About the Gibson Firebird

Origin of the Gibson Firebird

Towards the late 1950's, Gibson's competition with Fender was growing stronger than ever. With Fender's new line of Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars, they were beginning to monopolize the guitar scene, something Gibson wasn't too happy about. The Telecasters and Stratocasters exciting and very new look made them very popular at the time.
As a reaction to the Fender combos popularity, Ted McCarty, President of Gibson, commissioned a new line of "futuristic" guitars to challenge Fender. This resulted in the creation of the Gibson Flying V, and the Gibson Explorer, two guitars which ended up beingextremely big mainstream flops for the company.

Set back but unwilling to give up, Ted McCarty hired a car maker named Ray Dietrich in order to create him a new axe that would finally be able to compete with the Stratocaster and Telecaster. Dietrich proceded to take the Gibson Explorer guitar, and round off the ends, in addition to adding two "wings" to the guitar, and tacked on a singular piece of wood for the neck that went through the body. From that was born the Gibson Firebird, a guitar so crazily shaped, the majority of people though it was backwards due to the right facing horn, which was larger than the left hand side. Because of this, the Firebird was unofficially named "reverse", a title which most Firebirds still hold today.

Reaction to the Firebird

The Gibson Firebird was a huge win for Gibson, and was instrumental in revitalizing Gibson. Not too long after the Firebirds birth, Les Paul would have an argument with Ted McCarty and exit Gibson. McCarty had thought that even without the Les Paul design, Gibson would be able to stay lucrative with the new Gibson Firebird and Gibson SG. However, changes to the Firebird would destroy any hope for Gibson lacking a Gibson Les Paul axe.

In 1965, Gibson created a new Firebird in a "non-reverse" design, where the left horn was larger than the right horn, similar to more regular axes, and removed the neck-through style. This new guitar flopped horribly for Gibson, and it would be taken off manufacturing by 1969. Fortunately for Gibson, Les Paul had rejoined Gibson and with him did the Gibson Les Paul Guitar, which would keep the money rolling in.

The Firebird Guitar Now

In 1990, Gibson went back to producing the Gibson Firebird, with the original "reverse" style body. Later on, Gibson Custom Shop would rebirth the "non-reverse" design models also.

Features of the Gibson Firebird Guitar

The Gibson Firebird had some very unique designs that gave it an extremely defined design. Along with the "reverse" style body, the headstock on the guitar was also switched around. Instead of using standard tuners, the headstock featured banjo design tuning keys on the back of it, a design Dietrich implemented to simplify tuning. The Gibson Firebird was also the very first guitar to use a neck through design, where the neck of the gutiar was a singular piece of wood that extended all the way though the body of the firebird. The Firebird guitar contained mini-humbucking pickups, but later a couple would include the notorious Gibson P-90 pickups. In addition the Firebird is that the models were named in Roman Numerals, such as I, III,V and VII, unsimilar tp the Les Paul which had suffixes such as Special, Junior, and Custom.

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