vic wrote:
It's really amazing...I mean why start messing around with a construction that was almost perfect ? One explanation offered by Gibson at the time was that these changes were suppose to lead to better tonal properties. It could not have been to save on costs (sqeezing a thin slice of maple between two mahogany layers sounds like more work to me ? and making the headstocks bigger by about 20% means using more mahogany...!)
The Gibson-way of doing things sometimes amazes (even) me ?
Well it's not just a Gibson thing. Look at how Fender changed the Stratocaster and the Telecaster over the years. Some of those changes were actually, I think, not bad ideas but they were badly executed because Fender generally were looking to cut costs everywhere.
TV must have had something to do with it. It's worth making the headstock bigger and the logo easier to read if your guitars are going to be on TV. If X-Rated Bob is going to be playing on the Grand Ole Opry you WANT the public to know that he's playing your guitar.
Classic designs weren't designed to be classic. Often they just happened. Gibson might not have set out to have specific combinations of woods and pickups. They just started at some arbitrary point and that design ended up being "the classic". They may have genuinely intended improvements to be improvements but firstly such things are subjective, their idea of good tone might not be mine, and secondly it's in the nature of things that intended improvements don't always work out as planned. Also people are ornery beasts, they often don't want improvements not because they think whatever-it-is can't be improved but because they don't want change.
Some years ago I went to a certain pub in London. I'd sought it out because, I'd read, it had the best selection of real ales in London and the ales were well kept. It was a pub that had obviously been kept pretty much intact and "as was" for many years - which was part of it's charm for me. I struck up conversation with an old bloke who was sitting there. He told me that "my dad drank here, and my grandfather drank here, and his father, God rest his soul, drank here" (every time he mentioned his grandfather's father he'd touch the peak of his cap and add "God rest his soul"). Then he said "and now this damn yank has bought the place, and he wants to sand the floorboards."
Now you could see that the floor hadn't been sanded in a while, and it was getting a bit uneven (not to mention discoloured) and with people getting increasingly likely to sue the pants off of the landlord because they stubbed their toe on a piece of protruding woodwork you'd think that maybe levelling things out a bit, without ripping up the whole place and rebuilding it into something much more modern.
So I asked "is that so bad?"
"Them floorboards was good enough for my father. They was good enough for my grandfather, and they was good enough for HIS father, God rest his soul. And besides, once he's sanded the floorboards
who knows what he'll do next.
"
I think that often we're like that old timer in that pub. When we see a change all we know is that it's a change and once one thing changes who knows what else will change.
