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Topic: vintage gibson tidbit.... |
Bill Hatcher
From:
Atlanta Ga. USA
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Posted 18 Mar 2018 5:49 pm |
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from an interview with one of the designers of the les paul guitar and the president of gibson guitars for a while...ted mcCarty. i thought this very interesting.
"I can remember that after that first year we came up with a number of guitars, and I thought, What am I going to do next year, what can I come up with that’s new? Well, in 1948 the most popular guitars we made were the lap model steel guitars—they were the quantity units. We still made the L-5 and the Super 400, but the big volume were these solidbodies.
They had started to make some designs for those things before I got there—a design company known as Barnes & Reinecke, in Chicago. [Notably, Gibson’s solid maple and plastic Ultratone/BR-1 steel, introduced in 1946.] Chicago was home plate for everything in those days, and that company designed the guitars that we were making at that time, the solid lap models." |
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Doug Beaumier
From:
Northampton, MA
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Posted 18 Mar 2018 6:04 pm
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Yes, Barnes & Reinecke designed industrial products... kitchen appliances, televisions, radios, washing machines, toasters, etc. Gibson was looking for a modern, post-war design for their lap steels, something radically different. BR came up with the Ultratone, Century 6, and other BR models. Perfect for the space age!
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Jack Hanson
From:
San Luis Valley, USA
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Posted 19 Mar 2018 6:25 am
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| Barnes & Reinecke also designed the cabinets of some, if not all, of the early postwar Gibson amplifiers. |
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Bill Hatcher
From:
Atlanta Ga. USA
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Posted 19 Mar 2018 10:21 am
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| interesting that the lap steels were the big money makers and top selling guitars for the vaulted gibson co that year. |
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