“I joined a band playing 1920s style jazz in the early 1990s and was given a cassette tape of songs to learn,” says guitarist Richard Barnes. “The first one was ‘Dinah’ by…
In Part One of our feature on Eddie Lang’s guitars, luthier and guitar historian Todd Cambio looked at the instruments played by Eddie Lang before he settled on Gibson guitars in the…
Musician and luthier Todd Cambio established Fraulini Guitars (https://fraulini.com) to offer traditional performers’ instruments modelled after the classic designs of the early 20th century. As a result of his research into the…
The Gibson L-5 went through a number of modifications before it was relaunched in 1935 with a larger 17-inch ‘Advanced’ body. The most notable of these included the switch from a birch…
Introduced in 1912, the Gibson L-4 had a 16-inch wide body, an oval soundhole, a neck that met the body at the 12th fret (actually somewhere between the 11th and 12th frets) and…
Nitro Nightmare One of the first thermoplastics, Celluloid – a material produced by combining nitrocellulose with camphor and added plasticisers – was widely used by Gibson and many other manufacturers for bindings, pickguards and other plastic parts.…
“The 1941 L-5 guitar pictured below (Serial Number 97291) was purchased at the Southern California Guitar Show in 1995,” says guitar historian and collector, Lynn Wheelwright. “It was in the condition shown here…
By George Gruhn and Joe Spann Today the Gibson L-5 guitar and F-5 mandolin are both recognized as visionary innovations in stringed instrument design. But in 1922 when Gibson first introduced their…
How many fakes are out there? British artist John Myatt created around 200 forged paintings in what Scotland Yard described as “the biggest art fraud of the 20th Century”. He faked works…
A few words to remember our friend Paul Hostetter, who died of cancer, on February 13th, 2019. Paul was an enthusiastic supporter of the project that would eventually become the Pre-War Gibson L-5 Owners’…