The Gibson USA Factory Tour!

Wow Guys and Gals!

One of the best days ever!!! Just got home from the big behind the scenes Gibson USA Factory Tour. Wow!!

Legacy has worked with Gibson a lot the past year on various projects. They've put some of my lessons on Gibson.com. We worked with them on the iPhone app. Our of our employees, Danny (who used to work at Gibson) has been our main point of contact for these endeavors and also for the idea of me getting a tour of the factory. Gibson used to offer tours of this factory more often but now the factory really doesn't do many of them anymore.

As we got closer to it, "Steve's Gibson Tour" became more and more of a production. It was decided that we should take a video crew so that we could get footage of it all. This had to be approved and low and behold it went all the way to the top. Henry, the CEO of Gibson, had to approve us taking a video crew in the newly renovated factory. We got his approval and the date was set.

So the little "Steve's Gibson Tour" was now quite a circus. It was me, a video crew of 3, Danny (from Legacy Learning Systems), plus 2 representatives of Gibson. The main guy taking me on the tour and answering my endless questions was a wonderful man, Joe, who is the production supervisor for the entire plant. As we walked through the factory it was clear the love and respect he had from his employees and he to them. He has worked for Gibson 15 years and worked up from just one of the guys on the line to the entire production supervisor.

15 years sounds like a lot, but over the course of the tour we would pass station after station of craftsmen (and women) that have been there 20, 25, 30+ years. The sense of pride, heritage, and craftsmanship was everywhere.

Keep in mind, this factory was completely flooded in water, in May from anywhere from 2 to 4 feet. Joe, told me that around 8000 guitars were in the factory when the flood happened. Every one of them was carefully catalogued and run through the wood chipper that churned on the back parking lot of Gibson after the flood for weeks. It makes your heart sick.
Can you imagine the feeling if you were one of the craftsmen who make them.

Luckily most of the machines are raised and sustained minimal damage. But the whole plant was completely gutted due to the mold, mildew and water damage. It took 3-4 months to get it back going again and just about 6 weeks ago the guitars started to come off the line again.

Every solid body Gibson in the world is made at that factory - Les Pauls, SG's, Flying V's, Explorers. All of the semi-hollowbody's are made in Memphis (335s, L-5's etc). All of the acoustics are made in Montana.

It takes approximately 20 days to make a guitar in that factory - from blocks of wood to a new guitar in a box ready for shipping.

Mostly what I saw were Les Pauls - probably 60%, then SG's, then an occasional one of something else.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but Joe patiently took us through each station, explained what is going on and answered all of my endless questions. I may be an incredible looking 44 year old balding white guy on the outside but today on the inside I was a 10 year old kid thinking "This is SO TOTALLY COOL!"

I was deeply impressed by the personalness of the people and the instruments. I truly thought it was going to be more automated. "You put a block of wood on one end of the big machine, punch in "Red Les Paul", it churns and out it comes." But that was not how it was at all. All the way through the process, guitars are shaved with hand tools, inspected for defects, sanded, and painted by hand. On an on it went. I probably past at least 10 different stages where the instrument was inspected - good ones kept and bad ones discarded.

In one of the pictures, I think it is around Picture 12, you'll see a rather rough bearded man looking at an unfinished guitar neck. That man has hand carved the rough neck to every Les Paul since 1986. If you own a Les Paul and it was made since 1986, the man you see in that picture hand carved the the initial cut of the neck. Wow. Talk about heritage.

There were several people along the line like that.

Anyway, here are the pictures. I hope you enjoy them.

http://www.cameronpowell.net/clients/gibsonusatour/index.html

I thought many times about my Dad who told me when I was 10 years old "Gibson... that's a great guitar." He would have loved to have seen what I saw today. But he can't get around as well anymore and certainly couldn't have done all of the walking we did today.

It certainly made me appreciate the craftsmanship and complexity that goes into making a guitar. The neck alone, with all of it's parts from inlay, to truss rods, is quite a piece of work.

I am racking my brain to think of a way that we could get the Guitar Gathering attendees to get a tour like this.

Nope, they didn't give me a free guitar at the end of the tour. But I did change my "dream Les Paul" choice in my head about 3-4 times as I walked through there.

It was a great day!

- Steve Krenz