That whole dumb Gibson Jimi Strat thing....

[Huh?]

Gone......pooOOOOOFFF!! History, nothing , zip, nada. Pulled from the website not a single word about it all links "sorry the page does not exist"

There was SUCH a stink about this on the web. Maybe they came to their senses? I wonder what this means? Is it really gone and they are gonna toss all that tooling or what?

[scud133]

impending lawsuit?

[scud133]

it's still up on http://www.jimi-hendrix.com/

but you're right, all the links to gibson are totally gone now. maybe they decided to just scrap the pages because they were overflowing with negative user comments

[scud133]

Fender Les Paul Model Revealed (http://nevertoolateguitar.com/2009/09/23/fender-les-paul-model-revealed/)

[MikeRivers]

Maybe it was all a spoof. It's easy to fool a lot of people on the Internet these days.

[Billster]

Moved on to the piano racket (http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Pianos/Grand/Baldwin-Custom/Jimi-Hendrix.aspx)

[scud133]

Moved on to the piano racket (http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Pianos/Grand/Baldwin-Custom/Jimi-Hendrix.aspx)

oh ... my ... gawd

[gdoubleyou]

That is butt ugly, must remind myself gibson is a wood products company, not electronics.

:rolleyes:

[John Watt]

I thought Gibson had the guts to try another template of electric guitar as a designer special, and maybe present a product of a certain silhouette that is better manufactured than a lot of that company's offshore junk. Some of Gibson's designs throughout the years, trying to be hip and modern, like the Moderne, were just foolish. Mind you, everything was getting loud and raunchy in the 60's and 70's and not very many solid-body users were concerned with a guitar with more potential acoustic action, hence the flying V and the various half-circle pickguards that adorned some models as innovation.

The one thing I would have done as Gibson was retain the three per side tuners, their signature headstock. This Strat-style body and Gibson headstock would be a new look, combining my favorite aspects of both.
I'd put a humbucker by the neck and two single coils in the other positions, a much more usable addition than just a body shape.

I have another theory about a possible withdrawal from the domain, if that's true, since I wrote letters and exchanged email with both the Hendrix estate and Gibson over two years ago and this year, and I'm on fire on this domain. Maybe they're going to do what I did with the Strat silhouette, something that's driving other forum users nuts in DIY, "a new paradigm of electric guitar".

Hey, I can dream can't I? Wait a minute, I already did, and built it.

Twice as thick as a Strat and wider, but lighter.
A little louder with wider tone and enhanced harmonics.
A new lower level of softer, more tonal feedback.
Greater fret feel.
A two octave neck.
Built with local medium maple and poplar.
Neck to body is the first construction step.
Three-dimensional interior ground soak. (aluminum lining)
Easier access to the new higher frets.
Called a semi-solid-body, qualifying as new manufacture,
enabling new control over product through Free Trade.
Even though I loved my '64 Stratocaster for a long time,
my template would find a greater expression with
an S.G. or 335 silhouette.
My construction method enables more precise string placement,
but is far less costly and easier to build.

Thank you for any contemplating you may give my template.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P4vEgZj2jw
Here's the link to my new youtube video, proving some things.

as always, John Watt

[blue2blue]

Moved on to the piano racket (http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Pianos/Grand/Baldwin-Custom/Jimi-Hendrix.aspx)

oh ... my ... gawd

That is butt ugly, must remind myself gibson is a wood products company, not electronics.

:rolleyes:
Whatever it was you guys were looking at there is now gone...



The Strat clone is/was just freakin' weird, though.

That said, I have literally thought something along the lines of too bad Gibson doesn't make a strat knockoff... Now, before people jump all over me, let me just say that I haven't really looked at Fender guitars since I bought my J-Strat in the 90s as a stopgap.

I really wanted a strat-type guitar at that time and I looked at, conservatively, 50-60 American Standard Strats in various stores... but by the time I was done, I was so discouraged by the quality of the then current (c. 1996) Fender Strats that I decided to look for a good high end knockoff, picking up my J-Strat on sale to tide me over.

Even there, I looked at 13 J-Strats and mine was the only one I really liked -- but I hated the color (I learned to love it) and the fabled Fender QC let it out without beveling down the frets -- they literally stuck out the sides of the neck, tearing at your skin as you played. It was absolutely clear that no one had played that guitar on its way out the door. And it was, overall, the best of the J-Strat lot. Think about that. (I beveled them down myself after getting tips from a local luthier.)

Still, I think the $3K-$5K strat knock off market should properly remain in the hands of small shops. It's just too damn undignified and kind of sleazy feeling for Gibson to knock off a Fender -- even though Fender, or, more properly, companies they've bought and remolded have made shameless knocks of Gibsons. But that's Fender. I always thought Gibson was better than that... Even though I, personally, prefer the Fender designs. But, then, those came from the late, great Leo Fender... not any of the corporate drones who've managed the company in intervening decades. How many great guitar or amp designs have come out of any of the subsequent managements? That would be... I'm thinking, none.

[scud133]

John I watched the entire video... but I never once got to hear the damn thing being played!

Can we see it in action?

[John Watt]

scud133! Let me be open with you. I'm hoping your shield is more than just a graphic decoration, whether it is your job or a respect you are striving to attain. I'll add an attachment of my honour, inherited as it is. This is a very old Highlanders cap, worn during a historic ceremony, very serious for me.

I wish what you're asking was a quick and easy thing to do. It would be nice to make one. I'd like to do a retake of the one you saw. It's a matter of time, which is what I've got more than anything else, until I have my guitar and amp system playable. I've got band and gig offers. I know, a man my age, but I'm not married and don't have my own family responsibilities.

Right now I'm house sitting and looking out for Uncle Bill, 83. His niece, who owns this computer, in the hospital. So I might look good online, being a fast typer, but this sojourn with the computer will soon be over. I'm a domain in my own computer use, under construction, so I can access it from anywhere and do email and present myself, using the Bell intuitive build package. I'm typing here and not there, not very practical.

All this is just to show you where I'm at, so you won't think I'm playing games or am reluctant to show what my guitar sounds like, online, this tiny, tiny sounding machine, not like my Marshall stereo pre-amp based system.

What about your guitar? Maybe I should wait until I hear you before I decide to get into it. Okay, I'm twisting it for you, but it could be that way.

Thanks for asking. I'm sure you understand what I built and hear that this rubbed harmonic, and there's three high ones, is something new. I should have waited until my fingers were healed, blistered and sore from sanding and refinishing, and demolishing an old sports bar, using laquer thinner sometimes. They were slick and hard from clear-coat too, and I should have waited a day or two, getting into the new finish so I'd get more harmonics. That's why I was using a paper towel, and I should have practiced beforehand. The wood between the bridge and that pickup is the highest and loudest.

If I can't play I love talking or typing about it, but I should go before the slider looks too tiny.
as always, John Watt.

[scud133]

Well we don't need you to write a symphony, I would just to love to see or hear it as a fully completed guitar.

If I had designed something like that, I wouldn't even be able to sleep... I would be too excited to get strings on it and start playing.

You could have developed something totally revolutionary, but we'll never know until you actually play it!

[Jon Chappell]

Maybe they're going to do what I did with the Strat silhouette, something that's driving other forum users nuts in DIY, "a new paradigm of electric guitar".
...
Called a semi-solid-body, qualifying as new manufacture, ...

John, I watched your 9-minute video and was intrigued. You are obviously very earnest in your endeavor and I look forward to hearing about the finished product.

Two questions: In your introduction you make distinctions (using signage--I love it!) among the following types:

Acoustic
Acoustic-electric (w/pickups)
Semi-acoustic (more electric than acoustic)
Solid-body/Electric
Semi-hollow (more electric than acoustic, with a hollow)
Chambered
Semi-Solidbody (your design)


1. What's the difference between "acoustic-electric" and "semi-acoustic"? Can you cite iconic models from each category?

2. I'm guessing by "semi-hollow," you're referring to the ES-335 and its ilk, right? So what's the distinction between that and semi-acoustic? (Though you may clarify this by your answer to #1.)

Keep up the good work!

[MikeRivers]

1. What's the difference between "acoustic-electric" and "semi-acoustic"? Can you cite iconic models from each category?

My interpretation, though I probably wouldn't have named them that way, is that an "acoustic-electric" is a fully acoustic, almost certainly flat top guitar, with a pickup on it. LIke a Martin with either a factory or aftermarket pickup. Or, a popular (thanks to the Beatles) commercial model is the Gibson J160E. The qualifier is that it has to sound like a real guitar without using the pickup.

A "semi-acoustic" is one that looks like an acoustic guitar, nearly always with a thinner body, and not much resonance. It looks like a flat top guitar from the front and sounds like a washboard with pitch when you play it without the pickup, and with the pickup it sounds like a bad electric guitar. Yamaha, Ovation, and Washburn all had, and probably still have models like this. They're often painted red or blue. Sometimes even red, white, and blue.

2. I'm guessing by "semi-hollow," you're referring to the ES-335 and its ilk, right? So what's the distinction between that and semi-acoustic?
Without the pickup, they sound more like an arch top acoustic guitar than a "semi-acoustic" sounds like any guitar.

[Jon Chappell]

My interpretation, though I probably wouldn't have named them that way, is that an "acoustic-electric" is a fully acoustic, almost certainly flat top guitar, with a pickup on it. LIke a Martin with either a factory or aftermarket pickup. Or, a popular (thanks to the Beatles) commercial model is the Gibson J160E. The qualifier is that it has to sound like a real guitar without using the pickup.

See, I would've thought an "acoustic-electric" (as coined by Mr. Watt) was like a Johnny Smith or early L5--fully acoustic archtops that had floating pickups (courtesy of a U-bracket that wraps around the end of the fingerboard (see thumbnail of J. Smith). Didn't imagine it to be a flat-top, as I think of the J160E more as a true retro-fit (even though it was a production model for Gibson).

A "semi-acoustic" is one that looks like an acoustic guitar, nearly always with a thinner body, and not much resonance. It looks like a flat top guitar from the front and sounds like a washboard with pitch when you play it without the pickup, and with the pickup it sounds like a bad electric guitar. Yamaha, Ovation, and Washburn all had, and probably still have models like this. They're often painted red or blue. Sometimes even red, white, and blue.
I know the ones whereof you speak, Mike, but with regard to Mr. Watt's presentation (which is chronological), your versions would seem to come too early.

Without the pickup, they sound more like an arch top acoustic guitar than a "semi-acoustic" sounds like any guitar.

I don't think an ES-335 (and its ilk) sounds like an archtop. True, they have more sound than a solid-body, but they're pretty useless acoustically.

But I would agree that almost anything's better than those "thin red and blue models" played acoustically. :)

[MikeRivers]

See, I would've thought an "acoustic-electric" (as coined by Mr. Watt) was like a Johnny Smith or early L5--fully acoustic archtops that had floating pickups
Sure, that would fit, but then I have more flat top guitars and run into more of them on stage and in the studio than I do L5s, so I just tend to think in circles rather than Fs.
[/QUOTE]I don't think an ES-335 (and its ilk) sounds like an archtop. True, they have more sound than a solid-body, but they're pretty useless acoustically. [/QUOTE]
Agree on both counts. They look like a guitar from the front but don't sound like a guitar until they're plugged in. The difference between an ES-335 and one of those thin body flat tops with a pickup is that the ES-335 sounds like an electric guitar when it's played through an amplifier (and, yes, I know there are many electric guitar sounds). But the thin body flat top when plugged in has, to me, a very unpleasant sound that I don't associate with anything other than this type of guitar. An exception was a thin body electric classical that Chet Atkins played for a while, but I think that Chet Atkins could get whatever he was handed to play and it would sound like him. Some guitarists are just like that.

[John Watt]

Wow! I was thinking, here's some replies after my posting, I'll come back tomorrow, but you guys have got so much going I have to jump in.

scud133! I'm glad you watched it and got interested. It was just an acoustic demonstration, and not a good one at that. My favorite fingertips were blistered from sanding to refinish the top of my guitar, sore from tearing an old sports bar-pizzeria apart, getting solvents on them there and the clear-coat made them hard and shiny. That's why I used a paper towel and could only rub out one high harmonic. There's three easy ones. These are just audio gimmicks acoustically, considering it's an electric guitar, but they prove there's some kind of difference. I'll be posting an electrical demonstration in DIY sometime soon. I'd be slack if I didn't say you can see a lot more in DIY "a new paradigm of electric guitar", but be careful, you might feel you have to make some arrests.

I was putting this together and jamming with it in my associate's industrial sign shop every Sunday with my favorite bassist and drummer, building it during the week. That's when the hard to sleep excitement was for me. You can imagine sanding and having a harmonic pop out. It was as spooky as it was exciting. I call it chasing harmonics.
Your endorsement means something. Thank you!

Jon Chappell! My signage was meant to demonstrate how I used present generic terms to create a new manufacturing category for industrial purposes under Free Trade. Normally, I wouldn't try and squeeze the vast array of present instruments into so few categories. Actually, if I added one more modern one, it would be "off-shore". I'm probably older than you, and remember when anything with pickups was an acoustic-electric. When guitars started being made to be more electric than acoustics that are electrified, they became semi-acoustic. Personally, I think of Rickenbackers this way, and you're right, 335's, only because they hung in with rock bands when everyone else was solid-bodies, thinking Ten Years After, and just rock. For me, Gibson L5's are semi-acoustics, playing louder through an amp than ordinary acoustic-electrics if they had that big humbucker.

EDIT: Jon! Seeing that you are an adminstrator, and I took being a guitarist for granted, I appreciate your polite recognition of me as Mr. Watt, but I'm not a Mister. In my Scottish Highland culture, you have to own property, meaning a home, have a family, meaning a wife and kids, and have a healthy support for it all. I don't have any of that. And in Scottish terms, it's Master. There's no Heather around here, it's not Heavy, I can't see Heaven, and in this overseas lowlands I can't even be a Heathen. I don't expect you to feel that frustration.

Do you know that the first amplified guitars were acoustics with the arm of a record player taped on them, the needle stuck in the wood? That's what got Charlie Christian going and the term acoustic-electric.

MikeRivers! I've got to let you go on by yourself. You're right, but you're not my generation talking. Consider yourself lucky if you're into electronics. I wish I had digital stuff for effects in the 70's, especially deep echos. I'm still into ambient feedback, not generating my own flat, one-dimensional, effects driven sound. That's why I built my semi-solid-body in the first place, to further my own interest in music, with a guitar that reacts even more to my ambient environment, and be two octaves. It's not all happy, just like writing a blues song. I had to get down enough to lose singing and playing and forcing myself to want to do something new.

Too bad the four of us couldn't get our guitars together and make our own category of music.
as always, John Watt

[MikeRivers]

For me, Gibson L5's are semi-acoustics, playing louder through an amp than ordinary acoustic-electrics if they had that big humbucker.
An L5 is a very fine sounding acoustic guitar without an amplifier. Amplify it and it's a good sounding electric guitar, but it doesn't sound like an unamplified L5 only louder. You hear more of the sound of the pickup than the sound of the wood. To me, it's like two different guitars, both which sound good. The thin body flat top guitars don't sound like an acoustic guitar when unplugged and don't sound like either of the two very broad categories of an electric guitar when plugged in. It's a special sound that seems to have found somewhat of a place in some forms of contemporary music where it can fit it. But these guitars tend to be overused for their convenience (more volume on stage with less feedback) in music where its sound just doesn't fit in.

MikeRivers! I've got to let you go on by yourself. You're right, but you're not my generation talking.
Probably not. I'm 67. We had rock bands in my high school that were playing Fender and Gibson electrics, usually with two plugged into one amplifier. Johnny Smith and Jim Hall were playing amplified guitars that defined that jazz sound. Les Paul was being Les Paul and Chet Atkins was being Chet Atkins, both playing amplified guitars but creating new sounds and styles. Charlie Byrd (a local boy) brought the classical guitar into jazz and when he electrified, sought a natural, just louder, sound, and was pretty successful with it. He did play an amplified arch top acoustic guitar a bit, but again, his intent was to just amplify its acoustic sound.

That's where I derived my "definitions."

[Huh?]

Charlie Byrd (a local boy) brought the classical guitar into jazz ............

I just LOVE the album Jazz Samba-Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz. It does not get smoother than that. My old man had that on vinyl in the early 60's when I was a kid......I played the heck out of it and was really glad to find the CD re-issue some years ago.

[Huh?]

John Watt, what...... is going to stop that neck peeling back when it has string tension on it? You seem to have gone to an awful amount of detail in the build of the body, but to my eye it seems lacking structurally in that area. I get that Strat type bodies with bolt on necks only have 4 screws and a small neck pocket holding the body to the neck. But doesn't the solid body provide the extra rigidity that it needs once many lbs per sq inch of tension is placed on that headstock?

Sorry if I am wrong, you are the expert....I'd love to know your opinion on this....... whether it is an issue at all.