Welcome to Fox Guitars
Any guitar is any condition can be restored to playable condition
The Real Story of Orville Gibson
Orville Gibson’s life is the stuff of legend, as so much has been written about him – some of it true and some of it NOT. A lot of what is known about Orville can be traced back to this very article. Dornbush talks about many of the “facts” about Orville’s life from “first-hand” experience. The stories of Orville working as a “clerk in a shoe store” and as a “hobby” building instruments in “a room about 10 ft. by 12 ft.” are all here. The fact remains that there is a lot that we do NOT know about Orville’s life, especially after the formation of the company that would bear his name for over 100 years. Here are a few fascinating bits from the article: 1. Dornbush states that Orville was building “A” model mandolins and guitars “back in the 70’s and 80’s” – 1870’s & 1880’s that is. Much earlier than most accounts. 2. “In graduating the tops and backs [Orville] would tap them with his knuckle and carve them until they were in tune with each other”. Otherwise known as “tap tuning”, which has been credited as being invented by Lloyd Loar. 3. “The first variation Gibson made from the ‘A’ model was the Lyre-shaped instruments, which he had on a label that he placed in all the instruments he made”. See Gibson’s first ad from January 1903 below. 4. “The pearl inlays [Orville] Gibson used were made by a Turkish manufacturer, which probably accounts for the star and crescent design”. When I first heard this one, I thought it was nonsense. I guess I was wrong. The crescent & moon is the symbol of Islam. Take a look at the earliest F-2 & F-4 mandolin ads below. Also note the date on the infamous “Orville’s Work Shop” photo of 1900. A special thanks to Rod McDonald for providing a copy of this article and much more.
The following article was written by Henry Dornbush, a childhood friend of Orville Gibson. It was originally published in the August-September 1937 issue of Gibson’s in-house magazine called “The Mastertone”. Parts of the article were later used in Julius Bellson’s 1973 book “The Gibson Story”, although no crredit is given to Dornbush as the author.
Here is a small collection photos of the Gibson factory built in 1918 at 225 Parsons Street Kalamazoo, Michigan from the mid-30s and early 1940s.
Below: A 1912 annoucement in an architecture magazine about the new factory to be constructed on Parsons Street for a mere $20,000.
Below left: c1940 exterior of the 225 Parsons Street factory that Gibson occupied from 1918 - 1984. Lower right: c1936 factory interior of the "binding room" where workers installed binding and other pre-finish steps.
Below: c1936 interior of the "finish room". Note: The large "buffing jack" on the right. It was a very large machine with two buffing wheels on each end for polishing guitars after the lacquer finish was dry.
Below left: c1936 factory intereior showing the "raw materials " room where all the wood was cut to size. Note: The guitar body templates on the wall used to size materials for specific models.. Lower right: c1936 factory interior of the other end of "binding room" where a worker appears to be installing a fingerboard binding.
Below: c1936 Gibson even had its own baseball team.
