In Nashville, Tennessee one can find the Gibson uitar Corporation. They are a world-class manufacturer of electric guitars and have been producing various lines since the 1930s. The company also owns a number of other guitar companies including Epiphone, Valley Ats and Kramer to name a few. On top of guitars, they also produce the Baldwin pianos and Slingerland drums.
Gibson Guitar was founded by Orville Gibson who had been producing mandolins since the late 1800s. Soon after he would begin to produce their first lines of hollow-body guitars; manufactured on a commercial scale. They produced a number of flat-top guitars and were the first to produce a commercially available electric hollow-body.
Their most popular electric is the Les Paul which was made popular by Charlie Christian during the earlier years of the 1950s. While producing a popular line, they were not able to stay afloat and by the end of the 1960s Gibson had been consumed by the Norlin Corporation. It was not until 1986 that the name would become well-known once again after the original owners rescued the company and its guitars from certain doom. As a side not, while being named after Les Paul, the guitarist had very little input into its development but rather he was paid to endorse it.
Throughout the 1950’s, Gibson was headed up by Ted McCarty. While they had become known as a conservative company unwilling to change its sights of making a traditionally shaped guitar, it was 1958 that the Flying V and Explorer were introduced. Unfortunately, neither one of them were a big hit which when coupled with the force known as the Fender Stratocaster, Gibson was unable to make ends meet and their designs continued to become worse.
Gibson has recently become known for their SmartWood Exotic Les Pauls which consist of 6 different designs; all of which are finished with exotic woods. Known as SmartWood for a reason, these guitars are manufactured in a sustainable process which allows no damage to the rain forests in their creation.
Today their biggest line is known as the Gibson Robot Guitars which feature a unige tuning system which can self-tune the guitar in a manner of only a few seconds. While there had been externally utilized smart tuning systems in the past, Gibson Guitars became the first to incorporate it directly into a guitar.
There are many authorized and unauthorized copies of the Gibson guitars available throughout the world. Many guitarists choose to collect the older Gibsons due to their rarity. As with any older guitar, the values of a well-used Gibson electric guitar is greater then that of a new one. Some fanatics will go all the way to completely restore an old Gibson if they happen to come across one somewhere. The company holds a number of firsts in the industry which has allowed them to continue to be a very popular choice for many musicians today.
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