Within two years of this lowly beginning, Gibson made an audacious play for the top of the flat-top market by creating its first artist-endorsement model for guitarist/crooner Nick Lucas. If Gibson’s low opinion of flat-tops was not evident in the simple H-pattern top bracing of the L-1, it was clear in the company’s downward extension of the flat-top line to the L-0, originally a plainer version of the L-1 but quickly distinguished from the L-1 by an all-mahogany body. Like the archtops, the inaugural version of the L-1 flat-top had maple back and sides, despite the fact rosewood and mahogany were long-established as the preferred woods for flat-tops.
Gibson had actually tried a flat-top under its “Army-Navy” label at the end of World War I, but the L-1 of 1926 was the first regular-production model under the Gibson brand. The body shape was easily recognizable because, like all Gibson guitar models going back to Orville Gibson’s original creations, it had a circular lower-bout outline that did not flatten around the endpin. It was a small-bodied guitar, only 131/2″ wide. Gibson had taken the easiest path to becoming a flat-top guitarmaker by simply putting a flat top on the body outline of the L-1, their lowest archtop model. When it reappeared after the war, it was essentially the J-200 we know today, but it was fundamentally different from the pre-war version – with maple back and sides replacing the original rosewood, making the pre-war version one of the rarest and most highly sought of all Gibson acoustic guitars.ĭespite Gibson’s late start, the company’s flat-top designs came a long way in a relatively short time.
The Super Jumbo, as the model was originally called, barely got off the ground before World War II reduced Gibson’s guitar production to a trickle of inexpensive models.
#Gibson j 200 artist full
The Gibson company was founded on the belief that carved-top guitars were superior to flat-top designs, and consequently, Gibson was a reluctant entrant in the rising flat-top market of the 1920s.Īdd the fact Gibson, more than any other company, was still determined to make the world’s best mandolins, banjos, and archtop guitars, and it’s not surprising that the ’30s had almost passed before Gibson turned its full attention to flat-tops and designed a model that would rank with such legendary Gibsons as the Super 400 archtop, the F-5 mandolin and the Mastertone banjos.
0 kommentar(er)
