Sunday, 25 February 2018

Gibson's Failed Modernist Experiment: The Origins of the Flying V

It was Seth Lover at Gibson who first sketched out a rough shape for a new guitar design with an unusual pointed body, and it was Seth, too, who gave the instrument its name: the Flying V. Seth was used to coming up with important new items for the company. A little earlier, he’d devised Gibson’s humbucking pickup, and two of those sat proudly on the V when it debuted early in 1958, almost exactly 60 years ago as you read this. It was the most revolutionary electric guitar that had ever been made. There was an unwritten law that the body of a guitar had to follow a traditional shape. Until the V, virtually every guitar—other than some lap steels—had familiar rounded outlines to the body, with an upper and lower bout straddling a waisted middle. This symmetrical figure-of-eight shape led to the cliché about a guitar being like a woman’s body. Guitars had been this shape for a long time, since their roots in earlier centuries. Every guitar more or less copied the standard template. Gibson was not known for revolutionary moves. It was seen more as a safe, successful Midwest manufacturer. But the firm’s managers were well...

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