Gibson Acoustic guitars have come a long way from Kalamazoo to Bozeman Montana and Gibson Acoustic has paved every mile of it with craftsmanship and innovation, but there have certainly been a few pit stops and detours along the way.
The company’s standing in the field of acoustic guitars is almost immeasurable, but despite Gibson’s enormous legacy, it was not born into this world as a maker of the flat-top guitars that are the stock in trade of the Gibson Acoustic division today.
Headed by the talented luthier Ren Ferguson, the small but skilled team in Bozeman established a new standard for quality hand-made mandolins, and the shop’s achievements were quickly acknowledged in the marketplace. As much as the mandolin had been a cornerstone instrument for Gibson back at its founding nearly 100 years before. However, the flat-top guitar was clearly the instrument that players and collectors most wanted to see brought back from the brink of extinction. With a team of artisans now in place, Gibson’s new management saw the wisdom in making acoustic guitars in Bozeman, and in 1989 it began moving flat-top production entirely from Nashville to a new plant that was just being finished on the outskirts of this Montana mountain town. Mandolin production was, in turn, soon moved back to Nashville in order to make room for this new priority out west. Gibson’s goal was nothing short of reestablishing the reputation for quality acoustic flat-top guitars that the company had enjoyed in its heyday, but this was bound to be an uphill climb.
"It was a slow and painful start," confirms Gibson Acoustic’s Bill Gonder from Bozeman, "this was essentially a brand new company when production began in 1990, so there was a learning curve. A lot of good people were hired, but they were local artisans — potters, painters, poets — and it took some time to get them working on guitars in an assembly line. We had to climb out of a hole, and fight our way back into the American marketplace." Over the course of the first few years the Bozeman plant got production times down and guitar output up, and laboured endlessly toward its ultimate goal of producing the best new flat-top Gibson guitars that could be made. All along the way, too, assistance came from some surprising places.
"Everyone in the guitar industry wanted us to succeed," says Gonder, "because Gibson was such an iconic maker of acoustic guitars. There was an incredible outpouring of help and support from other makers throughout the acoustic community, and many players with fabulous collections of vintage Gibsons came forward with guitars for us to study and work from, in order to recreate them in Bozeman."
Slowly but surely, working from original vintage instruments, Ferguson, Gonder and the rest of the Bozeman team brought an accurate SJ-200 back to the market, a J-45, a Southern Jumbo, an L-00 and one reproduction after another of great, time-tested Gibson acoustic guitars, all of which received rave reviews from players and the guitar press alike. Gibson Acoustic’s lines gradually settled into the delineations seen in the range today: True Vintage encompasses accurate renditions of past models; Modern Classics includes guitars that adapt these templates to the varied needs of modern performers; the Legends Series includes dead-accurate, period-correct reproductions of highly prized original instruments; and the Signature Artist Series offers renditions based on the specific guitars—or tailored toward the needs — of several major artists. In addition, the Songmaker Series includes high-quality but back-to-basics models designed to suit the needs of contemporary singer-songwriters. Taken as a comprehensive range, the entire output represents the best acoustic guitars Gibson has made in some 50 or 60 years.
The Gibson Acoustic guitar range is now available from Digital Village online, in-store or via telephone mail-order. Contact the Romford, Clapham and Cambridge stores for Gibson Acoustic