How come the reissues don't recreate the slim taper headstock?

[gibsonchiq]

If you look at an old Gibson from the 30s and 40s, the tip of the headstock gets slimmer and slimmer as it goes up. How come they don't recreate that in the reissues they are putting out?

 

Bozeman seeming to put a lot of effort into recreating everything about the old guitars but not this one. 

[slimt]

5 hours ago, gibsonchiq said:

If you look at an old Gibson from the 30s and 40s, the tip of the headstock gets slimmer and slimmer as it goes up. How come they don't recreate that in the reissues they are putting out?

 

Bozeman seeming to put a lot of effort into recreating everything about the old guitars but not this one. 

Actually Gibson Bozeman did a pretty good job creating The looks and similar sounds of Gibsons from back in the day.  But there are a few things that changed   Not just the tapered headstock .  As is with most guitar manufactures.   

[gibsonchiq]

2 minutes ago, slimt said:

Actually Gibson Bozeman did a pretty good job creating The looks and similar sounds of Gibsons from back in the day.  But there are a few things that changed   Not just the tapered headstock .  As is with most guitar manufactures.   

What else changed?

[slimt]

15 minutes ago, gibsonchiq said:

What else changed?

In some cases scale length ,  more frets, , types of woods used per original examples. , inner bracing sizes.    Neck sizes.   Body dimensions. 

[Dave F]

I had a 2010 J45 Legend. They did do the tapered headstock on it. 

[Buc McMaster]

Hmmm.  This makes one wonder what the taper on the headstock was for in the first place.  Mechanically this would make the string post length above the headstock longer at the far end which in turn could make the nut break angle smaller for these strings, assuming that these strings are not wound to the bottom of the post.  This makes any mechanical advantage inconsistent.  So the tapered headstock was simply a cosmetic thing?  Seems so.  Any other speculators on this particular attribute of vintage Gibsons?

Personally I think it was an attractive thing and it would be nice to see it incorporated in modern builds.

[zombywoof]

Regarding headstock shapes, while I could be dead wrong, I have always heard that as obtaining enough suitable 12/4 size mahogany to satisfy production needs started to get more difficult to come by, builders began going with smaller size stock.  Hence the addition of wings.

As for the rest of it, as Master Luthier John Greven once noted, no builder, whether it be Martin, Gibson or whomever, made changes purely for sound.  Changes more often as not had to do with cutting costs (both labor and scrap) and solving an engineering problem the biggest of which was how to avoid guitars being returned under warranty which was a major drag on the bottom line of any company.  Bozeman is no different than others.  There is a reason you no longer see say an L00 with a bridge plate the thickness of a couple of business cards with the whole instrument clocking in at maybe three pounds. 

Then you have to throw in the fact that Bozeman has its own ideas as to what sounds and feels best.  There is a reason necks with a thickness at the 1st fret of 1.0" and a string spacing at the bridge of more than 2 3/16" are few and far between.  And if Bozeman builds a guitar with anything other than a scalloped bracing rather than the delicate non-scalloped bracing my '32 L1 features and the version of that bracing my 1956 Southern Jumbo sported, I have yet to see it.  While they do capture the characteristic Gibson voice there is enough of a nuanced difference to distinguish between "Old School" and "New School" Gibson Tone.

[Red 333]

I asked Ren Ferguson this once. It was probably around 2004. I was curious, because the newly released Epiphone Masterbilt guitars (which were original designs, and not a recreation of any Gibson model) DID have tapered headstocks. He said he wasn't aware that the old Gibsons were like that.

Remember, in the very early days, they were building guitars in Bozeman often without having seen guitars from the '30s and '40s, with jigs and tooling they often made themselves. Once they got set up, they kept building that way.

While Bozeman famously had access to Eldon Whitford's Advanced Jumbo to measure before the model was reissued in the early '90s, they may not thought to have look closely at the taper of the headstock because they didn't know to look. This was at a time when vintage guitar knowledge was not nearly as easily available as it is now with the internet. I think it was even before Whitfield wrote his book on Gibson acoustics. Since then, much more has been noted and is more well known.

Old guitars Bozeman did have more access to locally were likely from the 50's and beyond, which is when the headstock changed to the non-tapered style.  These guitars were relatively newer and made in greater numbers than in early years, and had a better chance of making it to remote Montana. It's only later they began to get access to more old builds to examine and measure them and look to more closely make guitars with those exact specs. And that buyers looked for appreciated those details.  As Dave F said, the Legend series did have the tapered headstock, but that was probably the most exacting recreation, and one of the most expensive.

Red 333

Edited March 20 by Red 333

[Red 333]

3 hours ago, Buc McMaster said:

Hmmm.  This makes one wonder what the taper on the headstock was for in the first place.  Mechanically this would make the string post length above the headstock longer at the far end which in turn could make the nut break angle smaller for these strings, assuming that these strings are not wound to the bottom of the post.  This makes any mechanical advantage inconsistent.  So the tapered headstock was simply a cosmetic thing?  Seems so.  Any other speculators on this particular attribute of vintage Gibsons?

Personally I think it was an attractive thing and it would be nice to see it incorporated in modern builds.

I don't know if anyone knows the origin or reasoning for the design, but the mechanical inconsistency, as you say, is certainty something that contributes to the character of those old instruments.

Red 333

[gibsonchiq]

4 minutes ago, Red 333 said:

 As Dave F said, the Legend series did have the tapered headstock, but that was probably the most exacting recreation, and one of the most expensive.

Red 333

 

 

Is the legend series even higher caliber than the CS banner or Murphy lab guitars made today?

[Red 333]

2 hours ago, zombywoof said:

Regarding headstock shapes, while I could be dead wrong, I have always heard that as obtaining enough suitable 12/4 size mahogany to satisfy production needs started to get more difficult to come by, builders began going with smaller size stock.  Hence the addition of wings.

 

The taper the OP is referring to is the depth of the headstock at the top (narrower) to the bottom (deeper), not the width. But yes, I've heard that as the reasoning for the addition of the wings on the sides of the headstock.

I wholeheartedly agree with your observations about changes to design usually being about cost cutting (and the other things in your post). Leaving the headstock un-tapered saves time and time is money. 

Red 333

Edited March 20 by Red 333

[Dave F]

I believe the early (2007-2010) were. A few years later they were using the Legend name on everything they dreamt up. 

[Red 333]

6 minutes ago, gibsonchiq said:

 

 

Is the legend series even higher caliber than the CS banner or Murphy lab guitars made today?

I can't say. I've never seen a CS Banner or a Murphy. I'm sure they are excellent, in any case. I have a Legend, though, and love it.

Red 333

Edited March 20 by Red 333

[slimt]

9 hours ago, Red 333 said:

I can't say. I've never seen a CS Banner or a Murphy. I'm sure they are excellent, in any case. I have a Legend, though, and love it.

Red 333

The Legends are in my opinion. The best in the j45 line .   I didnt realize that those had tapered peg heads.  

[zombywoof]

21 hours ago, Red 333 said:

The taper the OP is referring to is the depth of the headstock at the top (narrower) to the bottom (deeper), not the width. But yes, I've heard that as the reasoning for the addition of the wings on the sides of the headstock.

I wholeheartedly agree with your observations about changes to design usually being about cost cutting (and the other things in your post). Leaving the headstock un-tapered saves time and time is money. 

Red 333

I get that and that a 12/4 plank is 1/2" deeper than a 10/4 board. You would think that the savings in scrap cost by going with a 10/4 board would be enough to rationalize it.  The addition of wings were more about strengthening the headstock than adding width to it.

Edited March 21 by zombywoof

[zombywoof]

There are times when I see a specific year attached to a "Reissue" that I think Bozeman must have pulled it out of a hat. What is truly strange is that had Gibson simply gone with another year for some of them such as 1941 or 1942 for their 1933 L-00 and 1936 J35 they would have been a whole lot closer to hitting the mark as by that time Kalamazoo had gone with scalloped X bracing and two scalloped tone bars on every guitar which rolled out of the factory.  

[jt]

I've long wondered about this. When I was in Bozeman touring the factory, I asked this precise question while standing in front of the CNC machine that was cutting necks. My tour guide responded, "We just can't do that." But the CNC could easily have been programmed to taper the headstock. Certainly, it wasn't a question of sufficient wood. The machine spits out necks with non-tapered headstocks. Tapering would simply have involved a bit of programming and the shaving off a bit of wood from the necks the machine was ejecting.

[Red 333]

4 hours ago, jt said:

I've long wondered about this. When I was in Bozeman touring the factory, I asked this precise question while standing in front of the CNC machine that was cutting necks. My tour guide responded, "We just can't do that." But the CNC could easily have been programmed to taper the headstock. Certainly, it wasn't a question of sufficient wood. The machine spits out necks with non-tapered headstocks. Tapering would simply have involved a bit of programming and the shaving off a bit of wood from the necks the machine was ejecting.

Epiphone was doing it in 2004 on $499 Chinese-made Masterbilt guitars, which were certainly shaped by CNC, which is why I asked Ren that very thing. 

Red 333

Edited March 22 by Red 333

[BluesKing777]

Anybody actually know WHY Gibson built the originals with the tapered headstocks?

Is it special for something?

 

BluesKing777.