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The Editors: "Gibson Guitars: Artistry in Wood and Music" is reprinted here with the permission of Woodwork magazine and photographer/writer Peter W. Richardson. The feature appears in the current April issue. Woodwork: A Magazine For All Woodworkers is edited by John Lavine. For more information contact Woodwork, Ross Periodicals, Inc., 42 Digital Drive #5, Novato, CA 94949 Our thanks to Peter and John.

    The history of 20th-century music was practically written on the strings of Gibson Guitars. Music greats, from folkies like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan to jazz legends Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow and Charlie Byrd, have all played Gibson instruments. Rock idols, including Jimmy Page, Chuck Berry, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton, are all Gibson alumni. So, too, are country stars Jimmy Wakely and Hank Snow, as well as Emmy Lou Harris and Kix Brooks.

Gibson Guitars has created numerous instruments which have become benchmarks in the industry: guitars like the L00, the E5, J35, J50, SJ200, and the Hummingbird and Dove models among acoustic instruments; the legendary Les Pauls, the Flying V and Explorer solid bodies, and the classic hollow body electrics like the Super 400 CES, the ES295, the Wes Montgomery and Tal Farlow models are all part of the pantheon of stringed instruments. And the best of all, at least in my opinion, is the Gibson Byrdland, the finest jazz instrument ever built.

But all this began quite modestly in Kalamazoo Michigan in 1894, when a shoe clerk and woodworking hobbyist named Orville H. Gibson built a mandolin using a carved, arched top like that of a Stradivarius violin. He followed that with an arched-top guitar and, in 1902, founded the Gibson Mandolin Guitar Manufacturing Corporation Ltd. Eventually, it became the Gibson Guitar Corporation, but long before that, it came to represent the epitome of fine quality, hand-crafted, innovative, stringed musical instruments.

Nowhere is this fact more evident than in the Gibson Guitar Custom Division, at their current location in Nashville, Tennessee. The division is headed by Rick Gembar, an affable ex-Ohioan with a passionate enthusiasm for Corvettes. Rick owned and operated a large architectural millwork shop before coming to Gibson to manage the Bellgrade, Montana mandolin shop, but was soon promoted to running both the Bozeman, Montana acoustic plant and the Nashville Custom Division. It is here in Nashville that all repairs, custom orders, and the now-famous Gibson Historic Collection are produced. Whatever the request, from a Special Issue 63 Corvette model Les Paul, to a hand-carved creation for rock artist Slash, this is where it gets built. Here also is where potential new models are designed, built and tested. Almost every step in production is done by hand and many, if not most, of the workers are also musicians.

Before a new model is built, the idea is put forward and usually a set of plans is drawn. Then begins the research, development and building of as many as three prototypes before the instrument goes to a review panel for evaluation. Eventually, if all goes well, it will go to Henry Juszkiewicz for a final approval. Once approved, however, the instrument follows the same basic production process as every other instrument in the division, be that the wildest art guitar or the classics of the Historic Collection.

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