For visitors and residents of Cleveland this summer, the sight of a nine-foot tall, wildly painted and decorated Fender Strat will become commonplace. In a project called GuitarMania, artists team up with local and national sponsors to fill the city streets with these larger-than-life icons of music.
The guitars’ themes address specific issues, as in the case of Lisa Elias’ sparkly Passionately Pink for the Cure, and celebrate Cleveland institutions, like Jim Hurguy’s All for One Cleveland Cavaliers guitar. While some of the guitars are simply repainted, some artists choose to transform the entire guitar like Susie Frazier Mueller’s Crocodile Rock, which takes the shape and texture of a crocodile.
The group of more than 75 guitars started their journey at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on May 25th before being moved to their individual locations throughout the city. GuitarMania has a map to guide viewers to specific guitars available on their website. After Labor Day, the guitars will return to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for six weeks until an auction on October 20.
The guitars represent a celebration of the city’s art and musical culture, while raising money for the United Way of Greater Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s education fund. The United Way is an independent nonprofit organization that raises money to help support health and human service causes. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s education fund promotes a variety of music-education ventures for all ages in the community.
Funds are raised through the sponsors of the guitars, which range from local banks to sports teams and individuals. After the display is over, an auction will be held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The $75 per ticket gala event draws a variety of bidders – including some well-known rockers. GuitarMania also produces miniature models of select guitars from past years which are available at various stores throughout Ohio and through Fender USA’s online store. The miniatures retail for $24.99.
This is the third time that Cleveland has hosted the project – giant guitars first took over the city in 2002, and did so again in 2004. The first two incarnations of the project raised more than $1.5 million for the charities.
This year’s GuitarMania brings the art and music into local high schools with a new project called It’s All Guitars! where high school students are given 30 real Fender Strats to decorate. These guitars will be on display at public library branches around the city during the summer and will also be auctioned off at the October 20 auction.
It’s All Guitars! also served as a competition where one of the student-designed guitars was replicated in nine-foot glory for participation in GuitarMania. The winning guitar by Regina High School art students was called “Sweet Cleveland,” and featured a candy theme.
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However, as preferences in the guitar market have made a pronounced shift toward smaller, boutique builders, the major manufacturers have adapted. The Gibson Custom Shop has taken a multifaceted approach to enriching their stock, adding three extensive lines in just two years. Ranging from meticulous recreations of vintage models to the “thinking outside the box” aesthetic of their artist-inspired lines, Gibson has devoted a great deal of attention to their Custom Shop ventures. This month, we’re taking a look at exactly what the Gibson Custom Shop has up their sleeves, how the company’s past has brought them to this point, and how you can get your hands on one of these distinctive instruments.
Evolution of the Custom Shop
The first hint of what the current Gibson Custom Shop offers can be found in early artist partnerships. The idea of affixing an artist’s name to an instrument – to the benefit of both the artist and the manufacturer – is nothing new in the guitar industry, and Gibson has been at it since the 1920s. Gibson’s first foray into artist models came with the Nick Lucas Model acoustic guitar, which was followed by the Roy Smeck Stage Deluxe Hawaiian guitar in the ‘30s, and the Les Paul and Byrdland model electrics in the 1950s. Into the ‘60s, artists such as Barney Kessel, Trini Lopez, Johnny Smith and Tal Farlow were graced with their own Artist models, but custom instruments were another matter, having been limited to employee requests and one-offs for individual artists.
This was no longer the case in the ‘80s, which became a time of great change for Gibson. In addition to their move from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Nashville, Tennessee early in the decade, Gibson began building custom guitars for individuals who had no other ties to the company other than the needed funds and a local Gibson dealer willing to make a few phone calls on their behalf. This tactic proved successful enough that when Henry Juszkiewicz and Dave Berryman bought the company in 1986, Gibson decided to split the Custom Shop into a separate division within the organization. The 1990s proved to be an eventful decade for the company, beginning with Rick Gembar taking the helm as Custom Shop General Manager in 1993. It was also during this time that Gibson developed the idea for limited edition replicas of popular artists’ instruments. Going beyond simply replicating sought-after vintage guitars from the company’s past, these guitars were initially based on tried and true vintage designs, but included the modifications that particular artists had done to make the instrument more functional for their needs.
The first in this series for the Custom Shop was the Joe Perry Les Paul in 1996, followed by the Ace Frehley in ’97 – both of which then had production runs at Gibson USA. These have been followed by other blockbusters, including the Eric Clapton 335 and the Jimmy Page Les Paul. Today, the Signature series features a diverse array of instruments from artists ranging from metal masters Judas Priest, whose modified SG exemplifies Glenn Tipton’s stripped-down rock and roll machine, to jazz/rock guitar legend and Mr. ES- 335 himself, Larry Carlton, who has a Signature model replicating his beloved 1968 ES-335. Throughout the ‘90s and into the current decade, while Gibson continued to release various Signature models, the Custom Shop did anything but stand still. They have been busy building some of the finest vintage reproductions available. Their quest to replicate the “Holy Grail” of late ‘50s Les Paul Standards actually began in 1979, when the plant was still located in Kalamazoo – the introduction of the Les Paul KM model, which, although not a true reproduction, sought to offer the features players were seeking in the vintage models. This was followed by the Nashville-produced Heritage 80 Les Paul, which more closely followed vintage Les Paul specs. Along with limited runs for various dealers who specialized in vintage and high-end Gibsons, these guitars paved the way for the current offering of accurate reproductions from Gibson’s Custom Shop.
Today, the Custom Shop still operates upon many of the same tenets that Gibson was built on over 100 years ago, always keeping legacy and tradition close – even going as far as using some of the same machinery used to build the original instruments. In 2000, Gibson opened a new facility in Memphis, Tennessee, devoted to building semi-hollowbody guitars such as the famed ES-335. This plant shares the Custom Shop workload with the Nashville facility. In 2006, the Nashville Custom Shop moved into a larger facility, enabling the division to continue to produce outstanding quality while meeting ever-growing demand.
In the past two years, the Gibson Custom Shop has focused their efforts as the popularity of custom guitars has grown. They have added the Inspired By™ artistcentric series in 2005, the Vintage Original Spec™ series of faithful reproductions in 2006, and the Popular Demand™ line of guitars based on customer requests in 2007.
Blasts from the past
The Gibson Custom Shop has garnered acclaim for recreating classic guitars from years gone by, allowing players and collectors to come as close as possible to owning an incredible vintage instrument without coughing up six figures. The Vintage Original Spec line (VOS) best exemplifies the Custom Shop’s unyielding dedication to historical accuracy. The line, launched in 2006, to date has released 17 Les Paul and SG models.
Each guitar features solid mahogany backs and long neck tenons to reproduce the sound and sustain of the vintage instruments. The electronics and hardware on the instruments are as accurate as possible – Gibson puts a great deal of effort into researching this, hence the “Original Spec” part of the name. Though they can’t use an exact duplicate for every piece of equipment, they manage to come pretty close, with items like the nearly identical, lightweight aluminum stopbar tailpieces available on most of the VOS guitars.
What really sets these guitars apart is the unique aging process that makes them appear to be a well cared for 40 year old guitar. The process includes softening the edges, giving the hardware a lightly oxidized look, and a finishing method unique to Gibson. The models are also available without the aging process, per dealer request.
Though there are no immediate plans to include archtops or ES guitars in the VOS line, the VOS is not the only line of historic reissues. Gibson offers “Historic” versions of their archtops, ES series, and special designer guitars like the 1959 Flying V. Additionally, limited Historic versions of Les Pauls exist outside of the VOS series, like the 1954 Oxblood. While these aren’t as readily available as the VOS guitars, some are still available through dealers.
Inspired by the greatsAside from taking inspiration from past models, the Gibson Custom Shop is also known for its artist-inspired models. Familiar to most players is the Signature Series, though the newer Inspired By series, started in 2005, is beginning to quickly build in popularity.
The Inspired By series has drawn considerable attention from players due to the unconventional artists that are already represented. From actor Kiefer Sutherland’s KS-336-based Inspired By model, to regional guitar ace Johnny A.’s two uniquely styled hollowbodies, Gibson stands by its decisions with pride, choosing artists with passion and a good ear to make unique guitars.
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When did you decide to play guitar? I started when I was 13, during the summer break between seventh and eighth grade. I loved Elton John and the Who, a lot of great, classic ‘70s rock. I was starting to write lyrics because I wanted to be involved in the songwriting process, but I realized I was a horrible singer and lyricist, so I started playing guitar. The first day was ten hours, the next day was eight hours, then my fingers hurt, so I only played four hours the third day.
Playing until the skin came off of your fingers?
Yeah, the classic story; I had a really horrible old acoustic that my parents bought for me at the PX for something like ten dollars. It had a small little body and really high action. It wasn’t a Harmony, but it was something like that. And, you know, I was just persistent; once I latched on to the guitar it was as though a long lost limb was reconnected. I just couldn’t let go. I wouldn’t let go.
Was there a defining moment for you – like seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show – when you thought, that’s what I want to do?
That moment was literally getting the guitar in my hands. That’s why I never stopped playing. I don’t think I missed a day of playing the guitar for several years, and I played at least three or four hours a day. Even when I was sick and had to stay home, I was playing guitar. Those were my formative years; I would pick up riffs from Lynyrd Skynyrd and Ted Nugent records, sitting there for hours, picking the needle up and dropping it back down on the record a million times, trying to learn the intro to “Sweet Home Alabama.”
I remember cueing up records over and over.
Yeah, and trying to slow them down to 16 rpm, to learn the quicker licks. If you were a kid back then, and you had that kind of relentless nature to keep doing that over and over, you know there was something seriously driving you. Otherwise, it took too much effort!
Moving forward a bit – how did you then make the transition from high school bands and bar bands to studio and soundtrack work? That was a bit of a process. I played in bands in high school in the panhandle of Florida. My parents lived on a farm in a small town called Laurel Hill, and I was playing weekends there. I was in a couple of different bands; one was a straight up, hard-country band, doing Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard tunes, and the other was a rock band, where we could make more money doing Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet and Skynyrd covers.
Would this have been in the late ‘70s?
Yeah, exactly, this was the late 70’s, and it was a great period of time because there were tons of clubs all along the panhandle. I played all over, from Tallahassee to Mobile, Alabama. You know, I was 16, 17, 18 years old, and making great money for back then.