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Ever the optimist, I'd like to see Gibson try again for a Kalamazoo Gals line of guitars. Accurate replicas, credit to the Gals, and a small portion of each sale going to a women's history nonprofit. Yeah, I know. I tried this before. I sent guitars and X-rays to Gibson after the management committed to what I've just described. But the company simply copied my guitars and sold them without crediting the Gals. It took me 10 months to get my guitars back. But, that was during the Henry era. I'd love to try with the new management. My proposal: begin with the full fleet of Banner LGs:

Blame the change from 2 3/8 spacing at the bridge to 2 1/8 on the rise of the use of that horrible implement, the plectrum. 🙂 As a fingerpicker, I also prefer wider string spacing. But at this point, I play guitars with a wide range of spacing and am now comfortable with pretty much whatever. I suppose that's the benefit of having too many guitars! The one guitar I built and those I've commissioned, though, sport 1 13/16 at the nut and 2 5/16 at the bridge. Still, I play equally poorly regardless of string spacing. 🙂

LGs, anyone:

It's his 1946 LG-2. A lovely guitar that I played while traveling with Jackson and band for my Fretboard Journal cover story: The Smeck in his guitar stand in the video looks like the one on the FJ cover. It's his "Number 1" Smeck, a glorious guitar that I also had the privilege of playing. As for Mr. Strings, I'm a fan. He does not always play "a jillion" notes. He's as tasteful and talented a flatpicker as lives.

Another gorgeous example of the work of the Kalamazoo Gals! Congratulations. Thanks for sharing the photos with us.

Fantastic, Anne! I hope that you'll share your video with us.

A beautiful guitar! Congratulations and thanks for sharing it with us.

Fabulous guitars! But his one is no later than 1928 and more likely 1927.

Absolutely lovely, Lars! Thank you for sharing this with us.

Oops. I meant to type a smiley fact after my reference to the jokes. Sorry. I hadn't thought about the guitar also being produced during the first year of J=185 production. Thanks!

A beautiful guitar with, obviously, custom bridge-wing inlays. I'd so hoped that we could avoid the obvious old-guy jokes. Alas ...

Albert Lee is a dear friend. He's the best of the best by any measure: guitarist, musical historian, human being. (Yeah, Albert and I are posing here with Buddy Holly's widow, Maria Elena Holly, on what would have been Buddy's 75th birthday. That's another long, but imvho, very cool story.) Albert's Everly J-200 is a musical treasure. I'd love to own a replica (and I've played the original). Folks should remember that the Everly brothers were rhythm players, and fantastic rhythm players. Those giant pickguards probably inadvertently served to transform the normally booming J-200 into a good rhythm guitar. The subsequent Everly signature model, which was based on the slightly smaller J-185 body, but rendered shallower, is an extraordinary rhythm guitar. Would I value it for any other musical purpose? No. But it does it do what is does better, imvho, than any guitar? Yes. Again, imvho, it's cool that Gibson is reissuing this guitar. Folks have commented in this thread about the best era for J-200s. Ain't no question, once again, imvho: the pre-1940s rosewood models. Astonishing. But, back to the topic: long may the Everly brothers' music and their guitars reign!

Lars, This was just after the book was published. BBC Radio produced an hour-long documentary about the Kalamazoo Gals and flew me to London to be interviewed by the host, Suzi Quatro. I got a gig at Ronnie Scott's, the great London jazz club where Jeff recorded one of my all-time favorite electric guitar performances. I was thrilled to be performing on that same stage. When I entered the venue, the manager said to me, “Jeff is coming to see you.” “Jeff, who?” I asked. “Jeff Beck.” Gulp. He sat in the front row. The management had graciously unscrewed the light bulb above his table. Speaking of graciousness, Mr. Beck was complimentary of my performance. After the show, Jeff and I hung for an hour, or so, trading my guitar (a 1943 SJ that a young US soldier took to WWII) back and forth. Here’s the video of my opening tune. As the camera pans left, you’ll see Jeff sitting behind a glass of champagne.

As always, I agree with Lars. I've no opinion or knowledge of Depp as a person nor about his domestic/defamation dispute. And I've no interest in such things. But the guy can play. Here he is laying down some lead for a Hollywood Vampires recording: And some slide playing for some sort of promo: Aerosmith's Joe Perry is a member of the Vampires, too. Before joining the band, he contacted Johnny for guitar lessons. Really. He'd heard/seen Johnny doing a creditable job playing Django's "Minor Swing" for the movie, "Chocolate." Yep, Johnny actually played the song for the move scene:

Yes, it's a Depp composition and I agree that it is brilliant. As for Beck stooping to play with Depp, he's played with far worse guitarists. 🙂

I like low action on my guitars and found Jackson's guitars set up to my liking. Mostly what I remember was how friendly Jackson, David, and the band were to me. A truly wonderful experience.

It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. 🙂 Yes, Jackson toured with something like 20 acoustic guitars, housed in giant containers that the roadies wheeled onto stage, opened to reveal the guitars sitting in racks. Jackson made one request of me: that I play all the guitars. again, a tough job. 🙂 His number 1 Smeck was astonishing. But every guitar was fabulous. Jackson regaled me with stories about buying guitars, including about a dozen Smecks, and keeping those he thought were best. Somewhere on my laptop's hard drive I have audio recordings of Jackson, David Lindley, and me passing guitars back and forth, playing them, and talking about them.

I love the B-bender on the Dove! The fellow uses the bender very artistically. But we need to revisit the original B-bender: As for Zomby's reference to David Lindley, oh yeah (though no benders or pedal steel for him). I was fortunate to go on the road with Jackson Browne and band for several weeks while writing the Fretboard Journal cover story on Jackson. I'll offer here two short versions of the best Lindley stories. First, on the last night of my hang, I was with Jackson after a show, wandering back stage with Jackson talking about all things guitars. It was probably about midnight. The road crew had nearly loaded up. As we walked by a dressing room, we could hear Lindley playing guitar (or oud, or zither, or whatever). Jackson said to me, "If you want to be David Lindley, that's what you have to do: play every waking hour." It was true, I never saw David not playing an instrument. He even took his meals in a dressing room so that he could play while eating. One afternoon while the crew was setting up for the evening's performance at the Beacon Theater in NYC. David, of course, was playing while awaiting sound check. David was sitting on a monitor or something such playing an oud. "Want to try this, John?" "Uh, no," I responded. "I don't have any idea how that thing is tuned." "Oh, it's easy," said David, "the lower 3 strings are tuned like [an instrument I'd never heard of]. The high strings are tuned like [another instrument I'd never heard of]." I declined, but now regret doing so.

Ain't that the truth! 🙂

Oh, absolutely. The War Production Board closed Singer Sewing Machine and Steinway Piano, among many other companies, because they used in manufacturing metals critical to the war effort (pianos use a big chunk of metal in their soundboards). The War Production Board also closed all gold and silver mines so that the miners and mining companies would instead move to other locations to extract minerals necessary to producing war-related products containing steel, aluminum, copper, tin, etc. Researching this was one of the most steps in writing what would become Kalamazoo Gals. I obtained somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 pages from the National Archives, every page mentioning Gibson and/or guitars. Along with discovering the magic that the Gals contributed to guitar making (my X-ray and CT-scan studies produced statistically significant data revealing that the women's work was more refined than that of the men who built guitars before and after WWII), I'm proudest of documenting the War Production Board's impact on musical instrument making. I'm a fortunate fellow.

There was no prohibition on building guitars during WWII. Indeed, as I document in Kalamazoo Gals, Gibson's president, Guy Hart, appeared before the War Production Board, the federal agency that president Roosevelt set up to convert the economy for peacetime to wartime, and complained that the company couldn't keep up with demand for guitars by US soldiers. (Hart also complained that his company was "being run almost completely by women.") The truss rod disappeared on Gibsons (and Martins and other guitars) because the War Production Board issued an order mandating that no more than 10% of the weight of a stringed instrument consist of metal. The order issued in the spring of 1942 but was not implemented until the summer of 1943 (when Gibson sent a letter to its dealer announcing that guitars wouldn't have truss rods). The order did not affect guitars then in production. As a result, the truss rod-less guitars began appearing in late 1943 or early 1944. The necks of the guitars without truss rods are very stable. Gibson reinforced them with a V-shaped maple "rod" that runs the length of the neck under the fingerboard (Martin used a square ebony rod during this time). I have 2 Banners with the maple reinforcement. The necks are quite stable. The guitars are crazy light and very responsive. I hope that this adds to the discussion.

Sorry to offend. I meant simply to offer a financial recommendation: if offered a thing at 1/4 its market value, maybe buy it. But, well, I don't do this. As you and other members of this forum might know, folks in the vintage guitar community know me. I often receive pleas to purchase a vintage Gibson. My response is always the same. If I'm not interested, I decline. If I'm interested, I inform the potential seller that I will purchase the guitar only at market value. I ask the seller to have the guitar appraised by either Gruhn's or Carters' shops. I'll either pay that price or I won't purchase the guitar. I typically know more than the seller in these situations and do not want to take advantage of a naive seller. The seller, obviously, can sell the guitar for less than the appraised price, but not to me. Again, I apologize.

If you find a '59 Les Paul for $95,000, buy as many as you can. Current value is 4-5 times that number. Of course the "Holy Grail thing" is a farce. But, well, please do your best to play a late 1930s D-38. No acoustic guitar has a more impressive bass response. Now, whether that bass serves your music (it doesn't serve what I see to do) is a different question. I truly understand the reluctance to embrace vintage guitars. But, well, the worst I've done, economically, is to sell a vintage Gibson for 5 times what I paid for it.

Yes. This aggregation of features would not be my preference. But every Banner Gibson is unique. The grail in the Martin vintage guitar community is the one-of-a-kind a guitar. Nearly all vintage Gibson vintage guitars are one-of-a-kind. The Gibson grail(s) would be two-of-a-kind: two guitars with the same specs. 🙂 As most here know, I've played dozens of WWII-era Banner Gibsons. No two have sounded remotely alike.

Anne, A wonderful song with deeply meaningful lyrics. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.