When Gibson finally started to work on their first electric guitar, the company
had a 40 year tradition and quality and also innovation to keep up. Gibson saw
that they would have to build the best guitar that would beat everything else.
In 1935, Gibson hired the help of musician
Alvino Rey to help develop the pickup
with also the help of engineers at the Lyon & Healy company which was based in
Chicago. Finally later in that year
walter Fuller came up with the final design.
Finally Gibson brought out (at that time) an original pickup, which was hexagonal,
this was on a lap steel model in the later end of 1935. The pickup was installed
on a F-hole archtop guitar, this guitar was called the ES-150, this first of
many.
unfortunately for Gibson they were now up against it, to provide customers with
yet another guitar which would be better of quality then the ES-150, and then
world war 2 broke out, and this caused Gibson to stop producing while the war
was on. After the war, the electric guitar started to come into its prime, and
there was lots of innovation going on in the Gibson factory. A new pickup (called
the P-90) was designed to give the player much more power then ever before, soon
after this Gibson then brought out the ES-5 (this guitar was a first for it had
thee pickups) and also the ES-175.
In 1958 Ted McCarty (who designed the ES-175 and the ES-5) finally brought out the
ES-335, which is undoubtedly one of the most famous guitars used in the music
industry, soon after came the flying V.
Of course Gibson are still there providing players with fantastic sounds and keeps
the players interested and so wanting to play their instruments.
References -
http://www.chrisbsmusic.com/gibsonhistory.html