Interesting reading: Bill Lawrence interview

[Turbojet]

While doing research on the "OBL" pickups on my 1995 Nighthawk, I stumbled across this interesting 1998 Bill Lawrence interview regarding his time at Gibson.

 

A great historical (and technical) reference for many guitar lovers...

 

http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/BL_Gibsonarticle.htm

 

For the Nighthawk owners, you can see where the inspiration came from:

 

"...In my opinion, guitars today are at the same stage that violins were between the 15th and 16th centuries. At that time, the violin, just like the guitar today, did not have a final form. At some point, a form will crystallize, and specifically, that will be a mixture of the forms of the two original guitar makers.

 

Fender and Gibson?

 

Yes, just like with the Amati and Stradivari of their time."

 

 

Cheers,

George

http://georgesolo.com

[brianh]

And these St. Blues guitars:

http://www.saintblues.com/home.php

[carverman]

While doing research on the "OBL" pickups on my 1995 Nighthawk' date=' I stumbled across this interesting 1998 Bill Lawrence interview regarding his time at Gibson.

 

A great historical (and technical) reference for many guitar lovers... [/quote']

 

Guitars are constantly evolving and the market is what drives the evolution.

Whether they will someday evolve to be a marriage of both major manufacturing

styles, is hard to predict. Tradition plays a lot in instrument evolution.

 

Violins being classical shapes (except for the modern day electric violins) haven't

really evolved that much as far as shape and tone..most violin players still prefere

the Stradivarius or others from the 16th century masters..and I suspect it's the

same way with some guitars as well.. A classic shape is the accepted form.

[bluesman345]

That was a good article. I laughed when I read, "In 1957, Epiphone took over Gibson". Of particular interest was the history of the decline of Gibson in the '70's (I think Gretsch had a similar reversal of fortune a few years back):

 

The problems started many years earlier, around 1973/74. Gibson was looked at as a money-making project. The owners of that time were in the beer business, the spirit that is so important in instrument making was lacking. I often had the feeling that the company was being degraded into a furniture factory. Instead of making the instruments by hand in a first-class way, they looked for the fault in the models themselves. They experimented on the market with new instruments that were not well thought out or fully worked out. The owners understood absolutely nothing about the guitar business. They hired top managers who had been educated at first-class universities, but who had a flaw: For them, instrument making was a book with seven seals. They came to me with things that I knew right from the very beginning would not work. If I made my objections known, they said I just didn't know anything at all about business. That fact that that really bothered me is the reason I left Gibson, but in my subconscious I had the feeling that someone would come along who would bring the business up again, and I already had a plan firmly in mind about how that could be done! But before that came to pass, the company was turned over to new people who were not even worth talking about. This involved a consortium of banks or something, to this day we don't know anything more about it. Then Gibson/Norlin was really golden by comparison, because then you could still talk to real people, be a real person. Truly, all the bankers could see was a killing to be made. Nothing was repaired, all of the machines fell apart. It was a crying shame.

 

Could this be "deja vu all over again"?