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    Many of the jobs which one might think are machined are not. I watched Rhonda Johns hand-roll a neck against a large belt sander. A nose block is placed on the turning radius of the sander. Each block is designed for different guitars, and guides the raw neck, with the fingerboard in place as it is rolled against the belt, to contour the back of the neck. At this juncture, the neck is wider than the finger board, but when Rhonda is finished it will be shaped to an exact fit. In another area, the carved top for a Super 400 is being sanded using a slack-belt sander which is brought to bear on the top by pressing down on the belt with a cloth before removing the top and studying the results.

Elsewhere, the necks are progressing. Mother of Pearl or other materials are inlaid into fingerboards and the fret kerfs are cut, by hand, using a dovetail-type saw. Then the frets are fitted and hand-filed until they match the sides of the fingerboards before being assembled onto a guitar body. At this stage, the entire neck assembly is fine-tuned by file, eye and measurements to assure a smooth, low action; anyone who has ever played a Gibson guitar is first impressed by how low and fast the action is, without the string buzz that is often associated with a lesser instrument.

Before any of the instruments leave this first stage of manufacturing, to journey through the building to the finishing and final assembly area, they end up in the hand-sand, fill and stain department. At this point, the basic instrument is completely assembled, except for a finish and its electronics and hardware. However, before it can move beyond here, it is gone over extensively to correct any flaws. Small imperfections are filled, stained to match their background, and hand-sanded to a silky smooth finish prior to painting. Finishing then receives the instrument and first applies the appropriate lacquer finish. So meticulous is the approach to guitars built for the Historic Collection series that, in the case of the 56 and 57 Les Paul Gold Top reissues, the original bronze powder supplier from the 1950s was contracted to provide the powder to color the finish on the reissue!

Once a finish has been applied, the instrument moves to Wanda Johnson and her team of Maricella, Jolene, and Randy. Their job is to hand scrape the over-spray from all of the binding on each guitar or banjo. In order to guarantee a perfectly seamless finish, Gibson does not mask off any of these details prior to painting! Instead, Wanda and her crew painstakingly remove the extra finish with various turned scrapers, razor blades and assorted instruments. One slip at this stage and a $2300 to $23,000 instrument could be sawn up for scrap, as Gibson allows no factory seconds to leave the building!

After scraping, the finish is buffed out on two high-speed wheels. David Mahaffey and Tim Evans are responsible for this critical step. Watching them hold the guitars against the huge wheels as they lean their weight into them, then quickly twirling the instruments over and returning them to the buffer, is like watching a ballet. These wheels are quite capable of launching a guitar into the rafters if it ever escaped the grasp of these industrial choreographers.

Once the initial polishing is completed, the last stages of the process begin. Pick-ups and wiring are installed, small handling imperfections are corrected , the nut (the string guide on the headstock) is installed and hand-sanded to the perfect height prior to fitting the strings. The guitar neck, which has been taped to protect the frets, fingerboard and inlay, is cleaned up, and finally, the strings are installed and the instrument played. Provided everything is perfect, a hard case is chosen and the finished guitar is boxed and set out for shipping. With a three year backlog of orders, there is no such thing as inventory!

The story, however, does not end here. Set against a wall across the aisle from the hand-sand, fill and stain department sits the pro shop, and its collection of luthiers, headed by Phillip Philly Jones. Here is where the prototypes and the custom and art guitars are created and where they do repairs. While I was there, Philly was building a Les Paul Art Piece for use as a showcase of the companys wide-ranging expertise, while Ryan Futch worked on a custom guitar for Steve Cropper of the Blues Brothers Band. Meanwhile, Todd Harrison was finishing some fingerboards, and Sean Nicholson cut frets into a Nighthawk model. All this and repairs, too, are just in a days work for Philly and company.

The guitar Philly is crafting is an unbelievable work of artistry. The back fingerboard and headstock are all Mother of Pearl and and it is triple-bound, with one layer appearing to be a band of marquetry. It will eventually be fitted with triple pickups, but, at the moment, Philly is meticulously takingmeasurements with a long metal ruler before moving to study a drawing and then sketch out a pattern on the back of the headstock. He is a large man, and this graceful little guitar is dwarfed in comparison. Nevertheless, Phillys dexterous fingers have delicately crafted many musical works of art.

Although not as spectacular a piece as the custom, diamond-studded, $250,000 Les Paul Black Beauty with gold-plated hardware that was built to celebrate Gibsons 100th anniversary, this is, nonetheless, a dramatic instrument. So, too, is the Slash edition Les Paul that Bruce Kunkel is carving near the other end of the same long workbench. The carving, in the upper rear corner of the top, is of a coiled snake, wearing a top hat and smoking a cigarette. Bruce is delicately hand-carving the relief into the 3/8" thick top; slowly but surely, the image begins to take shape as Bruce labors over the guitar, cross-lit by a small desk lamp. His eyeglasses shaded by the dark blue brim of a baseball cap, he is a study in concentration as he meticulously pares away a little off the top with each stroke. It actually appears as if the shapes are buried within the top and Bruce is peeling away layers to reveal them. Several custom/art guitars have been graced with Kunkels carving. There is the commemorative Les Paul Tribute guitar, depicting two personae of Les, one a young man in the Navy and one the familiar musician, guitar in hand. And then there is the commemorative Elvis Presley instrument, featuring three decorative carvings of the King set against a sunburst on an ES295 model.

It is from within this shop, amidst the rows and rows of dusty guitars and their cases awaiting repair, and the congested work benches laden with this art guitar or that special edition, that the heart of this industry giant can be seen. From here come the creations that will be the future of Gibson and the elaborately reworked reissues that show its past. Repairs are a new function for the pro shop. The company only started doing them two years ago, when they moved the custom shop to its present location. The repair sections priority is straightforward: artists first and the public second. The wait can be several months, yet still the backlog keeps piling up, like the back orders for the new product.

Gibson is the kind of company that people like to work for, a company they tend to stay with. On staff today are numerous employees with over 10 years seniority. However, there is one man whose tenure goes all the way back to the days in Kalamazoo. Jim Hutchinson, or Hutch as he is referred to, is in charge of carved-top guitars and has been with the Gibson Corporation for 35 years. He can remember the company in its heyday, and through the dark days before the current ownership. He has swept floors, and worked in assembly, and has a wealth of memories stretching throughout his career. Today, as he looks out over the manufacturing plant from his desk on the shop floor, he feels confident that the company will be hand-building fine instruments for many years to come. His sentiments appear to be shared by all those who work here; everyone here is expecting to stay. For them, this is more than fine woodworking, it is more than a job, it is part of who they are and they are a part of music history.

Peter W. Richardson is a photojournalist and woodworker in Toronto, Canada.

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