Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works, No Love all Things Tech, and I
Speaker 1: had a listener recently give me a request to cover
Speaker 1: the story of Gibson Guitars, which has been in the
Speaker 1: news recently after the company filed for bankruptcy. Listener who
Speaker 1: requested this, I apologize because while I did a search
Speaker 1: in my email and on Twitter, I couldn't find where
Speaker 1: it was. And maybe you asked me somewhere else, And
Speaker 1: I apologize for for leaving your name out. If you
Speaker 1: can get in touch with me and let me know
Speaker 1: who you are, I'll make sure to to confirm your
Speaker 1: identity in a future episode. But I thought it was
Speaker 1: a great request. I have talked about electric guitars in
Speaker 1: the past, but it was a long long time ago.
Speaker 1: Chris Poulette, my original co host, and I we talked
Speaker 1: all about electric guitars. We're gonna cover some of that
Speaker 1: same territory here, but it's been like eight years, so
Speaker 1: I think it's okay for me to go back over it.
Speaker 1: So in this episode, we're gonna take a look at
Speaker 1: the founder of Gibson Guitars, how acoustic guitars work, the
Speaker 1: early days of electric guitars and how they work, and
Speaker 1: how the company grew into a household name if your
Speaker 1: household was pretty musical. In our next episode, we're gonna
Speaker 1: skip ahead to learn about why the company had to
Speaker 1: declare bankruptcy and what will come next for it. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna kind of book end the company in these
Speaker 1: two episodes. Now, the story of Gibson begins with its founder,
Speaker 1: Orville H. Gibson. Orville was born in eighteen fifty six
Speaker 1: in Chatta Gay, New York, or Chateau Gay if you
Speaker 1: want to pronounce it the French way, But as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell, the actual local pronunciation is closer
Speaker 1: to Chatta Gay. And I couldn't even be getting that wrong.
Speaker 1: And I apologize because I probably am. I'm a Southerner.
Speaker 1: That's a Yankee town. Let's chalk it up to that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: This town is not that far from the boy her
Speaker 1: with Canada, and his dad was originally from England. His
Speaker 1: mom was an American and very little is known about
Speaker 1: his life. He had several siblings. He was the youngest
Speaker 1: of the Gibson children, But there aren't a whole lot
Speaker 1: of records of his life, uh that have been discovered
Speaker 1: over time. So a lot of the stuff that we've
Speaker 1: learned about Gibson we've learned kind of through circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 1: There are a few records that we can cite, but
Speaker 1: we only know a few facts. So when he was
Speaker 1: in his late teens, Gibson moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. We're
Speaker 1: not entirely sure why. He may have left with his brother,
Speaker 1: one of his older brothers, but we don't really know.
Speaker 1: He clearly had an interest in woodcarving and music when
Speaker 1: he was a kid. He became an accomplished musician, and
Speaker 1: he was the leader of a group called the Orpheus
Speaker 1: Mandolin Club. Author Joyce Brumbaugh suggests in her book Orville H.
Speaker 1: Gibson A Peculiar Excellency, that he was likely an animated
Speaker 1: and energetic person because he was performing on the vaudeville's stage.
Speaker 1: So if you're in vaudeville theater, in order to keep
Speaker 1: the audience's attention, you have to be really personable. This
Speaker 1: stands and start contrast with the standard photograph of Orville H. Gibson.
Speaker 1: It shows in unsmiling, heavily mustached gentleman with a really
Speaker 1: intense stare. He does not look like a fun loving individual,
Speaker 1: but since he was the band leader of a vaudeville group,
Speaker 1: he probably lightened up a bit on stage. Gibson began
Speaker 1: making musical instruments in Kalamazoo, possibly starting as early as
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. He worked as a clerk for a
Speaker 1: couple of Kalamazoo businesses to support himself, and he made
Speaker 1: instruments on commission only on occasion. Brumbal says that Orville
Speaker 1: may have viewed being a luthier, that's a person who
Speaker 1: actually builds stringed instruments as a kind of retirement plan,
Speaker 1: like once he got to a certain age, he would
Speaker 1: be making these kind of out of pleasure on his
Speaker 1: own pace for money. The first documented Gibson instrument, according
Speaker 1: to the company official history page, dates to eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: By then, Gibson had his own wood shop. His designs
Speaker 1: built off the arch top design of the violin. I'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about what that arch top
Speaker 1: design means in just a second, but first let's talk
Speaker 1: about the basic structure of stringed instruments like guitars and mandolins,
Speaker 1: again understanding of their anatomy. Now I'm gonna focus mostly
Speaker 1: on guitars for our discussion, but many of the same
Speaker 1: things apply to mandolin's. Mandolin's and guitars are not that different,
Speaker 1: although their strings are grouped and tuned differently. Guitars have
Speaker 1: three major parts. You have the body, and acoustic guitars
Speaker 1: have a hollow body, upon which is the soundboard. More
Speaker 1: on that in a second. Then there's the neck of
Speaker 1: the guitar, upon which are the frets, and at the
Speaker 1: very end of it is the head of the guitar,
Speaker 1: which has the tuning pegs. So let's start with talking
Speaker 1: about the body. Now, you can divide the body of
Speaker 1: most acoustic guitars into three more parts, so you can
Speaker 1: think of a guitar kind of has almost like a
Speaker 1: pair shape or a figure rate shape in a way.
Speaker 1: The narrow part of an acoustic guitar is called the waist,
Speaker 1: and it's meant to make it easier to rest the
Speaker 1: guitar against your knee for playing. The wider sections, the
Speaker 1: ones that are that bow out a bit, they're called bouts.
Speaker 1: So the upper bout of a guitar is the bit
Speaker 1: that connects to the neck of the guitar. The lower
Speaker 1: bout has the bridge attached to it. The body on
Speaker 1: an acoustic guitar tends to have a large hole in it, called,
Speaker 1: appropriately enough, the sound hole. Below the sound hole is
Speaker 1: a piece called the bridge. This is the piece that
Speaker 1: acts as the anchor point for the strings on that
Speaker 1: end of the guitar. On the bridge is another piece
Speaker 1: called the saddle, and the strings of the guitar rest
Speaker 1: against the saddle, which provides a raised point so that
Speaker 1: the strings are clear of the bridge and of the
Speaker 1: rest of the guitar the frets along the neck. Otherwise
Speaker 1: the strings would not be able to vibrate properly. They
Speaker 1: would be uh brushing up against the guitar and you
Speaker 1: would get a buzzing noise. Strings stretch up to the
Speaker 1: neck to the head of the guitar, where they pass
Speaker 1: through a piece called the nut and wrap around the
Speaker 1: tuning pegs. So the nut is a piece with grooves
Speaker 1: in it that the strings fit through, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of similar to the saddle on the other end of
Speaker 1: the guitar. The nut and saddle act as as sort
Speaker 1: of um a raised section that keeps those strings clear
Speaker 1: of the rest of the guitar. Right, So very similar
Speaker 1: in many ways to the bridge and and saddle. If
Speaker 1: you to turn the tuning pegs, you can increase or
Speaker 1: decrease the amount of tension on individual strings, which changes
Speaker 1: their rate of vibration and therefore their pitch. The saddle
Speaker 1: and the nut represent the two ends of a guitar string.
Speaker 1: So even though the string technically extends past the nut
Speaker 1: and the saddle, so on one end, on the nut end,
Speaker 1: it continues on to wrap around the tuning peg. On
Speaker 1: the saddle end, it continues down to the anchor point
Speaker 1: on the bridge. Uh, we actually considered the length of
Speaker 1: the string to be saddle to nut. Now that distance
Speaker 1: between the nut and the saddle is the scale length
Speaker 1: of the guitar. When you strum a string, you cause
Speaker 1: it to vibrate, and vibrations pass through the saddle to
Speaker 1: the bridge and therefore to the soundboard. And let's stick
Speaker 1: with the strings for a second to have a discussion
Speaker 1: about pitch and notes, and then we'll get back to
Speaker 1: the soundboard and the body of the guitar and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about acoustics, the frequency of the strings
Speaker 1: vibration determines its pitch. Rapidly vibrating strings create higher pitches
Speaker 1: than slower vibrating strings, and several factors determine how fast
Speaker 1: a string will vibrate. So one of those is the
Speaker 1: length of the string. Another is the amount of tension
Speaker 1: that's on the string. The more tension is on the string,
Speaker 1: the faster it's going to vibrate. The weight of the
Speaker 1: string matters. The lighter the string is, the faster it
Speaker 1: will vibrate, and how springy the string is. So if
Speaker 1: you have a very springy material like a rubber band,
Speaker 1: that vibrates a lot more than non stringy springy material
Speaker 1: like twine. For example, the first string on a guitar
Speaker 1: tends to be very very thin and have less weight,
Speaker 1: and the sixth string, the last string on a standard guitar,
Speaker 1: is much thicker and heavier. Pressing down on a string
Speaker 1: at a fret will decrease the strength strings length, and
Speaker 1: that increases the frequency of the strings vibrations, which also
Speaker 1: means it makes the pitch of the strings note higher.
Speaker 1: So when you have a guitar, you got that neck,
Speaker 1: you got all the frets on there. If you put
Speaker 1: your finger down on a string and you press down
Speaker 1: and you play that string, it's going to play at
Speaker 1: a higher pitch than it would if you didn't have
Speaker 1: your finger there, if you were playing it as they
Speaker 1: say open. Open is when you do not have a
Speaker 1: finger on the neck where you're pressing down at a
Speaker 1: fret on a particular string. And as you move up
Speaker 1: the neck closer toward the bridge, the pitch of the
Speaker 1: note you play will increase. It will go higher because
Speaker 1: you're decreasing the length of the string and making it
Speaker 1: vibrate more frequently within a second. Now, when I talk
Speaker 1: about frequency, what I'm really talking about is the number
Speaker 1: of times the string passes over an arbitrary point after
Speaker 1: you strum it. So imagine you've got a little sensor
Speaker 1: placed just below a string, and you strum the string,
Speaker 1: and the sensor counts every time the string leaves and
Speaker 1: returns to a certain position. So every time it moves
Speaker 1: out and back counts as a wave, like a sound wave.
Speaker 1: The frequency of those waves determines the pitch. So, for example,
Speaker 1: let's say you've got a guitar and you've tuned it
Speaker 1: to the standard guitar tuning, which is E, B, G,
Speaker 1: D A E. Your first string is tuned to EAT. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were to press down on the first string
Speaker 1: at the fifth fret, and then you were to strum
Speaker 1: that string, the string would vibrate at a frequency of
Speaker 1: four forty times per second, and that would produce and
Speaker 1: A note that is the frequency of an A note.
Speaker 1: Strumming an open first string to produce the E note
Speaker 1: it naturally would produce would cause the string to vibrate
Speaker 1: at three nine point six times per second. That's because
Speaker 1: an open note represents a longer string, so that's why
Speaker 1: it has fewer vibrations per second. It's a longer string.
Speaker 1: If you have a scale length of twenty six inches,
Speaker 1: meaning that's the distance between the nut and the saddle,
Speaker 1: the E note would represent a string that's twenty six
Speaker 1: inches long at that particular tension and that particular weight.
Speaker 1: If you put your finger on the fifth threat, the
Speaker 1: strings length has been reduced to nineteen point four eight inches,
Speaker 1: and if you were to go all the way down
Speaker 1: to the twelfth fret, you'd be at thirteen inches. You
Speaker 1: would produce an E note again, but that would be
Speaker 1: an octave higher than your original E. The notes from
Speaker 1: the major scale the C scale R, C, D, E, F, G, A, B,
Speaker 1: and then C again. The frequencies for those notes are
Speaker 1: two hundred sixty four hurts for C to ninety seven
Speaker 1: hurts for D, three hurts for E, three fifty two
Speaker 1: hurts for F, three nine six hurts for G four
Speaker 1: or forty hurts for A four, nine five hurts for B,
Speaker 1: and five eight hurts for C. Again, that means to
Speaker 1: go from C to D you would have to multiply
Speaker 1: sees frequency by nine eight. But to get from D
Speaker 1: to E you would have to multiply ds frequency by
Speaker 1: ten ninths. And to go from E to F you
Speaker 1: got to multiply by sixteen fifteen. Which sounds like some
Speaker 1: really screwy math. So how did we figure all this out?
Speaker 1: We'll explain all that in a minute, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. So how
Speaker 1: did we get this weird math where we take one
Speaker 1: frequency and then we start multiplying it by stuff like
Speaker 1: nine eighth or sixteen fifteen or ten ninths or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: we actually work backward. The major scale represents songs or
Speaker 1: notes rather that we humans find pleasant, So what happened
Speaker 1: was we figured out the notes that we most like
Speaker 1: to listen to, and we started tuning our instruments to
Speaker 1: those notes. We said, oh, this is this has got
Speaker 1: a nice sound to it. It It appeals to me, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to tune this inst are meant to play
Speaker 1: these notes, And we just kept working with instruments to
Speaker 1: find the tunings that pleased us, and then they became
Speaker 1: the standard. Later, when acoustics really began to emerge as
Speaker 1: a branch of physics, we started to understand the mathematical
Speaker 1: relationships between these notes. Really, when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: music is math. So for example, the first ce and
Speaker 1: the major scale has a frequency of two hundred sixty
Speaker 1: four hurts. If you move up an octave to the
Speaker 1: next see as a frequency of five eight hurts. And
Speaker 1: if you pay attention, you see that that is twice
Speaker 1: the number of two sixty four. So the notes we
Speaker 1: are familiar with end up being arbitrary, right, the thing
Speaker 1: we called to see it's called a cee for arbitrary reasons,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the reason why we picked that set
Speaker 1: of frequencies as opposed to some other one. You know,
Speaker 1: we picked two sixty four instead of to seventy. It's
Speaker 1: because it sounded good to us, so we happen to
Speaker 1: like those notes. That's the ones that ended up being picked.
Speaker 1: And then it just turns out that, uh, we started
Speaker 1: learning about the mathematical relationships later. The mathematical connection allows
Speaker 1: for alternate tunings. If we take the same progression of
Speaker 1: fractions that we used in the C scale. You know
Speaker 1: when I said nine eights and then ten ninths and
Speaker 1: in fifteen sixteenth, it will use the exact same progression
Speaker 1: that you use to determine the different frequencies in the
Speaker 1: C major scale. And then you started with D as
Speaker 1: your first note. So you begin with D and then
Speaker 1: you decide to go up nine eighths and then etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You would find out that some of the notes would
Speaker 1: still have the same frequency as on the C major scale,
Speaker 1: but some of them would be a little different, not
Speaker 1: a lot, maybe just a few uh maybe a few
Speaker 1: waves difference of frequency maybe if you hurts difference, I
Speaker 1: should say in frequency. But you would also notice that
Speaker 1: the both the f uh and the C would have
Speaker 1: frequencies significantly higher than they did on the C scale.
Speaker 1: So you look at the D scale, and you say, huh.
Speaker 1: While most of these are more or less in line
Speaker 1: with their compatriots over in the C scale, F and
Speaker 1: C on this D scale are very different. They're higher.
Speaker 1: That's where we get F sharp and C sharp, and
Speaker 1: in fact that's where we get sharps. In general. That's
Speaker 1: why certain letters have a sharp or a flat. By
Speaker 1: the way, sharp and flat, it's all dependent on your perspective.
Speaker 1: Uh So a G sharp is or rather a G
Speaker 1: flat is the same as an F sharp. So F
Speaker 1: sharp would mean that the frequency is a little higher
Speaker 1: than your standard F note. G flat means that the
Speaker 1: frequency is a little lower than your standard G note.
Speaker 1: But F and G are right next to each other,
Speaker 1: So and F sharp and a G flat they're the
Speaker 1: same thing. Um so good to know. Also, when you
Speaker 1: play a note, you typically don't get one pure note,
Speaker 1: especially on the guitar, you actually get harmonics. Plucking a
Speaker 1: note doesn't just generate the frequency, the fundamental frequency for
Speaker 1: that note, but the harmonics at two, three, and four
Speaker 1: times the pure tone. However, each step up also has
Speaker 1: a reduction in amplitude or volume. So for example, let's
Speaker 1: say you play an A note, which is that four
Speaker 1: forty hurts. Uh. You also get some harmonics at eight
Speaker 1: eight hurts, but your amplitude will be lower, like half
Speaker 1: the amplitude of your fundamental frequency. So we tend to
Speaker 1: perceive these fundamental frequencies and their overtones as a single note,
Speaker 1: like we're not hearing multiple notes when we pluck this.
Speaker 1: They all kind of blend together to make one note.
Speaker 1: But combinations of overtones can create a different feel for sounds,
Speaker 1: so they are important in acoustics. The hollow body of
Speaker 1: the guitar amplifies the vibrations from the strings. The vibrations
Speaker 1: move through the strings, through the bridge onto the sound board.
Speaker 1: It causes air molecules inside the hollow body of the
Speaker 1: guitar to vibrate. They emerge from this whole in a concentration,
Speaker 1: and then those vibrating air molecules cause other air molecules
Speaker 1: to vibrate, and so on and so forth, until air
Speaker 1: molecules in your ear canals start to vibrate and press
Speaker 1: against your tim panic membrane or create areas of low pressure,
Speaker 1: allowing your tim tympanic membrane to press outward, and again
Speaker 1: we get the stimulation of nerve cells in our ears
Speaker 1: that ultimately our brains interpret as sound. But I've talked
Speaker 1: about that a lot in recent episodes, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to go over it again in any greater detail
Speaker 1: than what I just did. That is so Gibson's designs
Speaker 1: incorporated an arch structure. I mentioned that earlier. So what
Speaker 1: did that actually mean? Well, that was something that was
Speaker 1: common in violins, and by arch structure, I mean that
Speaker 1: the soundboard on the guitar bowed out, bowed out maybe
Speaker 1: or arched out. That's probably the better way of putting it.
Speaker 1: Arched out rather than being perfectly flat. So instead of
Speaker 1: having a flat face guitar, the face of the guitar
Speaker 1: actually uh arched outward a little bit from the player.
Speaker 1: The whole instrument was carved out of a single piece
Speaker 1: of wood, and Orville also hollowed out part of the
Speaker 1: neck of the guitar because he was hoping that it
Speaker 1: would help improve the quality of sound the guitar would produce.
Speaker 1: So at the base of the neck where it joins
Speaker 1: that upper bout that was actually hollowed out to try
Speaker 1: and create more resonance for the guitar. Orville Gibson actually
Speaker 1: filed a patent for his design, though specifically he filed
Speaker 1: it for mandolins, but it was the same approach and
Speaker 1: he filed for it in and the Patent Office granted
Speaker 1: him a patent in eight While constructing a guitar, Gibson
Speaker 1: would tap upon the partially finished body and listen for
Speaker 1: the sound that it made when he tapped it, and
Speaker 1: this would be a way that he would tune the
Speaker 1: guitar's body painstakingly between carving sessions to get it just right.
Speaker 1: So he listened to it and think, that's not the
Speaker 1: sound quality I'm gonna need. I'll carve away a little
Speaker 1: bit more to get the right kind of resonance. This
Speaker 1: was the same approach that master violin builders were using
Speaker 1: when they were making their incredible instruments, so it made
Speaker 1: the process of building a guitar really methodical. Another word
Speaker 1: from methodical would be really slow. Gibson actually gained a
Speaker 1: reputation as a talented luthier, and his instruments were really
Speaker 1: in demand, but he was not able to produce as
Speaker 1: many instruments as people wanted, and so he began to
Speaker 1: look around for a way to expand this and in
Speaker 1: nineteen o two he sought out help in the form
Speaker 1: of a business agreement with a collection of Kalamazoo business
Speaker 1: owners essentially five owners who were willing to launch a
Speaker 1: business around this. They formed the Gibson Mandolin Guitar Manufacturing Company.
Speaker 1: Here's the weird thing. Gibson himself was not a partner
Speaker 1: in this firm. Instead, he accepted a one time payment
Speaker 1: of two thousand five dollars for his patents where his
Speaker 1: patent I should say, and served as a consultant for
Speaker 1: the first two years of the company's history. But in
Speaker 1: nineteen o four, Orville Gibson left the company that bore
Speaker 1: his own name, and he would later leave Kalamazoo, Michigan entirely,
Speaker 1: perhaps due to declining health. He drew a pension from
Speaker 1: the company until his death in nineteen eight teen, um
Speaker 1: he died from heart failure. The company was building instruments
Speaker 1: based off of Orville Gibson's designs, however, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: nineteen Lloyd Lore joined the company l O. A. R.
Speaker 1: He'd become an important person at Gibson, as would another
Speaker 1: employee named Ted McHugh, and at that point the company's
Speaker 1: guitar line was called the L Series. The series had
Speaker 1: eschewed some of Gibson's original designs, like the intricate inlays
Speaker 1: that he would create for his soundboards that cut down
Speaker 1: on their manufacturing time and had also cut down on
Speaker 1: a cost. He also they also had abandoned the idea
Speaker 1: of carving out the UH the instruments sides and next
Speaker 1: from a single piece of wood, or hollowing out a neck.
Speaker 1: They had pretty much given up on some of the
Speaker 1: more time consuming elements of this. There were models that
Speaker 1: were called the L the and then they had the
Speaker 1: L one to the L four someone which had been
Speaker 1: discontinued by the time that Laura came on, But some
Speaker 1: of them were actually available in multiple sizes, so different
Speaker 1: model of guitar UH, sometimes with different sizes within a
Speaker 1: single model family. MQ would develop a steel bar that
Speaker 1: could fit inside the neck of a guitar to improve
Speaker 1: the instrument's strength and rigidity, while also giving Luthier's the
Speaker 1: ability to make the next a little more slim, which
Speaker 1: would make them easier to hold and more comfortable to play.
Speaker 1: His invention was called a truss rod, and it would
Speaker 1: find its way into what many people consider to be
Speaker 1: the first modern acoustic guitar, the L five. The L
Speaker 1: five was Lloyd Lore's baby. He had created some novel
Speaker 1: designs for the company's F five mandolin, and he decided
Speaker 1: to use those same design principles when working on the
Speaker 1: L five guitar. The design included getting rid of the
Speaker 1: sound hole entirely, so instead of having that sort of
Speaker 1: oval sound hole that's in the face of the guitar,
Speaker 1: he went with a pair of F holes. They're so
Speaker 1: called because they look kind of like a lower case
Speaker 1: stylized letter F, and they were on either side of
Speaker 1: where the string were. This is similar to the way
Speaker 1: violins were constructed and the F five mandolin as well.
Speaker 1: So this was a new way of um allowing sound
Speaker 1: to emerge from the body of the guitar, and it
Speaker 1: gave it a slightly different tone than the guitars that
Speaker 1: had round or oval sound holes. The guitar also had
Speaker 1: an adjustable bridge, and an adjustable bridge leads to adjustable action.
Speaker 1: The action on a guitar refers to the height of
Speaker 1: the strings above the guitars fretboard, so you're looking at
Speaker 1: the neck of the guitar, you're looking at the frets.
Speaker 1: The frets are slightly raised from the neck. That's the
Speaker 1: point where you can put pressure so that the string
Speaker 1: ends up changing its length. You can make the strings
Speaker 1: shorter by pressing down on the strings at the frets. Well,
Speaker 1: you want to have the right height between your guitar
Speaker 1: strings and the frets in order to get the sound
Speaker 1: you want. You can actually measure it by setting a
Speaker 1: ruler down on the fret and then seeing where the
Speaker 1: string falls on the rulers measurements typic. You would use
Speaker 1: the twelfth fret on a guitar to measure a strings action.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the middle of the neck, and keeping
Speaker 1: the height of the strings relative to the frets at
Speaker 1: a good action is important to make sure the guitar
Speaker 1: plays well and stays in tune properly. Low action is
Speaker 1: easier to play because you don't have to press is
Speaker 1: hard to have the strings make contact with the frets. However,
Speaker 1: it also can create a buzz sound as you play,
Speaker 1: because sometimes the strings are gonna make contact with the
Speaker 1: frets and they're gonna vibrate against the frets. That's where
Speaker 1: you get that buzzing sound. High action is harder to
Speaker 1: play because you have to press harder to make the
Speaker 1: strings make contact with the frets, but they It also
Speaker 1: plays at a higher volume than low action does, and
Speaker 1: adjustable bridge made it easier from musicians to get their
Speaker 1: instruments set just right for their style of play. And uh,
Speaker 1: you also find that acoustic guitars in general have higher
Speaker 1: action than electric guitars because that higher volume is necessary
Speaker 1: for an acoustic guitar. With electric guitar, you've got electricification.
Speaker 1: An acoustic guitar you don't have that necessarily. Laura would
Speaker 1: stay with Gibson until nineteen twenty four, and he would
Speaker 1: leave the company after trying to convince executives and they
Speaker 1: should let him experiment with designing electric instruments. They said, no,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense. There's that's not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: Stop doing it. So he left the company and he
Speaker 1: would go on to found his own instruments company with
Speaker 1: a couple of other former Gibson employees, and they would
Speaker 1: start producing electric instruments beginning in nineteen thirty three, although
Speaker 1: the method they used was not the one that would
Speaker 1: become the standard for electric guitars moving forward. Gibson itself
Speaker 1: would not start getting into the electric guitar business until
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, and I'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about electric guitars and how they work in just a second,
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: After Lare left Gibson the and he continued to design
Speaker 1: guitars built off of his work. To improve the volume,
Speaker 1: new models became a bit larger, to around sixteen to
Speaker 1: seventeen inches across the body. In nineteen thirty four, Gibson
Speaker 1: introduced a guitar called the Super four hundred, a luxury instrument.
Speaker 1: It had gold plated tuning features at pearl inlays along
Speaker 1: the neck and ebony fingerboard, and a lot of other embellishments.
Speaker 1: The name came from the instruments price tag of four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in nineteen thirty four. If we had just
Speaker 1: for inflation, that guitar would cost seven thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: sixty dollars in today's money. Who It was also bigger
Speaker 1: than the standard Gibson guitars. It measured eighteen inches across
Speaker 1: the body, compared to that sixteen or seventeen inch average
Speaker 1: that Gibson typically made. Some musicians felt that this was
Speaker 1: just too big. Some people thought that really the guitar
Speaker 1: only existed as kind of a status symbol and not
Speaker 1: really as a practical guitar. But other folks really like
Speaker 1: the design. They really felt that they got superior sound
Speaker 1: of this guitar style. Gibson also started making flat top
Speaker 1: acoustic guitars around this time and introduced some lower cost guitars, so,
Speaker 1: in other words, they started making some guitars that didn't
Speaker 1: have that arch front face to them, but the company
Speaker 1: was still slow to adopt the electric guitar approach. There
Speaker 1: was a call for electric guitars because the acoustic guitar
Speaker 1: is such a relatively quiet instrument. One of the popular
Speaker 1: styles of music at around this time in history was
Speaker 1: big band, which used drums and really louder instruments to
Speaker 1: drive the music. So the guitar wasn't really a good
Speaker 1: match for those types of pieces. The other instruments in
Speaker 1: the band would drown out the music the guitar was making.
Speaker 1: In fact, um there were musicians in that era who
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, you know, I knew the guy was
Speaker 1: playing the guitar, but you couldn't hear it. I mean,
Speaker 1: they might as well just have saved themselves the effort
Speaker 1: to just kind of move their hand in front of
Speaker 1: the strings, because no one was going to hear it anyway,
Speaker 1: because all the other instruments were so loud. If you
Speaker 1: listen to my episodes on speakers, the ones that just published,
Speaker 1: you know that this was the same time people were
Speaker 1: working on creating electronic loudspeakers. So one solution would be
Speaker 1: to use a microphone and an acoustic guitar, but that
Speaker 1: was not really ideal. Uh, you would get a lot
Speaker 1: of acoustic feedback, you would get a lot of interference
Speaker 1: stuff where the sounds coming out of the loudspeaker would
Speaker 1: not sound as smooth or natural as the rest of
Speaker 1: the instruments in the band. So it wasn't a great solution.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty one, musician George bow Champ and an
Speaker 1: electrical engineer named Adolf Rickenbacker decided to tackle this problem
Speaker 1: and find a way to electrically amplify the volume of
Speaker 1: a played string. Now, there had been a couple of
Speaker 1: other experiments creating electric guitars, but they were taking a
Speaker 1: totally different approach than what anyone else had done at
Speaker 1: that point. So bo Schamp, he played Hawaiian guitar and
Speaker 1: Hawaiian music it tends to rely upon the guitar as
Speaker 1: the melodic leader of a piece of music, so you
Speaker 1: really had to make sure the guitar could be heard
Speaker 1: because that was the heart of the music you were playing.
Speaker 1: So you had to have something that would allow the
Speaker 1: guitar to be heard clearly above other instruments. So they
Speaker 1: came up with a pretty genius idea that we now
Speaker 1: call a pickup. Pickups rely upon one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things to talk about, Magnetic Fields, not the band, though
Speaker 1: I do love the Magnetic Fields and their Songbook of
Speaker 1: Love is amazing, so you should go listen to it.
Speaker 1: If you've not heard Book of Love by the Magnetic Fields,
Speaker 1: go listen to that. Anyway, I'm talking about the physics
Speaker 1: of magnetic fields and electro magnetism. The heart of the
Speaker 1: pickup is a coil of conductive wire, typically made of copper,
Speaker 1: and it tends to be wrapped around a permanent magnet.
Speaker 1: This is inside the body of the guitar and positioned
Speaker 1: underneath the strings. So you might use a bar magnet
Speaker 1: which stretches over the entire length of where the strings
Speaker 1: are wrapped thousands and thousands of times by very thin
Speaker 1: copper wire or you might use a series of magnets,
Speaker 1: one under each string, and each of them wrapped with
Speaker 1: copper wire. Those strings are made The strings of the
Speaker 1: guitar are made out of ferro magnetic material, so they
Speaker 1: are also you can magnetize them. In fact, due to
Speaker 1: the proximity of the strings to the permanent magnet in
Speaker 1: the pickup, the strings themselves are slightly magnetized, and you
Speaker 1: could even design a pickup in which there's no permanent
Speaker 1: magnet in the pickup itself. You could have the coils
Speaker 1: of copper wrapped around some other material that's not a magnet,
Speaker 1: not a permanent magnetol on its own, as long as
Speaker 1: the strings of the guitar itself were magnetized. If the
Speaker 1: strings are magnetized, this is still going to work. So
Speaker 1: when you cause one of these strings to vibrate, the
Speaker 1: magnetized string creates a source of magnetic flux. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a fluctuating magnetic field, just caused by the
Speaker 1: vibration of the string. So the magnetic fields moving, and
Speaker 1: that's similar to the way a magnetic field would change
Speaker 1: if you were to run alternating current through an electro magnet.
Speaker 1: For example, This moving magnet near the coil of conductive
Speaker 1: wire induces a change of voltage in the wire, allowing
Speaker 1: current to flow through, and if you transfer that current
Speaker 1: to an amplifier and then that that amplified signal to
Speaker 1: a speaker, you get amplified guitar strings. You're ready to rock.
Speaker 1: The guitar itself is passive, by the way, so you're
Speaker 1: not sending electricity to the guitar. You're not powering the guitar. Instead,
Speaker 1: the guitar is generating electricity through this process of magnetic flux,
Speaker 1: inducing a change of voltage in the pickup. So the
Speaker 1: cable you plug into an electric guitar is there to
Speaker 1: convey the electric signal from the guitar to an amplifier.
Speaker 1: It's not sending any power to the device itself. There
Speaker 1: are some guitars that have active power elements, but your
Speaker 1: basic electric guitar doesn't need them. It's completely passive. Gibson
Speaker 1: started making their own hollow body electric guitars in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, starting with the e H one fifty. The
Speaker 1: e H stood for Electric Hawaiian, meaning it was an
Speaker 1: electric Hawaiian style guitar and it was meant to be
Speaker 1: played on your lap as a steel guitar would be,
Speaker 1: so it's a lap guitar. Following that was the E
Speaker 1: S one fifty E stood for electric Spanish. Spanish is
Speaker 1: the general term for the style of guitar that we
Speaker 1: typically associate with acoustic guitar, just that basic kind of
Speaker 1: pear shape, hollow body style, that's a Spanish guitar. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty there was a guy named Les Paul who
Speaker 1: invented a new type of solid body electric guitar. So
Speaker 1: there's no hollow element to this. UH. It was more
Speaker 1: like a Frankenstein's Monster version of a guitar because he
Speaker 1: was using bits and pieces of other guitars in this.
Speaker 1: But the heart of it, the main piece of it,
Speaker 1: from the head all the way down to the base
Speaker 1: of the guitar, was a solid piece of hindwood. It
Speaker 1: was a pinewood block. The UH actually the neck and
Speaker 1: fingerboard ended up being from a Gibson guitar. So he
Speaker 1: would cut this pine block short, put a actual guitar
Speaker 1: neck and front board onto it, and then on either
Speaker 1: side of this pine board block he put the old
Speaker 1: sides to an epiphone archtop guitar. So it makes it
Speaker 1: look more like a guitar, but the block of what
Speaker 1: itself was solid. He had an electric pickup, actually, he
Speaker 1: had a couple of electric pickups installed on this thing.
Speaker 1: But the guitar itself didn't have any hollow element to
Speaker 1: its body, so it had no resonating chamber. And this
Speaker 1: was a whole new idea, this idea of you don't
Speaker 1: need that hollow body to generate sound. You can just
Speaker 1: use the electric pickups to pull out these vibrations and
Speaker 1: create sound this way. And he called his creation the log.
Speaker 1: The thing was the guitar just had a amazing qualities
Speaker 1: that other guitars didn't like, like an incredible sustain You
Speaker 1: could play a note and it would sustain for a
Speaker 1: really long time. Because his pickups were nice and sensitive,
Speaker 1: they could really detect when the vibration was still going,
Speaker 1: even when it would normally be inaudible to us, it
Speaker 1: would be it would generate enough of a signal that
Speaker 1: through an amplifier you could keep hearing it for a
Speaker 1: really long time. And there was no acoustic feedback because
Speaker 1: there was no there was no hollow body there, so
Speaker 1: you didn't have any acoustic interference coming in as you
Speaker 1: played it. So he went to Gibson and he showed
Speaker 1: off his design and said, I think this might be
Speaker 1: really useful for you guys. But the company was not
Speaker 1: blown away and they dismissed less Paul initially. But then
Speaker 1: along came a competitor that changed things. That competitor was
Speaker 1: a guy named Leo Fender who was coming to the
Speaker 1: same conclusion as less Paul with regard to solid body
Speaker 1: electric guitar construction. So he had similar ideas of how
Speaker 1: this should be done, and he began working on this
Speaker 1: idea in the early nineteen forties and that design that
Speaker 1: he started working on slowly evolved into what would become
Speaker 1: the first commercial, mass produced solid body Spanish style electric guitar.
Speaker 1: It took about a decade for him to do it,
Speaker 1: but he was able to do it and launch it,
Speaker 1: and that was the Fender Telecaster. The Gibson company took notice.
Speaker 1: Then a decade had past, Gibson had still not really
Speaker 1: looked at this solid body design. But then Fender comes
Speaker 1: out with this thing. People are blown away by it,
Speaker 1: and Gibson says, WHOA, we could have jumped on this
Speaker 1: a decade earlier, but we didn't. And they get back
Speaker 1: in touch with less Paul. So less Paul comes back
Speaker 1: out and they essentially asked him to kind of consult
Speaker 1: with them as they start to build a solid body
Speaker 1: electric guitar design for the company. The extent of less
Speaker 1: Paul's involvement in that particular design is a matter of
Speaker 1: some debate. Some people say that he oversaw a design
Speaker 1: but didn't really have a whole lot of inputs. Some
Speaker 1: people say that he had a lot of influence on
Speaker 1: the design of the guitar. Either way, he did agree
Speaker 1: to endorse it and that was the birth of the
Speaker 1: Gibson Les Paul. He became an official product in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two and became the signature guitar for the Gibson company.
Speaker 1: Gibson would introduce several innovations in guitars over the following years,
Speaker 1: including a double coil pickup called the Humbucker, the flying
Speaker 1: V body style of guitar those are pretty wicked, and
Speaker 1: then uh a lot more as well. Ted McCarty, who
Speaker 1: was the president of the company during this era of innovation,
Speaker 1: he even was inventing stuff that was going into production,
Speaker 1: including a bridge called the tune oh Manic that had
Speaker 1: individually adjustable saddles to fine tune guitar action, so each
Speaker 1: string had its own individual saddle. McCarty ended up leaving
Speaker 1: the company in nineteen sixty six, and following his departure,
Speaker 1: there was a sort of tumultuous time at Gibson, a
Speaker 1: lot of uncertainty, and there was also a series of
Speaker 1: mergers and acquisitions that made things pretty complicated and sometimes
Speaker 1: put the company in a very difficult position. And I'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that series of decisions
Speaker 1: in the next episode when we unravel the reasons why
Speaker 1: Gibson recently declared bankruptcy and then look at what the
Speaker 1: company hopes to accomplish once it emerges from bankruptcy. But
Speaker 1: that's in the next episode. For now, I invite you
Speaker 1: guys to get in touch with me. Let me know
Speaker 1: what you think, Let me know if there are any
Speaker 1: topics you would like me to cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. Maybe there's a technology, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: company or a person that you would like me to
Speaker 1: talk about. Maybe there's someone you would like me to
Speaker 1: interview or have on as a guest. I would love
Speaker 1: to hear all of those ideas. Write me. The address
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop me a message on Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: the handle with both of those tech stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram, and make sure you go to
Speaker 1: twitch dot tv slash tech stuff. You can watch me
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Speaker 1: a chat room there you can participate in that as well.
Speaker 1: I look forward to seeing you and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For moral this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is that how stuff works dot com