WEBVTT - Why did Gibson Declare Bankruptcy? 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:13.920 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.119 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.920 how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.000 in the last episode I talked about the founding of 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.640 the Gibson Guitar Company, and that yet about how Orville 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.320 Gibson kind of sort of founded the company that bore 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:31.920 his name. I say kind of sort of because he 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:36.280 was a luthier, someone who makes mandolins and guitars, and 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:42.040 sought out the help of some businessmen in Calamazoo, Michigan, 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.440 after he started getting more requests for his work than 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:49.360 he was able to provide for it was it was great, 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.280 his work was in demand, but he wanted to to expand, 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.240 so he got together with a group of businessmen who 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.480 all made a business that they called a the Gibson Company, 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.280 um specifically the Gibson Mandolin Guitar Manufacturing Company, and Orville 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.240 was not a partner in that company. Instead, he sold 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.880 a patent to the group and he got a kind 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:14.360 of a pension from them, but other than that he 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:16.960 was not heavily involved in the business. After a couple 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:20.839 of years. I also talked about acoustic guitars and how 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:23.520 they work. I talked about electric guitar pickups and how 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:26.319 they work, as well as the evolution of Gibson in 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:31.200 its first six decades are so arguably seven decades depending 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:34.240 upon how you're counting. Now today we're going to look 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:37.560 at how Gibson has changed hands over the years leading 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.880 up to the company declaring bankruptcy in two thousand eighteen. 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.920 So what happened and is Gibson alone in this or 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:50.080 are other major guitar brands also facing financial difficulty? Well, first, 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:51.840 we have to backtrack just a bit. So in the 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.120 last episode I ended by talking about what was going 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:57.920 on in Gibson in the nineteen sixties. But earlier, back 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:03.120 in nineteen Gibson's ownership changed hands. A company called Chicago 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:07.360 Musical Instruments or c m I acquired Gibson, and the 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.520 founder of c m I was a guy named M. H. Berlin. 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.680 Berlin was born in eighteen ninety five in Romania, and 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.720 his family immigrated to the United States in the early 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:22.760 nineteen hundreds. They moved to Chicago. Berlin attended school through 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:27.080 the eighth grade and then left school to work at Wurlitzer's, 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.519 a retail store in Chicago. After serving in the U. S. 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.120 Navy during World War One, Berlin would return to the 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.200 United States and, after working for a musical instruments company 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:40.120 as a salesman, would eventually be the founder of CMI 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:45.080 in nineteen twenty. In nineteen forty four, only one of 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:50.079 the original five Kalamazoo businessmen who founded Gibson was still alive. 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:54.520 That was John Adams, not the president, and he was 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.640 eighty five years old. He decided he wanted to sell Gibson. 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.040 C m I had own into a successful musical instruments 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:06.800 distributor company, and Berlin's company bought out Gibson. For the 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.960 next two decades, Gibson performed well in the market and 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:16.680 introduced numerous innovations in their products. In nine, an odd 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:21.320 merger happened. C m I, the parent company for Gibson, 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.079 would merge with a company called E C L. Well. 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:29.440 What was e C L It was a brewery and 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:35.720 concrete company in Ecuador? What the what? Well? It was 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:39.480 a company that was founded in Ecuador. Uh was had 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:44.040 several different interests there, including concrete and cement as well 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.360 as a brewery, So the board of e c L 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.000 were really the owner of e c L. Purchased publicly 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.880 available stock in c m I enough of it to 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.320 assume control of the company. This is technically what we 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.760 would typically call a hostile takeover, the idea that you're 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.680 going through shares of stock rather than talking with leadership 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.440 about a transition from one style of company to another. 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:10.560 The chairman of v c L was a guy named 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:15.680 Norton Stevens, and the new merged company was called Now Orleans. 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.160 And Now Orland came from combining the first three letters 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:23.400 of Norton Stephen's first name with the last three letters 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:27.919 of MH. Berlin's last name, No Orlan. No Orlean had 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:32.839 three main businesses. One was brewing, one was musical instruments, 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.520 and the third was somewhat vaguely defined as technology. There 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:41.200 are some accounts from Gibson employees dating around this period 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.680 that suggests their new peers, their new business owners, were 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:50.239 more focused on maximizing profits than on building high quality 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.479 instruments for musicians. And it wasn't that they wanted to 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.440 make substandard products, but rather they just didn't have an 0:04:56.520 --> 0:05:00.719 understanding of what it takes to make a good music instrument. 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:05.040 They weren't Louthier's, they weren't even musicians necessarily, and according 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:08.159 to Stan Rendell, who was serving as the president of 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:11.320 Gibson at the time, the new way of doing business 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.680 ended up hurting Gibson and included a fundamental change in 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:20.799 the way the company approached products. Before the acquisition, Gibson 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:26.040 had a single customer that was c m I. Gibson 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:30.200 didn't sell directly to people. Gibson sold their products to 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:32.840 their parent company, c m I, which was a distributor. 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.600 So here's how it would work. Gibson would manufacture musical 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.640 instruments and then essentially would sell them to c m 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.520 I at a profit. So whatever it cost Gibson to 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:44.599 make the musical instrument, they would mark that up a 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.479 bit so they can see see a profit sell that 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:49.920 to c m I. C m I would distribute those 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.200 musical instruments at a marked up price to make their profit. 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.520 So each stage, the price of the guitar or whatever 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.279 it may be, it was a mandolin or avenge or 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:05.080 whatever would go up. So from Gibson to c m I, 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:08.279 price goes up. From c m I to say a 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.000 retail store somewhere the price goes up, and the price 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.240 goes up a little bit more to the end customer, 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:18.760 the musician. So that explains partially why these guitar prices 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:22.920 would get pretty high eventually, because you're talking about several 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:26.680 different middlemen that have to get their cut before it 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.360 ever gets to the customer. If Gibson were selling directly 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.200 to the customer, the prices might be a little lower, 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.359 not necessarily significantly lower. Because Gibson was always in the 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.240 business of making high end guitars. Their guitars were known 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:46.400 as UH some of the flagships in especially in electric guitars. 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:49.560 It was essentially Gibson and Fender were the two big names, 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.599 and so they could charge a premium because they were 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.280 selling the premium products. Everyone else was kind of selling 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:02.040 either slightly lower cost, lower quality ones or knockoffs, and 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:06.839 that was about it. Well, the Gibson would take the 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.840 profit that they made by selling to c m I 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:13.080 and they would use that money to fund research and development. 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:15.680 They would give raises to people who were innovating a 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:20.760 musical instrument design, they would improve manufacturing processes. Essentially, they 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.200 would reinvest their profit back into the business, back into 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:26.880 the people in the business, and it was a good 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:31.520 way to create an incentive to do good work. However, 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:36.160 upon normilists becoming the new reality, things would change. Nor 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:40.800 Leists operated Gibson as a cost center, meaning normilists would 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.920 just pay the bills as Gibson incurred them. So instead 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:47.640 of Gibson trying to balance everything by taking the revenue 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:50.200 it got from c m I and then paying off 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:54.160 whatever bills it had and investing in the business wherever 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:56.680 it needed to, nor Less would just say, oh, well, 0:07:56.720 --> 0:07:59.280 if you incur age expense, we'll pay it. There was 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.360 no profit model for Gibson to pursue anymore, and according 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.840 to Randell, this removed any incentive to innovate and work hard. 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:09.000 He said, if your bills are being paid, whether you 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:12.760 work hard or not, your inclined not to work very hard. 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.200 So that was kind of an interesting point. Now, I 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.280 will say that that doesn't necessarily hold true in all 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.640 venues where if your bills are paid, you aren't inclined 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:25.760 to work hard. But that but if it's if it's 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:30.880 a thing where uh you know, in this particular arrangement 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.559 that Gibson had with new or Less, essentially that does 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:37.600 seem to be one of the reasons why quality started 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.280 to slip, but the company did soldier on. It produced 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.239 a few instruments in that era that we're not praised 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.120 very much, possibly due to the new focus on the 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:51.720 streamline manufacturing process to maximize output. Some employees later expressed 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.640 opinions that this was at the cost of build quality. 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:58.000 Others would say, no, we made good guitars, they just 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:02.000 they just weren't the best, most innovative designs. But things 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.160 really took a downhill turn in the eyes of guitar 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.600 lovers in the mid to late seventies. That's when Gibson 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.319 began producing guitars that got what we'll call a mixed reception. 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:14.600 That's being kind. There are certainly some fans of Gibson's 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:16.400 guitars from this era, but there are a lot of 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:18.840 outspoken critics as well. In fact, I say that the 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:23.160 critics far outnumber the fans. So let's take the Marauder 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:29.200 as an example. Gibson introduced this line in nineteen seventy 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.360 four and went into mass production the following year. It 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.360 was a departure for Gibson designs as it featured a 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.559 bolton neck Gibson guitars up to that point had been 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:42.679 set in neck joint guitars being the next would slot 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.160 into the body of the guitar and then would be 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:48.600 secured by glue. So if you remember in the first 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:50.720 episode I talked about the anatomy of a guitar, you 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:53.640 have the body, that's the part that has the sound 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.440 hole in it. For an acoustic guitar. You have the 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.080 neck that's the part that joins onto the body, and 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.319 it's the part that the strings are are strung against 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:05.920 and have frets where you can press the string against 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.200 the frets to make different notes. And then you have 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.800 the head of the guitar. That's where these strings attached 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.080 to the tuning bags and you can tune the strings. 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:17.280 So where the neck and body would meet, you could 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:21.360 do what is called a set in neck joint, where 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.120 it has sort of the seamless look to it, where 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.079 the neck of the guitar sets into the body of 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.160 the guitar. But the Marauder was different. It was a 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.120 bolt on, which is what it sounds like. Once you 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:36.560 fit the neck to the guitar body, you secure the 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.400 neck to the body with screws or bolts, so Fender 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:44.520 guitars were frequently bolt on neck guitars and Gibson had 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.240 usually opted for set in neck guitars, so the Marauder 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:50.520 was a new direction. Some people said, oh, they're kind 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.920 of copying Fender, and some guitars said that it actually 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:56.720 sounded more like a Fender guitar than a Gibson guitar, 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.160 which was due to the difference in the pickup that 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.640 they used. So if you remember in my last episode 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:04.640 I talked about what a pickup is. I'll talk a 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.320 little bit more about it again in a second, but 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.880 Gibson pickups have sort of a more mellow sound to 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:15.079 them typically than Fender ones do. Fenders have a little 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:18.320 more not not twangy, but there's a little more of 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:22.000 a metallic sound to Fender pickups. And it's not that 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:25.680 one is better than the other necessarily. They give off 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.480 different qualities of sounds, So it all depends upon what 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:31.000 kind of sound you want to go for, what is 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.600 the tone that you're looking for, and that would help 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.360 determine which pickup you would most want to go with. 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.920 It's not necessarily that the Gibson model was superior Defender. 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.199 It was just different. But the marauder was also a 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.400 bit of a Frankenstein's monster. The marauder had the body 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.880 of a Less Paul edition Gibson guitar, so it was 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:54.560 shaped in the same way as a less Paul Gibson, 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.080 but the head at the end of the neck was 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.920 not from a Less Paul Asian guitar. It was from 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:04.120 a Flying V guitar, so it was a different style 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:06.280 head than what you would normally see with that style 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:10.280 of body. And the guitar had a pair of humbucker pickups. Now, 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:12.880 I mentioned the humbucker in the last episode, but I 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.199 did not go into much detail. So let me give 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:17.480 you a quick rundown. Now, as I said in the 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:21.160 last episode, electric guitars have at least one coil of 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:24.920 conductive wire, typically wrapped around a permanent magnet, and the 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:29.040 strings on electric guitar are ferromagnetic, and the area above 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:33.240 the picnic pickup gets magnetized just through proximity. So because 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.120 those strings are close to a permanent magnet, they get 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.000 a little They're magnetized to a small degree, and as 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:44.000 those strings vibrate, they create a fluctuating magnetic field over 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.240 the coil of conductive wire. That's inside the pickup. This 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.840 induces a change in voltage and thus current to flow 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.480 through this coil of conductive wire. That current can be 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:57.840 sent out to an amplifier and then two speakers to 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:01.440 produce sounds. You can also do lots of effects on 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:03.719 the signals and create all sorts of different things like 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.559 distortion and stuff. But what does that have to do 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:11.079 with a humbucker. Well, I'll tell you in just a second, 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.080 but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:24.840 A humbucker is a type of a double coil pickup 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.280 in which you have one coils magnets with their north 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:32.080 poles pointing up towards the strings, and the other coils 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.920 magnets have their south poles facing up towards the strings. 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.120 So that's where we get the double coils. Now, you 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:43.200 can have multiple magnets within the coils, but you only 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:46.240 have two coils, but the two coils connect together out 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.200 of phase. So why would you do this? Why would 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:53.240 you have one set one coils magnets with the north 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:55.880 pole facing up one coils magnets with the south pole 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:58.600 facing up, and why the heck connect them out of phase? Well, 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.280 as it turns out, can act of coils aren't just 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.120 good at picking up magnetic fluctuations. They are good at that, 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.719 but they're good at other things too, Like they're good 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:09.120 at being antenna in general, and they can pick up 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:11.760 all sorts of stuff which can produce a hum in 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.880 an outgoing signal from the guitar. So you could have 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:19.080 a guitar plugged into an amplifier and you can hear 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.520 a hum from the guitar even though you're not doing 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.160 anything with the guitar. There's that sort of distortion that's 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.080 coming in this little signal, and it can interfere with 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:30.640 the sounds you want to create with your guitar, because 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:34.040 once you amplify a signal, that hum becomes audible, and 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:36.480 chances are it's not what you want people to hear. 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:41.840 The humbucker, as the name implies, bucks the hum by 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.720 putting those two connected coils out of phase. Now allow 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.080 me to explain. By connecting the coils out of phase, 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:53.000 the two coils can eliminate incoming distortion signals. Now, this 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:57.680 is sort of how noise canceling headphones work. Visualize a 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.760 sound wave with peaks and val so the way we 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.000 typically think of sound waves where we've plotted against an 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.840 x y axis, and we've got those nice smooth curves 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:13.040 that represent the amplitude of the uh. The height represents 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:16.480 the amplitude of the sound wave, and the length of 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:19.320 that represents sort of the well the wavelength and then 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.640 ultimately the frequency if you have any sort of designation 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.160 of time on there. So visualize the sound wave with 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:29.680 peaks and valleys. That's a really steady tone, so it's nice. 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:33.320 And even now imagine you have a second wave identical 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:35.480 to the first. It's got the exact same wavelength, that's 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:39.640 got the exact same amplitude. But now imagine you offset 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.080 it so that if you overlay the second wavelength or 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:47.200 second wave on top of the first wave, the peaks 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.280 of one match with the valleys of the other, and 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.160 vice versa. So where wave one is at its highest 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.360 most point, wave two is as lowest most point, and 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:01.920 vice versa. These two waves cancel each other out. The 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.680 dips of one wave match the peaks of the other wave, 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:07.760 and you end up with a straight line. Mathematically speaking, 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:10.720 and in fact, as far as actual sound is concerned, 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.440 they cancel each other out. You you wouldn't hear anything, 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:18.120 so any incoming distortion signal would be picked up by 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.800 both coils. And you have one that's with these magnets 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:23.960 facing north and one that's with the magnets facing south, 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:28.840 and the two coils are connected out of phase. So 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:33.280 once the connections come in, you get these the noise 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:35.800 canceled out. So why doesn't the humbucker do the same 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:38.120 thing to the signals it picks up from the strings. 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.840 It's canceling out noise. Why doesn't can't Why doesn't it 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:45.800 cancel out the actual playing? Well, this has to do 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:49.520 with that old Star Trek trick of reversing the polarity. 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:55.680 So for the purposes of just eliminating distortion, the north 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.040 south designation of the magnets doesn't matter so much. That's 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:01.040 not really what's important. What's important is the fact that 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.200 the two coils are out of phase. But in order 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:07.840 to actually get sound from this electric guitar, that north 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:11.840 south orientation matters a lot. So one coil has the 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.800 north pole orientation towards the strings, one coil has the 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:18.080 south pole orientation towards the strings. That means the direction 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:22.040 of alternating voltage of one coil is opposite that of 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.400 the other. Coil, but you've connected the two coils out 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:29.720 of phase, so this effectively flips one signal so that 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:34.119 now you have an additive output rather than a canceled one. So, 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.879 in other words, all those peaks and valleys I was 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.560 talking about before they line up as opposed to offsetting 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:42.919 each other, they they are set up so that they 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:46.479 are directly lined up with one another because of that 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:50.359 out of phase connection. That's what flips that last switch 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.399 to make sure that they're lined up properly. This dramatically 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:57.359 improves your signal to noise ratio. You reduce hum and 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:00.959 you hear the signal much more clearly. So the humbucker 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:06.840 was a really clever UH innovation, and it wasn't necessarily 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.280 it wasn't just developed at Gibson. It's that Gibson really 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:14.439 um adopted the humbucker as their approach to pickups, as 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:19.200 opposed to something like the Fender Stratocaster line, which used 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.800 a single coil pickup. The position of the humbucker on 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.240 the body of the guitar also matters. Many guitars will 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:30.400 actually have multiple pickups. They'll have them positioned at different 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.280 points along the body of the guitar. Underneath the strings. 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.200 Typically you might find one with two pickups. One would 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.080 be positioned closer to the neck and one closer to 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.000 the bridge, And those guitars typically have a switch or 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:46.800 a knob that allows you to go from one or 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.000 the other, or even blend the two together, and you 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:53.080 get a different quality of sound that way. So if 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.280 you switch it to the neck, you're gonna be able 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:57.840 to tell the difference than if it were at the 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.400 bridge before. And of course there's some that even three 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.520 pickups where you've got one in between those other two, 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:06.720 and you can get all sorts of different combinations, and 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:10.159 it all ends up affecting the tone of the of 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:12.359 the sounds you're making. You're still creating the same notes, 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:17.760 the frequencies you create remain the same, but the actual 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:21.440 tone the feel of the sound changes, and it's very 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:23.719 hard to put it into words. It's much easier if 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.679 you go and find videos where people are showing the 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:31.120 difference between the different pickups, then you can really perceive 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:33.159 it much more easily. It's a lot harder to just 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:37.440 put into words. Anyway. Back to Gibson's guitars, the marauder 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:39.159 was what we were talking about a second Ago. But 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.320 in addition to the Marauder, Gibson released guitars like the 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:46.000 Gibson S One, which had a single coil pickup made 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:49.400 it sound more like a Fender Um. Then you also 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.760 had the Gibson Corvus, which is a hard one to 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.199 describe physically. The body of the Corvus was meant to 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:00.359 look like a bird. Corvus actually means crow in Latin, 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:03.800 but a lot of musicians had trouble visualizing the crow 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:07.399 from the guitar design because it's somewhat abstract, So instead 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.960 they referred to this guitar as Gibson's can opener because 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.600 I had kind of a hook look to it, which 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.680 made it look like an old fashioned manual can opener. 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:18.760 You need to look at a picture of one of 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:20.640 those to kind of get an idea of why they 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.720 called it this thing. Again, this isn't to say these 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.560 instruments didn't have fans. There are some people who love 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:31.080 these guitars, but the general consensus was that Gibson was 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:35.280 losing its way, and Gibson was not unique in this position. 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:39.879 In the nineties sixties, electric guitars were incredibly popular. The 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:44.320 music of the time was very heavily skewed towards electric guitars. 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.439 You had a lot of different genres that were UH 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:50.080 that were becoming very popular and some that were emerging. 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:54.000 So you had rhythm and blues, you had UH, you 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.240 had the early rock and roll guitars, you had surf rock. 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:00.040 You had all these sort of genres coming up and 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.520 and electric guitars took front and center and most of 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:07.320 those genres. So it became an attractive asset for larger 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:10.240 companies that were looking to diversify their holdings. They were saying, hey, 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:14.280 you know, the electric car electric guitar craze is crazy, 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:18.399 Let's let's invest in that. And so with Gibson, you 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:23.280 had this brewery in Ecuador that swooped in to purchase CMI. 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:28.359 Leo Fender of Fender Fames sold his companies to the 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:34.880 Columbia Broadcasting System better known as CBS in nineteen sixty. Epiphone, 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:38.240 which was another musical instruments company, was purchased by Chicago 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.600 Musical Musical Instrument Company in nineteen fifty seven c m 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:45.520 I that was the parent company of Gibson. UH. So 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.200 CMI buys Gibson N four, they buy Epiphone in nineteen 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:52.359 fifty seven, and originally the two businesses were kind of 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.440 kept separate from each other under the ownership of c 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:59.440 m I, but Epiphone would gradually end up building more 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.520 and more um musical instruments that were based off Gibson designs, 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:07.520 but at a lower cost point, using lower quality stuff 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:11.119 maybe or maybe not as precious materials. Maybe that's a 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:14.520 better way of putting it. They were frequently considered a 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.400 sub brand of Gibson and sort of looked at as 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:21.359 the entry level for guitars that followed the Gibson style, 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:24.040 so that maybe you would want to go and get 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:26.639 an epiphone before you went and got to Gibson, because 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:31.480 Gibson's really expensive and epiphones were less so. But there 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.280 are plenty of electric guitar experts who feel that this 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:38.080 era led to some really bad decisions among major electric 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:41.760 guitar companies, not just Gibson. They point to cost cutting 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:44.720 measures that were meant to bring down the manufacturing expense 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.040 for guitars, to make them easier to produce in larger numbers, 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:52.600 and to make them less breakable. Uh really, they were saying, 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.360 why what can we do to make these cheaper? To produce, 0:22:56.960 --> 0:22:58.959 make it easier to produce a lot of them, and 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:02.840 to try and reduce the number of customers who bring 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.000 back these instruments that are under warranty and then we 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.760 have to replace something. And the way you do that 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:12.280 typically is that you start cutting back on features. You 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:16.920 start simplifying the guitars so that there are fewer things 0:23:16.920 --> 0:23:19.800 to break, and it's faster and easier to make them. 0:23:20.280 --> 0:23:25.320 And you might take some liberties when you're making your designs, 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:28.640 things that a luthier would not have considered. The most 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:31.000 frequent way I saw it referenced during my research was 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:34.480 that the design of instruments was taken away from luthiers 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:38.199 and musicians and handed over to accountants and beam counters. 0:23:38.960 --> 0:23:42.400 For Gibson. This era stretched into the early nineteen eighties, 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:47.600