The new Gibson Garage in London has every Gibson in every flavour with friendly staff who are keen to hand you another guitar and another guitar, to strum and plug in. This is more fun that visiting another old church or art gallery – any time!
There are two conveyer belts suspended from the ceiling slowly moving beautiful guitars around the room, it’s quite impressive.
I found my absolute favourite, a 1959 Les Paul Re-issue, a relic guitar made to look worn, scratched, chipped and tattered even though they’re brand new. Only £8,700 (NZ$18,600), and it was just so easy t0 play. I played it though a MesaBoogie amp which is routed through headphones. It was a big, rich, well-rounded tone that makes everything you play just sound so good – and the neck is the perfect shape for my hand. I always thought Les Paul’s were too heavy, weight-wise, but this one was very comfortable to play.
The shop has a display of plain wood blocks, just pieces of wood were you can select the type of ‘tiger texture’ wood grain if you were wanting a new-build. Every option is available from the neck shape, frets and hardware. And then you can choose from a selection of cases; heavy duty road touring to basic gig bags.
Next, the Gibsons acoustics room. I’ve always wanted a Hummingbird and they had a beautiful one that is technically new, but it’s artificially aged even the top varnish is. They have a facility in Bozeman, Montana where all the Gibson acoustics are made, called the Murphy Lab. It’s a department where they slowly heat the guitar to rapidly dry the woods and then treat the varnish to have that aged look, you know, where the varnish has those thin surface cracks. But there’s more to it than that and the methods are all secret.
Gibson Murphy Lab Acoustic Guitars have taken the world by storm because they have all the qualities of an old guitar without having to pay collector’s prices.
My favourite was the 1952 J-185 re-issue, which is the same shape as the big jumbo J-200 (that Pete Townsend plays), but smaller. It still had a big bright sound, and it looks amazing. £5,000 (NZ$10,700), which sound like a lot of money, but that’s nearly what Auckland Council will charge me for consent to put on a bathroom in the garage, ridiculous – the world is all out of whack. No wonder people are screaming out to streamline the consent process.
Anyway, another guitar that I didn’t like the look of because it was too shiny and new was called The Songwriter Standard, but it actually sounded incredible.
There was plenty of merch to buy and not just T-shirts, but I thought about it, and really, I don’t need another T-shirt as tempted as I was.
