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PAUL VERNON CHESTER

Manouche Maestro

Gibson L5 Guitar

In 1922, Lloyd Loar was hired by the Gibson Company to redesign their instrument line in an effort to counter flagging sales, and in that same year the Gibson L5 was released to his design. Although the new instrument models flopped commercially and Loar left Gibson after only a couple of years, Gibson instruments signed by Loar now are among the most prized and celebrated in stringed-instrument history. Perhaps the most revered instrument from this period is the F5 mandolin, but probably the more broadly influential was the L5 guitar, which remains in production to this day.

Gibson’s L-5 debuted in 1922 as part of designer Lloyd Loar’s Master Series of instruments. It represented some of the most significant advancements ever brought to the archtop acoustic guitar, and, although it didn’t retain quite the seminal status that its sibling the F-5 mandolin enjoys to this day, it did lay the groundwork for the great Gibson archtops of the ’30s.

Maybelle Carter’s 1928 L-5, made just four years after Loar left Gibson in 1924, was a fairly austere instrument by the standards of later archtops, with simple dot inlays on the fingerboard, unbound f-holes, and a basic three-ply binding around its carved solid-spruce top, but it did sport a very resonant, lively construction, and innovations such as an adjustable bridge and an adjustable truss rod (both firsts for the archtop guitar when Gibson brought them to the L-5 later in 1922).

Today we might think of these archtops as archetypal “jazz boxes”, but in the early to mid ’20s the guitar was still a minority player in the jazz world, with the tenor banjo making the bigger noise up on the bandstand. Some groundbreaking jazz artists, Eddie Lang for one, did take up the L-5, but it was just as likely to be seen in the hands of players on the burgeoning country scene of the day, in an era when the flat-top acoustic had yet to establish its primacy in that genre.

Django playing a Gibson L5 with Challain Ferret, Nice 1948        

In 1934 the L-5’s body was “advanced” to 17" wide, and its look was enhanced by five-ply fingerboard and peghead binding and other elements. Later that same year, Gibson introduced the 18"-wide Super 400, a guitar that would become “king of the archtops”, although the L-5 endured until 1958 in its non-cutaway form, and until 1982 as the L-5C with cutaway.

Al Bowly here endorsing a Gibson L5


Crown Peghead Logo
Gibson put the first crown peghead logo on an L5 back in 1940, and it has graced the headstocks of many legendary Gibson guitars ever since, Over the years, it has also been called a "thistle" because of the group of flowering plants with the sharp prickles, though Gibson has preferred to call it a "crown."

A 1946 non-cutaway deep body archtop.  It has a vintage sunburst finish, and the carved Maple back has that wide, deep flame. The sides and neck are also flamed. Script headstock logo with flowerpot, Kluson Sealfast gold plated gears, pearl 'block' inlays in the bound Ebony fingerboard. Original compensated Rosewood bridge and Varitone tailpiece.

Gibson developed the Advanced L-5. Introduced in 1934, the L-5 is one of the most popular and acclaimed carved archtop guitars, endorsed by well-known Hollywood studio players such as Richard Ehrecke of Warner Brothers and Bobby Sherwood of MGM. The 17-inch L-5s feature backs, sides, and necks made of the finest curly maple. The Advanced L-5's original list price in 1936 was $275, and the accompanying Aeroplane case sold for $27. The guitar's top is made of Adirondack spruce, and the fingerboard is genuine ebony with pearl inlays. Gibson decorated the guitar with a sprayed sunburst Cremona brown finish.

Some of the new designs incorporated in the model were an Art Deco-style, gold-plated tailpiece, individual Grover gold-plated machine heads, an elevated celluloid pickguard and an adjustable bridge and truss rod. Lloyd Loar, Gibson's acoustic engineer, developed the first 16-inch f-hole archtop in age of Dixieland jazz, although the big band era was looming around the corner. The L-5 became a favourite among big band guitarists, but not without a bit of competition from Epiphone, who introduced their 16 3/8-inch Deluxe in 1931 to compete with Gibson's 16-inch L-5 model. In 1934, Gibson accepted Epiphone's challenge and expanded the size of their guitars from 16 inches to 17 inches to let Epiphone know they were serious about being the best and the biggest maker of archtop guitars. The Advanced L-5's body was not only enlarged by an inch, it was also redesigned with x-bracing, a new carving pattern incorporated into the top and back, 5-ply binding, longer scale length, and a reshaped headstock design

Eddie Lang's Acoustic Gibson L5

Salvatore Massaro (1902-1933), better known as Eddie Lang, was considered by some to be the first guitar virtuoso. He played a role in the development of the jazz sound that became mainstream through movies as he worked with greats like Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman, Bessie Smith, Jack Teagarden, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Smith Ballew, Fred Rich, Noel Taylor, Red Nichols, Frankie Trumbauer, Jean Goldkette, Paul Whiteman, Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, King Oliver, Hoagy Carmichael, Don Vorhees, Adrian Rollini, and J.C. Johnson. His most famous association was with violinist Joe Venuti, with whom he recorded under many different titles. In 1933 a botched operation unexpectedly ended Lang's life. He had gone in for a routine tonsillectomy and ended up suffering severe blood loss.

The ES-5 was the first electric model inspired by the L-5 guitar, first introduced in 1949, and later modified as the Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster. The L-5CES was a direct electric version of the L5, introduced in 1951. These originally used P-90 pickups,

The Gibson L5 Guitar (Book)

L5 enthusiasts might enjoy the book 'The Gibson L5 Guitar' by Adrian Ingram. First published in 1997, this book takes a look at the history of the L5 and the guitarists who helped it rise to prominence. The book is also lavishly illustrated with full colour photographs.

Gibson Byrdland L-5CES

The Byrdland is said to be the first of Gibson's Thinline series. Many guitarists did not desire the bulk of a traditional archtop guitar such as Gibson's L5  one of Gibson's top models. The Byrdland, with its overall depth of 2¼-in, is thinner than the L-5's 3⅜" depth. Gibson's president, Ted McCarthy, sought opinions and ideas about new products. The suggestions from Charlie Byrd and Hank Garland led to the development of the Byrdland. The Byrdland, first made in 1955, is essentially a custom built, thinner, L-5CES (Cutaway-Electric-Spanish). Later, the two specified a shorter scale neck. Guitarists who had an opportunity to play Gibson samples liked the Byrdland's short scale neck (23½") which enabled them to play intricate single-note patterns and unusual stretched chord voicings. The Byrdland then became a regular production instrument. The ES-350T was developed from the Byrdland using less costly hardware and detailings and was offered as a less expensive option.  From 1955 to 1960 the Byrdland was made with the Venetian, or rounded, cutaway on the body (The Venetian). From 1961–1968, it used the sharp, pointed, Florentine cutaway. It returned to the Venetian in 1969. The model was in production from 1955 through 1969. It was reintroduced as a limited run in 1977, 1978 and 1992. The guitar is currently available as part of Gibson's Custom series and is made with the Florentine cutaway, During 1976 only, a twelve string version was offered for sale; fewer than 20 were manufactured.  The famous jazz club, Birdland, filed a law suit against Gibson over the name. The suit was dismissed when Gibson showed that the name was made up from the names of two people.

Gibson Acoustic L-7 Video

Lloyd Loar

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, a brilliant acoustic engineer named Lloyd Loar, who was working for the Gibson guitar company, invented the first solid body electric viola.

The exact time period during which Loar built this viola is not certain. It could have been as early as the early 1920s, while he was working as an acoustical engineer for the product-development department at Gibson, or as late as the early '20s, when he was launching his own Vivitone guitar/mandolin company. It is an amazing and original instrument no matter what its exact vintage. The solid back spruce panel is shaped in the silhouette of a viola and is finished in the Gibson "Cremona-brown" brushed varnish. The body is triple-bound in ivoroid like a guitar, rather than traditionally purfled. The electronic control box and reinforcing spine are made out of mahogany, and the fingerboard is ebonized maple. An endpin extends from the body-the instrument was designed to be played gamba style. The scroll design is modernistic and has a machine-age appearance.

Loar's design causes bowed-string vibrations to travel through a conventional viola bridge that sits on a cantilevered steel plate. The plate vibrated on top of a wound magnetic coil, resulting in transduction of the string vibration into an electromagnetic signal. The signal is sent to a conventional amplifier, resulting in a resonant tone. (The design was inspired by early loudspeaker technology, which utilized a reverse idea: a steel plate was driven by an electromagnetic field, which in turn was amplified by a horn drive.) Like the soundpost in a violin, the treble side of the tone bar can be raised or lowed to supply an appropriate amount of vibration resistance for bass and treble balance. Loar was granted a patent for this revolutionary invention.

Loar was an accomplished composer and concert soloist and was awarded first prize for solo cello in the American Composers' Contest in 1921. As a concert artist, he regularly performed throughout the United States and Europe. But he also had extensive training in physics and acoustics, and in 1925 he became a professor of acoustics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Loar was granted a total of nine patents for his musical inventions over the course of his career, and he went on to develop and market one of the first electric guitars through Vivitone.

The viola has recently been restored at Washington Street Music in Santa Cruz, California by current owner Hank Risan, luthier and writer Rick Turner of Turner Guitars, and violin maker David Morse. Morse describes the instrument's sound as "open and articulate," while Turner calls it "amazingly rich. It rivals the best of modern amplified violins." (Special thanks to Turner and Morse for sharing their extensive knowledge regarding the physics of this remarkable instrument.)


Loar's F5 had a coil-wound pickup attached at one end to the fingerrest, and a small plastic foot at the other end that was screwed into the soundboard. A volume control knob was installed into the fingerrest and a metal-shielded cable lead away to a phono-jack.

A brief history of the origin and development of the Gibson Archtop guitar from 1897 to 1949
1897 Around this time Orville Gibson had produced the first Archtop guitar in America with an oval sound hole.
1919 Lloyd Loar joined Gibson and began designing their new guitars.
1923 Gibson released the first f-hole Archtop guitar designed by Lloyd Loar. The Gibson L-5.
1932 John D’Angelico sets up shop at 40 Kenmare Street in New York City and made some of the finest Archtop guitars to date.
1936 Gibson released its first commercially built electric guitar the ES-150 which was played by Charlie Christian.
1949 Gibson releases the ES-175 which sold for $175- This guitar had a laminated top instead of the solid carved top and was designed more as an electric guitar than as an acoustic.

Gibson EH150 Amplifier was also used by Django and having looked at the interior wiring shots its a marvel that our man was not electrocuted mid solo flight.

The EH-150 amp cabinet was covered in "Aeroplane cloth", luggage tweed, with contrasting vertical brown stripes. A black perforated aluminium grille protects the ten inch "Ultrasonic High Fidelity Reproducer" speaker. Later Gibson would often affix red stickers onto the back of speakers with the printed text "Ultrasonic Speaker". Especially during the '60s and '70s. Chassis were mounted at the bottom of cabinets.  The features of the early EH-150 amp include one input for microphone and three inputs for instruments, separate volume controls for the microphone and instruments sections, a bass-tone expander switch, and an "Echo" extension speaker jack.

For the microphone input stage of the early EH-150 one 6F5 valve(high mu triode) was used and one half of an 6N7 (dual high mu triode) to provide gain for the instruments input and the second half to a second gain stage for both input stages, one 6C5 valve (medium mu triode) to serve as a third gain stage and a transformer to split the phase of the amplified signal into two 6N6 output valves (direct-coupled power triodes.
One 5Z3 rectifier tube was also used.

The '37 EH-150 was the first ever class A tube amp with an overdrive channel. It is claimed it still sounds better than just about anything out there.  It has one knob---volume More Pic's

Amplifiers of the day were just as basic as the early electric guitars, if not more so. The EH-150 had in fact arrived before the ES-150 guitar, as partner to Gibson’s EH-150 lap-steel guitar (these were actually Gibson’s first genuine electric guitars, and the amplifier retained the lap steel’s “Electric Hawaiian” designation). The EH-150 originally carried a single 10" speaker (later a single 12") and was powered by a truly archaic circuit design, and now-obsolete preamp and power tubes, but it was an impressive beast for the mid ’30s. Even when the circuit had evolved a few years later to employ 6L6 output tubes, the amp still only produced around 15 watts at best, but that 15 watts sounded pretty darn loud next to any acoustic-only rhythm guitarist hacking away in the rhythm section, so these amps were enough to unleash the guitarist as soloist on the big-band stages of the day.

Charlie Christian to Gibson ES-150 guitar to Gibson EH-150 amplifier … to history. It’s a humble rig by the current standards but today’s electric guitarists have it to thank for proving what this instrument, and a great player, could do.

Barney Kessel talks about his ES150

  • War-time restrictions of components and hardware forced Gibson to halt manufacturing of electric guitars and amplifiers during World War II. Gibson began production again in 1946, employing Chicago-based electronic design company Barnes & Reinecke to design a new amplifier line. The new amps included the Ultratone BR-1, BR-3, BR-4, BR-6 and BR-9 models, with 10 to 18 watts of power. Volume and tone controls were featured on all models, except the smaller BR-6 and BR-9 amplifiers. The BR amplifiers were produced until 1954 and were discontinued to take advantage of more popular features and newer technology.

At the top of the line was the BR-1. A perforated aluminium grille with a stencilled brown "G" to protect the 12 inch speaker, brown leatherette covering, a six tubes chassis mounted at the top with a slanted, rear facing and cream coloured, control panel. About 18 watts output.

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Last modified: 13/09/2011