouldn't fall down into the dimple," Murphy said. Consequently, all the Reissue tops had to be carved one at a time on an older carver that Custom used (and still uses) for carving archtop guitars, such as the L-5 and Super 400.

Late in 1994 the Reissues changed slightly, and the "babysitter" noticed. The tops were coming back from the plant, after sanding and binding, a little flatter than they were supposed to be. Murphy discovered that the carving form was laying at an odd angle. The day before he left, he hand-scraped the form, and the tops made from that form, from late 1994 and early 1995, are to him "the coolest carving," different from any other period.

4. The Future