Gibson’s Robi Johns: “Designing guitars is the most joyous part of my work.”

Robi Johns has played a role in Gibson’s acoustic operation since 1990, when he left teaching and running a music store to become the location’s in-house musician.
The Gibson acoustic division’s head dreamer studied with Christopher Parkening, toured, played, taught, and has collaborated with many artists on signature models in his three-decade career.
Bozeman is known as the Sweet Pea City, a reference to the prolific flower that put this colorful Montana burgh on the map in the early 1900s. But most of us know it as the home of the Gibson Acoustic Craftory, where the brand makes guitars ranging from historic models like the L-00, J-45, Hummingbird, Dove, and J-200 to signature guitars for Jerry Cantrell, Orianthi, and Keb’ Mo’ to the company’s budget-priced Generation Collection, which offers updates on Gibson’s slope-, broad-shouldered, and cutaway models, all with sound ports. Turns out the region’s stable, dry climate is good for building guitars as well as raising blossoms.
When Robi Johns arrived at Gibson’s Bozeman location in 1990, “it was a small cinder block building. It was relatively crowded, dusty, and noisy, but safe, and we had this little office area with one fax machine—the key communication tool back in the day. Now, I’m sitting in an office that’s quiet, clean, and well-lit. We have meeting areas and beautiful showroom and event areas. And the plant is spacious and quiet in most areas, and certainly very clean and very modern.”
How modern and spacious? Gibson unveiled an expansion at the facility in November, more than doubling its size from 21,000 to 48,000 square feet, updating and enlarging the machine shop, the Custom Shop, and overall guitar-building space. It’s a testament to both the durability of Gibson’s long-established models as well as the success of new instruments like the Generation Collection.
“We put the very lightest, thinnest neck on it possible—we couldn’t go any thinner, quite frankly. It’s thin as a Les Paul from the 1960s.”
Johns’ title is senior product development manager, Gibson acoustics, but he’s also one of the Craftory’s key guitar designers and an accomplished player. As a young man, he studied with classical-guitar virtuoso Christopher Parkening and became an adjunct professor in classical guitar at Montana State University, also in Bozeman. In addition to the aforementioned guitarists, he’s designed instruments for Sheryl Crow (a signature Southern Jumbo Supreme), Jackson Brown (a 10-year process that culminated in the Model 1 that bears Brown’s name), Slash, and Eric Church, among many others.
“If I had to summarize the qualities that each player desires,” he says of the artists he’s created instruments for, “number one is tone of the acoustic guitar, because that reflects the sound of the music that artist makes, and inspires them. They are looking for a response from the instrument—response and tone affects how you’re playing and causes a different emotional state. They are also searching for a certain look or design that reflects their persona and helps define how they look on stage. It’s a symbiotic relationship between the artist and model.”
A J-45 Deluxe Rosewood guitar gets its neck set with one of the company’s trademark dovetail neck-to-body joints.
Johns’ latest signature project is a collaboration for Americana/country darling Brandi Carlile, for release this year. “Brandi loves 1940s small-body LG-2s, so about three years ago she came to us and said, ‘Would you build me one of these ... like the one I use normally, but, you know, new?’ So, I had the honor of designing a historic-based LG-2 for her that she fell in love with. Recently, she asked us to do a model for her, so I was able to take the qualities of her LG-2 and put them into a guitar that would be suitable for consumers. In other words, we made it so it wasn’t so expensive to build, like her original, but I was able to include the sound and the feel of what she loved. I had to please the artist and people who love our guitars with the new Brandi Carlile LG-2 Custom.”
Johns was also involved in the creation of the Generation Collection, a new line of five acoustics—the G-Writer, the G-Bird, the G-45, G-200, and G-00—inspired by legacy designs but updated with sound ports and alternative neck woods, like utile (an African hardwood), and slim neck profiles, among other features. The idea was to create a fleet priced between $999 and $1,999 street—more easily affordable instruments targeted at less experienced players. For Johns, the project was both a strategic and a design challenge.
“The acoustic guitar is more introverted, and the electric guitar is more for an extroverted experience.”
“We thought about this for a couple years,” says Johns. “‘What do new guitarists, that aren’t necessarily Gibson fans, want?’ So, we gave them a guitar at a lower price point, relative to our other guitars, that is really easy to play. We put the very lightest, thinnest neck on it possible—we couldn’t go any thinner, quite frankly. It’s thin as a Les Paul from the 1960s. And we flattened out the fretboards so you can bend notes really easily. We also include all of the benefits of how we build guitars: a dovetail neck-to-body joint, a radius top or curved top with curved bracing, and a very light lacquer finish. We took the best of Gibson construction features and put them in this lower-price-point instrument.”
The Generation Collection are also the first Gibsons to feature a sound port, which the company calls a “Player Port,” following boutique builders and Taylor, Breedlove, and other well-respected acoustic guitar makers into this terrain.
“Response and tone affects how you’re playing and causes a different emotional state.”
Here’s an upper-deck view of the finishing area in Gibson’s Acoustic Craftory.
Besides its lovely climbing flowers and the Gibson Craftory, Bozeman is also known as a railroad town. A modest freight yard is nestled in its center, and there’s even an old beanery where railroad workers for the Northern Pacific grabbed a bite during that line’s heyday. Johns also comes from a place famous for the rails—Altoona, Pennsylvania. “It’s a very blue-collar coal mining and railroad town, so that kind of forced me into loving the expressive arts, in contrast. I became a lover of painting and music, so that led me into going to music school. I got a couple of degrees in guitar performance, and later became a recording artist, and I had interest in many diverse musical styles. I practiced, practiced, practiced the guitar, every day, to the Nth degree. So, I’ve spent all my life on a guitar.”
Johns was teaching and running a music store in Bozeman when he was invited to Gibson. “The president of this division called me up and said, ‘We need an artist here. We have everything but a real musician.’ So, I became the sales and marketing director for acoustic guitars in 1990 and have been here ever since. I had a lot to learn. Gibson was such a big brand, and initially, I was going all over the world promoting the guitars and helping with the marketing and sales of them. And then, I started working here with the best luthiers in the music industry, so that’s how it morphed into my work with designing guitars.”
An SJ-200 reaches the final stage of its building process—a meticulous setup.
Johns’ creative patch was interrupted, gravely, in 2012, when he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. “I was told I was not going to live, I was not going to walk again, I was not going to use my arm again,” he recounts. “That is not what I decided was my fate. I had this strong wish to continue to use all that I’ve learned in my life’s experience—to contribute to what I love in music and arts and particularly the guitar. That kept me going and drove me to take on all these therapies. I still do therapy every day, because I want that quality of life back, and I’m enjoying doing what I’m doing with Gibson. It’s stopped me from being a player for a period of time, but it did not stop me from being a dreamer, or that I get to dream these guitars up with the artists and the great builders here.” Johns is working to reclaim his former playing prowess with the help of his current favorite guitars: a Gibson ES-175, which he praises for its acoustic-like tone—“I was a fan of Steve Howe in the ’70s”—and an acoustic Gibson Songwriter, along with a nylon-string instrument custom-built in Madrid.
If fate hadn’t lured Johns into the guitar life, he thinks that perhaps he might have chased his creative pursuits into film. “Sometimes I feel like a movie director,” he says. “I work with an artist and he or she creates a plot, and I get to direct the movie—analogous to designing the guitar, the most joyous part of my work. This is not just patronizing my own company, but I love Gibson. I get to work with the most absolutely brilliant people, highly skilled and inspiring, which nurtures me as a human being. I’m not playing guitar and being a performer anymore, but, metaphorically, I’m still reaching people all over the world—not with my music, but with the guitars that we build. And that fulfills me. That really is true.”
- First Look: Gibson G-Bird ›
- Gibson Launches the Jerry Cantrell Fire Devil and Atone Acoustic Guitars ›
- Gibson Unveils the Generation Collection of Acoustics ›
- Gibson G-Bird Review - Premier Guitar ›
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
ENGL, renowned for its high-performance amplifiers, proudly introduces the EP635 Fireball IR Pedal, a revolutionary 2-channel preamp pedal designed to deliver the legendary Fireball tone in a compact and feature-rich format.
The EP635 Fireball IR Pedal brings the raw power and precision of the ENGL Fireball amplifier into a pedalboard-friendly enclosure, offering unmatched flexibility and tonal control for guitarists of all styles. This cutting-edge pedal is equipped with advanced features, making it a must-have for players seeking high-gain perfection with modern digital convenience.
Key Features:
- Authentic Fireball Tone – Designed after the renowned ENGL Fireball amplifier, the EP635 delivers the unmistakable high-gain aggression and clarity that ENGL fans love.
- Two Independent Channels – Easily switch between two distinct channels, with each channel’s knob settings saved independently, allowing for seamless transitions between tones.
- Built-in Midboost Function – Enhance your tone with the integrated Midboost switch, perfect for cutting through the mix with extra punch.
- Advanced Noise Gate – Eliminate unwanted noise and maintain articulate clarity, even with high-gain settings.
- IR (Impulse Response) Loading via USB-C – Customize your sound with user-loadable IRs using the included software, bringing studio-quality cab simulations to your pedalboard.
- Headphone Output – Silent practice has never been easier, with a dedicated headphone output for direct monitoring.
- Premium Build and Intuitive Controls – Featuring a rugged chassis and responsive controls for Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence, ensuring precise tonal shaping.
SPECS:
- Input 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Output 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Headphone Output 1/8”(3,5mm) Jack
- 9V DC / 300mA (center negativ) / power supply, sold separately
- USB C
The Gibson EH-185, introduced in 1939, was one of the company’s first electric guitars.
Before the Les Pauls and SGs, this aluminum-reinforced instrument was one of the famous brand’s first electric guitars.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of electric guitar in shaping American popular music over the last half-century. Its introduction was a revolution, changing the course of modern musical styles. Today, when we think of the guitars that started the revolution, we think of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul, guitars held against the body and fretted with the fingertips. But the real spark of this musical mutiny was the lap-steel guitar.
In the early 20th century, guitar music was moving out of the parlors of homes and into public spaces where folks could gather together and dance. Guitarists needed to project their sound far beyond where their wimpy little acoustic instruments could reach. Instrument manufacturers began experimenting with larger body sizes, metal construction, and resonators to increase volume.
Around this time, George Beauchamp began experimenting with electric guitar amplification. He settled on a design using two U-shaped magnets and a single coil of wire. Beauchamp was in business with Adolph Rickenbacker, and they decided to stick this new invention into a lap steel.
If we put on our 1930s glasses, this decision makes perfect sense. The most popular music at the time was a blend of Hawaiian and jazz styles made famous by virtuosos like Solomon “Sol” Hoʻopiʻi. Photos of Hoʻopiʻi with a metal-body resonator abound—one can imagine his relief at being handed an instrument that projected sound toward the audience via an amplifier, rather than back at his own head via resonator cones. Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were simply following the market.
As it turned out, the popularity of Hawaiian music gave way to swing, and electric lap steels didn’t exactly take the world by storm. But Beauchamp and Rickenbacker had proven the viability of this new technology, and other manufacturers followed suit. In 1937, Gibson created a pickup with magnets under the strings, rather than above like Beauchamp’s.
“When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y.”
The first page of Gibson’s “Electrical Instruments” section in the 1939 catalog features a glowing, full-page write-up of their top-of-the-line lap steel: the EH-185. “Everything about this new electric Hawaiian Guitar smacks of good showmanship,” effuses the copy. “It has smoothness, great sustaining power, and an easy flow of tone that builds up strongly and does not die out.”
Picking up the 1940 EH-185 at Fanny’s House of Music is about as close as one can get to traveling back in time to try a new one. It is just so clean, with barely any dings or even finish checking. Overall, this is a 9/10 piece, and it’s a joy to behold. Speaking of picking it up, the first thing you notice when you lift the EH-185 out of the case is its weight. This is a much heavier instrument than other similar-sized lap steels, owing to a length of thick metal between the body and the fretboard. The catalog calls it “Hyblum metal,” which may be a flowery trade name for an early aluminum alloy.
This 1940 EH-185 is heavier than other lap steels in its class, thanks to a length of metal between its fretboard and body.
Photo by Madison Thorn
There are numerous other fancy appointments on the EH-185 that Gibson didn’t offer on their lesser models. It’s made of highly figured maple, with diamond-shaped decorations on the back of the body and neck. The double binding is nearly a centimeter thick and gives the instrument a luxurious, expensive look.
Behind all these high-end attributes is a great-sounding guitar, thanks to that old pickup. It’s got three blades protruding through the bobbin for the unwound strings and one longer blade for the wound strings. When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y. It was just crying out for a little crunch and a bluesy touch. It’s kind of cool how such a pristine, high-end vintage instrument can be so well-suited for a sound that’s rough around the edges.
As far as electric guitars go, it doesn’t get much more vintage than this 1940 Gibson EH-185 Lap Steel. It reminds us of where the story of the electric guitar truly began. This EH-185 isn’t just a relic—it’s a testament to when the future of music was unfolding in real time. Plug it in, and you become part of the revolution.
Sources: Smithsonian, Vintage Guitar, Mozart Project, Gibson Pre-War, WIRED, Steel Guitar Forum, Vintaxe
J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume.
J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume. Just check out a photo of his rig to see an intimidating wall of amps pointed directly at the Dinosaur Jr. leader’s head. And though his loudness permeates all that he does and has helped cement his reputation, there’s a lot more to his playing.
On this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re looking at each phase of the trio’s long career. How many pedals does J use to get his sound? What’s his best documented use of a flanger? How does his version of “Maggot Brain” (recorded with bassist Mike Watt) compare to Eddie Hazel’s? And were you as surprised as we were when Fender released a J Mascis signature Tele?