NGD - 1995 Artist Award

[BradHK]

That was the pickguard used in the 1990’s. Not sure of the exact years but from a quick look at the catalogs on GAD’s website the 1992 catalog and 1996 show that pickguard. Below is from the 1992 catalog

 

[Sleeko]

Stunner! Best of luck, happy strumming!

 

[banjomike]

I really like my 1990 AA a lot. It has been the guitar I've played most often for nearly a year now.
I like the pickup just fine, even though it could be stronger, I mostly play the AA acoustically, so I don't plug it in often.

I currently am using D'Addario Chrome Bronze 12's on it, and they sound fine, but mostly I use them as a good alternative for when I plug it in. The strings really last and keep their tone a long time.
Before I used them, I had been given a box of Martin Bronze 80/20 13s, and they made the guitar louder, with the 80/20 tone I generally prefer. While the Martin strings tend to lose their tone faster than some others, I do like them quite a lot. They haven't changed in decades.

Recently, I bought some sets of Ernie Ball Aluminum Bronze Mediums that are excellent strings. They have the same tone as 80/20s, but have very clear string-to-string definition and are very punchy sounding. They're also produce a very distinct 'harmonic envelope' around the primary note. I don't know if they're any louder, but they make a couple of my flat tops really punchy and sweet at the same time.

I own an extremely light and delicately built 1930 Gibson L-0 I was bequeathed by a friend who passed on in 2019. This guitar sounds the best with the Aluminum Bronze Lights, and I tried 2 or 3 others prior to these strings.
I'll probably try a set of these on the AA next.

My AA isn't as loud as some of my other archtops, but it has a great warm tone that's somewhere between the Gibson X and parallel bracing. Apparently, the Guild braces isn't exactly parallel; the bass brace is set at a slight angle to the treble brace. This may account for the guitar's deeper, warmer tone.
While the AA isn't as warm and woody as my 1939 Gibson L-7, I like it more than a friend's great old Gibson L-5. That's saying a lot, as I tried to get the L-5 away from him for years before finally giving up.

 

[banjomike]

My job at Gibson was Color Sprayer. I was hired because I had learned on my own how to spray a Gibson sunburst and I had done a few as part of my business. I also was familiar with many of Gibson's 'golden age' models from the 1930s.

To me, there was always a big difference between a shaded top and a sunburst. A true sunburst is more than just a shade, circling the perimeter of the guitar's body. The shoulders of a sunburst are always dark, often going to as dark as the brown can get, while the amber yellow center of the burst transitions widely and gradually, softly blending from dark to light so gradually there's no perceptible line between the two colors.
When it's done right, the colors glow because even at its most dark, the colors are always transparent and the woodgrain can be clearly seen in bright light.

I never called the transition color red. The classic Gibson burst uses only 2 colors; tobacco brown and yellow. I always called the red-orange transition color Russet, a brown with a warm orange-red tint.

Back in Gibson's early days, before reliable air compressors made spraying possible, the sunbursts were created with alcohol-based transparent dyes that were rubbed into the wood and blended by hand using cheesecloth rubbing pads. This was actually quite a fast way of coloring mandolins, and is still used by mando makers today. The old Gibson guitars took longer to make a good burst by hand rubbing, but not by much; with practice, the dyes can be worked very quickly, and they dry very quickly.
Back then, the clear coats were always done with an alcohol-based spirit varnish, French polished onto the guitar. The coloring was only slightly trickier to do.
But the spray gun beats French polishing by a far mile when it comes to production speed. Gibson, based close to Detroit's auto production, was the first guitar factory to adopt the spray gun, and to use lacquer instead of varnish. Nitrocellulose lacquer was the 'wonder finish' of the mid-1920s, as it dried quickly and produced a clear finish that was slower to yellow that resisted water staining and was much harder, so the instruments could be buffed, instead of laboriously hand-polished with rottenstone. Lacquer also shined much brighter, and had a much greater depth of color.

It must have been a real headache to learn how to use a spray gun for the color finishers at Gibson at first. Their first attempts at spraying a sunburst in ca. 1926 show this. The Loar era guitar's bursts are mostly dark brown going to only a small yellow oval center, and as often as not, the brown is opaque.

By ca. 1930, though, those color guys finally figured it all out. They used a combination of dye and laquer; the brown NGR (non grain-raising dye) was applied. by hand, to pre-darken the shoulders and edges, and then, the yellow and brown lacquers were sprayed, using both in combination, building color intensity in one, then the other.
It's much trickier than simply shading the perimeter with some brown. I took photos of a friend's 1934 Gibson Super 400 to use as a visual reminder of a masterful sunburst into the spray booth with me when I went to work there.

And I've always thought Gibson consistently did the burst the best. Though Guild's guys did a good job, theirs still couldn't compare to Gibson's best.

Until today. I just saw this AA on eBay this morning:

Honestly, this is as good as a sunburst gets. That's coming from a guy who has done at least 7,000 of them.
This one is 3 color, but it's done precisely correct in all respects. This is exactly the look the person who sprayed this guitar wanted to achieve. It's flawless.

And to my eye, this AA is classicly elegant/flashy in the best archtop tradition.

 

[JohnW63]

That is an awesome sunburst!

 

[sailingshoes72]

Very Interesting! I enjoyed reading about the history of guitar finishes at Gibson.

Back in Gibson's early days, before reliable air compressors made spraying possible, the sunbursts were created with alcohol-based transparent dyes that were rubbed into the wood and blended by hand using cheesecloth rubbing pad.

I definitely remember seeing the early spray sunburst finishes that are mostly dark brown going to a small yellow oval center at guitar shows and in photos.

 

[banjomike]

Very Interesting! I enjoyed reading about the history of guitar finishes at Gibson.



I definitely remember seeing the early spray sunburst finishes that are mostly dark brown going to a small yellow oval center at guitar shows and in photos.

Yup. The paint suppliers back then were part of the problem as well. Brushing lacquer had been around for a while, but in opaque colors only, and was mostly available in very few colors; the paint was mostly used in Detroit after Henry Ford scrapped all his other methods. The large industrial compressors he needed were the very first to use for spraying car bodies. Ford never offered any colors except for black, and he continued that practice after he abandoned painting car bodies with a paint brush, and later dipping them in a vat of black.

The first compressors Gibson used weren't the same size as Ford's, but they were still enormous in comparison to today's, and the colors used in finish all had to be hand mixed into clear lacquer to get some transparency to the colors.
The learning curve for these guys was very steep, and it was all trial and error for them all at a time in Gibson when the company's investors were only interested in getting their investment checks once a year.
In the Depression. Back then, it wasn't unusual for a floor manager to go up and slug a worker for no other reason than to keep his authority over them intact. If a worker complained, he was fired and on the street. Everyone took crap like that, just to keep their jobs.

To Gibson's credit, the company did everything it could to keep its workers working. Gibson offered several lines of guitars that all lacked the famous and patented truss rod, a Gibson invention, and they made an entire line of wooden toys, went into producing violins and bass viols, and some remarkably nice model toy sailboats that were actually sailed in wading ponds.
The other guitar companies of the time didn't do this. They simply cut their crews down to the bare bones and tried to ride the Depression out.

This actually helped the finish crews- the spraying mistakes were made on the toys and the other non-Gibson brands instead of being made on their most expensive products. By 1935, Gibson came out of the Depression with a full crew, all well exprerienced, just as the popular music of the time abandoned the banjo as an orchestra's rhythm instrument for the archtop guitar.
The Super 400 literally rocked the entire industry when it was introduced. It cost $400, over twice as much as the entire competition's best product, and Gibson couldn't meet the demand for them.

That was when the spray gun proved its worth to the industry. By today's standards, even Gibson's production was quite low, so the workers weren't rushed to supply product, and the color sprayers of the time could take all the time they needed to create some very beautiful sunburst finishes as the standard finish for Gibson. The sunburst made their big archtops very distinctive as a contrast to all the brass horns in the orchestras of the day.

The company has a very interesting history for sure. For a very long time, only Gibson took on all comers when it came to making guitars. It was one of the first to use pickups, made excellent flat tops, and established it's lasting reputation for the best archtops money could buy, and Gibson also made solid body steel guitars, banjos, ukuleles, and the entire mandolin family throughout the 1930s.

One of the coolest things was for the list price of any model they made plus a $50 surcharge, a customer could order a guitar that was custom-made. (or any of their other instruments too). The company built its own pickups in-house, and did all the design and production in-house.
$50 was a lot of money back then, but I once saw some photos of a custom 10-string steel guitar that needed a pickup. Making that single pickup must have cost Gibson more than $50, but even at a loss, the fact another steel player could order one like it made up for the loss. The company made money like Jack Dempsey boxed back then.
The only items Gibson farmed out to other manufacturers were the tuning pegs and their metal banjo parts. The legendary banjo tone rings that went into their Mastertone banjos were all made by Kalamazoo Foundry and Tank. A small outfit in town. It mostly made castings for the heating industry, back when radiators were the big thing in home heating.

And all of it came from the floor. The workers did it all with almost no management from above.

 

[DjangoLang19]

I have my Artist Award strung up with D'adario medium nickel bronze acoustic strings. They are meant for acoustic guitars so they have all the tone and volume of acoustic strings but they also have enough nickel content that they can be picked up through the pickup. I have a DeArmond 1000 on my guitar and the strings work very nice with the pickup and it's still nice to play unplugged.