Just found this article about “setting up your guitar” on the Gibson.com site. Its from back in 2007, but it still applies today. Especially if you have not set up your guitar since 2007!

Check it out:

Gibson Tone Tips: Set It Up

Proper Guitar Set Up is Critical to Playability

That’s right, set it up. Or, if need be, get someone else to set it up for you.

Whether you set up your guitar yourself, or have it done by a professional tech, a good set-up is crucial to achieving not only optimum playability but maximum tone too.

By “set-up,” we usually mean a combination of things that all work toward keeping your guitar in good condition, somewhat like the full tune-up you occasionally give your car. On a guitar, a full set-up generally includes adjusting neck pitch, string height, and intonation, and pickup height relative to strings.

It might also include conditioning the volume and tone controls (potentiometers), selector switch, and jack with a squirt of contact cleaner/lubricant, and lightly sanding―or “stoning”―the frets to remove slight divots and uneven spots that have emerged with heavy playing.

Let’s elaborate a little on the benefits of keeping your guitar ship-shape.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE.

I read that Gibson alone offers over 150 different varieties with their standard, reissues and artist series. Add to that all of the other manufacturer’s models and you have several hundred different “looks” to pick from.

BUT THAT’S NOT ENOUGH!!!

For all of you wanna-be guitar designers, click on the image to the left and watch your screen morph into a guitar designers pallet of options.

Be patient as this site may take a minute or two to load…but I guarantee it will be worth the wait!

This is an amazing graphics application that will allow you to customize the Color (Plaintop, Flametop, Quilttop), Body (Finish, Binding, Pickguard), Neck (Ebony, Rosewood, Maple, Inlays), Pickups (Bridge, Neck, Screws), Hardware (Tuner, Bridge, Controls, Toggle) and so much more.

Read more…

OK… so I don’t have scientific proof…or an inside scoop…but I have been wondering for some time why Gibson has been releasing all of these artist-played, custom-shop-relic’d, ultra-expensive signature guitars.

For example, the Jeff Beck 1954 Les Paul Oxblood – available for just under $25,000.00!

Then today (courtesy: Nashville Business Journal) I read this:

Gibson Guitar owes the Internal Revenue Service nearly $450,000.00!

Gibson Guitar Corp. faces a federal tax lien of nearly $446,000, according to Davidson County records filed today.

The Internal Revenue Service says the Nashville guitar manufacturer owes more than $442,600 in corporate income taxes for 2007 and 2008 and $3,350 in payroll taxes for 2006. The tax lien follows various legal and financial issues in the past year, including a federal raid over rare wood, allegations of price rigging and the downgrading of the company’s credit rating by Moody’s.

In an official statement, the company said Monday afternoon that the tax lien is associated with penalties and interest claimed due by the IRS. Gibson said the penalties and interest resulted from mistakes on 2006 through 2008 tax returns that were prepared by an independent tax and auditing firm that is no longer employed by Gibson.

“The company is currently amending each of these returns and believes that once amended returns are filed, substantial tax refunds will be due and that any penalties or interest claimed due will be abated.
Read more…

Jeff Beck in the "Gibson Showroom"

If You Have An Extra $25,000 Laying Around…

From Gibson.com… The 1954 Jeff Beck Les Paul Oxblood is the most detail-precise reissue of this hallowed instrument ever produced by Gibson Custom. All of the intensively accurate Custom Shop craftsmanship is there. From the one-piece light mahogany back to the accurately-arched carved maple top to the light aluminum wrapover bridge to the one-piece Beck-profile mahogany neck with long-tenon neck joint. Beyond even these, however, the instrument exudes the vibe of the original, with a feel, sound and finish match that pay homage to Beck’s own modified Les Paul. -GIBSON

Available in very limited numbers, the Jeff Beck 1954 Les Paul Oxblood from Gibson Custom will come in two different series.

The first 50 of these historic guitars will be carefully aged by the master luthiers at Gibson Custom to look exactly like Beck’s original, then personally hand-signed, numbered and played by Beck himself.

The next 100 guitars will be prepared with Gibson Custom’s pioneering V.O.S. finish, bringing the total run to just 150 rare instruments. Each one also comes with a specially produced Gibson Custom case with Beck’s signature silkscreened on the top, a custom care kit and a certificate of authenticity.

The 50 “Hand-Signed” and “Beck-Played” are on sale now… (better hurry!)

I want to know…who buys these guitars? I mean…seriously!

I already know what many of you are saying…”Who is Crystal Bowersox?”

Crystal Bowersox is one of American Idol’s Season #9 frontrunner girls. She is certainly my favorite.

One reviewer wrote : The 23-year-old former farmgirl and single mom has a headful of dreads, a chinful of facial piercings, and a mouthful of sandpaper-and-velvet.

She’s been strumming and singing since the age of 10 and cites trailblazing blues women like Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Bonnie Raitt, and Sista Otis as her own musical influrnces. Her most notable “idol” might be Melissa Etheridge–as evidenced by the “Melissa” autograph on the body of her acoustic guitar.

She looks destined to make the “Top 12″ — especially after her soulful performance last night of “Give Me One Reason”.
(video below)

I noticed that her electric guitar has not been signed. Looks like a great place for a “GuitarDaddy” autograph! Hey Crystal, is that space for sale?

We all have our “favorite axe”.

Now… try to imagine that favorite axe… STOLEN from you.

That’s what happened to B.B. King, and his beloved Gibson ES-345… Lucille.

As the story goes, B.B.’s main gigging guitar was stolen earlier this year.

Miraculously, it was recovered in a pawn shop by an honest man who knew he had found a guitar that was not your every day Gibson… Read the full story by CLICKING HERE.

PRESS RELEASE:

The passing of the incomparable Les Paul in August 2009 broke the hearts of guitar enthusiasts around the world.

What can never be broken, though, is the legacy of innovation and creativity that he built during 94 years of constant musicianship.

Though the original guitar he designed in 1952 has informed every Gibson guitar since, our engineers were inspired anew to handcraft a guitar just the way Les demanded it nearly 60 years ago. Never before has a Les Paul guitar been so completely designed to Les’ original specifications.

Until now.

Anchored by a golden mahogany body, maple top and rosewood fingerboard, the Les Paul Tribute 1952 is equipped with an all-new bridge that’s an exact replica of Les’ original 1952 patent. Our luthiers have also added historical interest with details like stamping “prototype” into the back of the peg head and staying true to Les’ preference for P-90 pickups.

The Les Paul Tribute 1952 honors the most important figure in all of guitar history and the guitar he designed and loved.

Click on the guitar photo to link directly to GIBSON USA.

For Funny Music T-Shirts, Mugs and Bumper Stickers, Visit the Buddy and Hopkins Online Store!

I am sure “it” has happened to you.  “It” happened to me last month.

I was in the neighborhood of my local guitar store (which will remain unnamed) and I had some free time .  Whenever I get a chance to stop in and browse, I do.  It was the perfect “kid in a candy store” opportunity, and I wanted to see the newest candy.

For the record, I don’t just write about guitars… I also play the guitar.  For further record, I am still a beginner.  On a good day, I am somewhere between a beginner and an intermediate player.

(My challenge is the same as so many other guitar players I know.  I work full time and have to balance the remaining free time between family, household chores and sleep.  I practice and play guitar in the remaining time — which is not very much)

So… back to the candy store.  I mean… guitar store.  I walk in and do what I do every time I walk in that store.  I stand there and stare, gaze, dream, covet and drool. There is eye-candy everywhere and the first decision to be made is where to start looking.

Since I wanted to check out the new Taylor T3, I strolled over to the “high-end” guitar wall where the Taylor electric’s were hanging.  Sure enough, they had the guitar of my dreams — today’s dream at least — and I asked Ted (not his real name) to pull down the T3 so I could hold it.

It was a simple request, but that’s when “it” happened.

Before Ted could honor my simple request and hand me the guitar, he subjected me to a :30 second “Ted the Shred-Master” concert featuring Ted on lead guitar.  No offense, but I personally am not a shred-fan.  I can tolerate some of it, but not for long.  And :30 seconds was about :25 seconds longer than I cared to listen to Ted shred on a T3.

I just wanted to hold the guitar.  If it felt right, I may have wanted to plug it in to a Fender Twin Reverb and practice my 1-4-5 progressions.  Heck, I may even buy one some day!  But no, Ted had to show me what he can do.  He had to show off his chops.

The problem with that is that while I am not a shred guitar fan, Ted was clearly a better guitar player than me.  And when he did what he did, he intimidated me to the point that I was not going to play one note in front of Ted.

So when I came across this comic of Buddy & Hopkins, it reminded me of that Saturday afternoon in the unnamed guitar store… It also reminded me that I need to go back and play that T3 for myself…

OK… this post is bound to bend the E-Strings of a few guitarists, but for the life of me, I don’t understand the attraction to “relic” guitars.

To me, buying a relic guitar is like buying a beat-up car… or an old house with cracked walls and paint peeling from the ceiling… or a pair of blue jeans with holes in the knees. I know, I know… jeans with holes in the knees have been a hot-selling item for years… but I am talking about a guitar!

I’m a lot like Ed Roman.  I like SHINY GUITARS!  (No flames, please.)

I don’t gig (yet) thus most of my guitars are in the “excellent to mint condition” category.  I can’t imagine taking my Les Paul and etching, staining, dinging, bumping and cracking it – all in the name of creating a “Vintage Guitar” look.

There are dozens of books you can buy and videos you can watch that will give you step-by-step instructions on how to make your brand new Fender look like it has traveled with the Rolling Stones since 1962.  A simple Google search for “Relic Guitars” returned a few hundred web sites — all designed to transform your brand new Gibson into something my parents would toss in the trash if I wasn’t watching.

One of the most popular relic guitar sites starts out with this quote: “In our opinion, nothing is more beautiful than a vintage guitar that has been heavily played and has that “dragged behind a truck and through a fire” appearance.”

HUH?

To each his own. Some like blues; some like jazz. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I actually take pride in wiping down my guitars after I play them.  I rub out the fingerprints.  I polish the finish.  I buff the humbucker covers when I change the strings.  I almost cried when I bumped the headstock of my strat against a music stand (and it didn’t even leave a mark). 

Just call me the “anti-relic” GuitarDaddy!

That’s my opinion, what’s yours??

“Every rock music fan has heard the war, every rock guitarist has fought in the battles.”

Starting with their conception and design in the early 1950s, Solidbodies, The 50 Year Guitar War focuses on the five decade competition of sounds between the two guitars that have been heard on more popular recordings than any other instruments during the rock era. The documentary features players, historians, instrument dealers and collectors expressing their views on the competitive influences of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul. The soundtrack and performance segments feature guitar solos played on those two instruments with styles of music highly representative of the time periods that are discussed in the documentary.

Among those contributing commentary are Joe Bonamassa, named Best Blues Guitarist by Guitar Player Magazine’s readership in their 2008 Reader’s Choice Awards; Derek Trucks, famed slide guitar virtuoso who leads his own group and played with Eric Clapton’s band during his 2006-2007 world tour; Henry Garza, guitarist and singer with the Grammy Award winning Los Lonely Boys; Gary Hoey, internationally acclaimed guitarist who has composed for ESPN’s Summer X Games; George Gruhn, the owner of Gruhn Guitars who is considered to be one of the world’s leading experts on vintage guitars; and Richard R. Smith, the author of “Fender: The Sound Heard ‘Round The World” which is often viewed as the definitive book about Fender guitars and Leo Fender.

It’s been rock ‘n’ roll’s version of Coke vs. Pepsi, the Yankees vs. the Red Sox, almost since the music’s start. And the battle is still being fought every day in garages, studios, and music clubs across America. It’s the guitar wars: Fender vs. Gibson.
-The Boston Globe

You can visit the official site of the DVD release and view a video trailer by CLICKING HERE.