Gibson USA FULL FACTORY TOUR

playing trade guitars is giving away this gibson custom shop les paul to one of you how to enter subscribe to playing trade guitars on youtube and we'll give it away when we hit 50 000 subscribers [Music] all right hey for plane train guitars i'm john that's zach behind the camera got my good buddy mikey here who has finally been delivered his amazing adam jones silverburst we're continuing this amazing tour of gibson nashville gibson usa this is the gibson usa main plant we're gonna get a tour and uh this day just keeps on trucking man let's do it we're here with uh plane trade guitars we have a tour awesome how you doing oh i reckon i recognize you from some of the gibson tv stuff i think how you doing i'm john john john yeah from clean trade guitars this is zach zach are you good with shaking or do i need a fist bump i'm okay i'm okay with shaking if you are okay well welcome get signed in sure you can stow them in the uh guard station here right back right here yeah they don't look better they look like oakland appreciate you okay go dogs yes sir so this was the first facility that gibson opened in nashville in 1975 and uh kalamazoo was getting pretty antiquated at that time and they had a lot of demand they needed to increase production so they decided to open up this place in nashville since it's a music city anyway and they initially started only making les pauls to get the staff trained and up and running and get everything tooled up and then by the late 70s they added more solid bodies and by 84 they decided to shut down kalamazoo completely sold the building to what is now heritage and then uh moved everything here and at that time the building was half as large or less than half as large as it is now and at that time it was headquarters manufacturing of solid bodies acoustics banjos mandolins everything since then of course custom shop grew to have their own location down the block the acoustics moved to boseman montana in the late 80s and then now what we do here at usa is the high volume solid body guitars and es guitars if it says gibson on the headstock it means it's you know entirely us-made nitrocellulose lacquer finish and so forth so yeah is that a recording that's one of those yeah that's the les paul recording we did a limited edition of this in uh man i can't remember 2013 or 14 i believe and uh we only made like a hundred of them i believe wow but it took probably more development time that year than anything else his original pickups were of course the low impedance pickups so we retooled the covers but his original guitars kind of fell short you know what i mean they didn't really have any kind of sell through he felt it was a great idea but it didn't really take off so what we did here i designed high impedance pickups instead of low impedance pickups and then added a jensen microphone transformer in the controls so now you can have high impedance that you have great sounding pickups through a normal amp or low impedance like his original intention by utilization of that jensen microphone transformer and these are your designs that went into it yeah yeah and then uh and then and then some of his switches like he had the decade switches and things like that that weren't very practical so we went with single and dual coil in phase and out of phase and then ground lift for the low impedance so uh it's it's kind of capturing his intention but modernizing it and make it a bit more practical sure so uh so yeah that was a very fun project but yeah it was very limited like i said only like 100 guitars yeah i spotted it i was like man you don't see those every day it's cool to see it hanging on the wall yeah yeah it was uh it was a fun project yeah it's a bucket head yeah wow gosh look at this we can't even make it into the factory yeah so so that's an oversized les paul body with a longer scale 28 27 or 28 inch i forget wow and uh you know his uh kill switch is on there so yeah that's cool people who don't know who buckethead is i always joke you know even when he came in the factory he still had you know the bucket on yeah everything on so i i joke that you know it's probably john stamos in disguise or something like that you know [Laughter] this is derek truck's uh sg so he has the the faux lyre tail piece on there yeah so it has the look and you know adds some weight so it still has that that counterbalance balance feel that the liar adds to it so uh we did that for a few years from like 20 11 until 14 i i think uh then we have you know joe bonamassa gary oh no this is lou paulo the uh oh we had to take the perry down because it was over there gary clark jr this was another bona masa and then that was one of the slashes yep beautiful yeah the gary clark was a fun one this one kind of happened because we had already had gary's uh signature model sg casino i mean uh epiphone casino right and so uh our er guy called me and said hey what would what could you do you know to kind of get him in you know he's picking up like his very very first guitar was like this ibanez uh roadstar strat kind of thing he said you know sometimes he's looking for something like that what could we do and i was i was very busy at the time i'm like i don't have time to talk about this right now but how about a 3p90 sg and he was like boom you know that's cool we've never done you know and afterwards we thought about it and researched it no we never did a 3p90sg we did a three humbucker but never a 3p90 and then we used the uh p90s the slug magnet rod magnet p90s and a lot of people associate those you know with you know the strat or tele kind of sound however in 1946 when we debuted the p90 we had a version like this with the rod magnets as well as the version we know with six screws and the bar magnets so uh we did these before they did theirs and then their reverse wine reverse polarized and you have a blend on the rhythm tone so you can treat this with this down it's just a regular two pickup sg volume volume master tone and then uh you can blend in that center pickup with wherever this switch is so it's a very very versatile setup very cool yeah that's unique for sure yeah yeah gary's fantastic sammy hagar loves paul this is the gary moore right here and then the lizzie hale explorer so now we can enter the factory uh probably go around this way chris hey so we're going to start the tour here at the body line we have our rough mill across the parking lot and at the rough mill we'll get all the raw lumber and process it into the appropriate size blanks used for bodies or necks rough machine them and then we send them up here so at this point we're seeing bodies as the rough mill supplies them to us so these are some sg moderns where it has a maple top with mahogany back and all this carving is done at the rough mill and supplied to us like this these are wings for firebirds so the the wings will go on the neck through section [Music] oh here's a nice one so this is the les paul obviously we have a 3a flame top on this one mahogany back and this is how it's supplied from the rough mill and if you feel the surface it'll almost feel like alligator skin yeah and that's from the ball nose cutter it's rounded so as it passes across here to carve that top it leaves the tool marks okay and that's why you have that alligator kind of feel will finish the binding channel bind it and then sand that all down smooth and is that all hand finishing stuff that has to be done or how do you end up how do you end up sanding this to that we'll see that some of it is done on a big slack belt sander and then then it's followed up in color prep with sanders done by hand oh you know what i never even saw that they must have just put it up yeah very cool yeah so this is the es body line okay this press gibson bought in the mid 50s used from the furniture industry so we think it's from the 30s or 40s and this this machine has pressed every single es guitar that we've ever made oh my god so if you think of bb king's es or albert lee's eric clapton or any of the iconic you know keith richards any anybody who's played an es it's come out of this machine it's warm too you can feel oh yeah we use heat pressure so it's it's warmed up to about 220 degrees we have three plies of wood maple and then we rotate it 90 degrees poplar and then maple and that's what comprises the top and back of the es so this would be a finished top you can see how it has the contouring yeah wow look at that so it would go in the press like this and then that press comes down and that heat and pressure it stays in there for three minutes and that cures the glue and helps form the top veneers together that's very hot then we put it on the racks here to dry and at this point it could be either a top or a back okay once we put it on this machine we'll route it out and then if it's a top it'll route it out for the upholstery controls and if it's a back it doesn't sure then it goes to the next stations we glue up the cores over here we'll take the cores assemble those and then we glue the tops and backs together on that affair there so you have a bladder situation like this that inflates and that's where we glue the tops and backs together and this is the center block you said yeah the center block the core and then we'll have a trimming operation where you can see the veneers extending off of the rim of the guitar there sure yeah so we'll trim that on a router table or shaper table channel it for binding and then we do the binding over here that's where we channel it on those tables there so he's unwrapping an es that's already been bound the top has been bound the back still has yet to be bound yeah so i mean even i mean that's still the most efficient way to do it huh just tie it down and have it yeah you know pressure-wise yeah we're gonna watch probably gary coming up on solid bodies but that rope method is probably one of the only processes that we still do today that we did over 100 years ago and it takes over two months to train one of these guys how to do that but once you do it it's way better and has a lot greater degree of success and accuracy than using tape or rubber bands like some other manufacturers use so it pays to teach people that skill yeah it is highly skilled come down over the years the skill's still in use that's yeah we go around here and get the solid body line yeah cut through here is gary oh gary's on that side let's go watch gary you guys probably can't even keep up with demand these days huh no we have uh ever since the the changeover with the new leadership we straightened out the product line you know we corrected a lot of features that people were asking for got things back and and then i split the line between the original and the modern series and now the folks who want the original series guitars with those features can have it and then the newer players who want you know fresher colors and newer features can have the modern series everybody's happy so it's created a very very huge backlog for us we're actively hiring new new people all the time but it takes a long time to train them so it's a good spot because it's very good for us but it's a challenge because we do have a lot of backorders how you doing hi gary how you doing good how are you gary is going to show us how he's binding the top of an es so he starts with a strip of abs plastic for the binding if you want to catch this there's a glue trough here he'll he'll slide that whole piece in so the whole piece of binding is covered in that glue okay and that glue has solvents in there that start to melt the binding and that that helps it get a good glue seam around the body as well as just hold it on see so then he'll wrap it around the body he'll center it up so he has enough length on both sides and then he's going to hold it in the center and then start tying it then he'll wipe off the excess glue on the outside so it's kind of like a belt at that stage it's kind of right yeah you tie it at the waist and that holds it all around the butt end of the guitar and then he starts that process of wrapping it around the butt end [Music] and the sequence of wraps that he's doing is the part that takes a long time because when you see a rack of these guitars like you do here that sequence of wraps will all be in that same sequence okay and we've figured out over time what that sequence is to get the proper pressure not only in the waist but at the ends of the tips of the horn inside the cutaways high pressure areas like that it's very critical to get the proper tension and you see he's wearing gloves the gloves not only keep the glue from getting on his hands but just as important if not more so keep his hands from getting rope burn because when you're doing that there's a lot of force you're using and that that burlap rope will kind of burn your hands so that's so big that kind of degrades the binding does that help keep its shape or does that serve it it softens the binding and it softens not only the pliability but the surface of it so it literally starts to melt into the grain okay so with the pressure of that rope holding that binding in and that's starting to melt now you're not going to have like a dark or open glue seam okay it's amazing it's been done this way for over 100 years yeah [Music] now he's re-wetting the inside because as you as you wrap it at that point it starts to dry a bit so you got to make sure it's wet have there been any major changes i mean apart from memphis closing have there been any major changes to the process in the past several years with the uh yeah there's been a lot you know it was originally done here for you know decades before it moved to memphis and moved back here during the change two years ago and since then uh you know certain things like the top press is the same as it was since the 50s binding is the same as it was for over 100 years ago the glue formula has changed a little bit only to accelerate the drying so it used to dry over eight hours and now we get it about three to four hours little things like that have changed and then we've done uh some other process changes in terms of the nc routing of the controls and uh things like that that make it more accurate okay than it was in the past it's done with the cnc machine that's rounded out with the yeah yeah cnc ensures that accuracy yeah and then we have other clamping processes that we've retooled for gluing into kerfing thank you gary thank you so much for joining us and you see how quickly he's done that yeah that that is one of the most highly skilled tasks we have in the plant we have other tasks that take longer that aren't as highly skilled but that's just the nature of those tasks like sanding a guitar takes longer but this is a lot more skilled right so gary and his team just do incredible work we're very proud of that thank you gary thank you so much so we can look at the slack belt sander here we have the slack belt sander so it's a big belt sander and you can see there's a moving table under there and now he's standing in es and he'll he'll take that wad of cloth as you can see and he'll he'll move it as he's sliding that guitar body okay and that makes that slack belt conform into the contours of the guitar les paul will be done the same way wow and on the case of a les paul he'll flip it over on the back and then he'll take that that flat black with felt on it and do a similar thing but it'll be a flat belt instead of that wadded up ball of cloth wow and that will remove the excess binding around the perimeter of the guitar as well as any tool marks like on a les paul where it's carved like that so it's an incredibly uh skilled process as well because you could you could ruin a body very easily yeah if you don't know what you're doing especially in the waist if you put too much pressure there it'll dip and now your binding is going to be cut away you have to learn that feel yeah because it builds the belt's going this way and then you're using that rag basically to move a counter yeah the belt yeah in that direction and you're pressing down on that belt yeah so it stretches and conforms into the contour and and if you use the incorrect pressure and you there he's just kind of trueing up the outsides if you put too much pressure like i said on any one area you can cause a dip and you just can't get rid of that dip you got to strap the body very very important here we have the neck fitters we'll come back well actually we could do it now i guess it's out of sequence if you don't mind oh no problem okay uh also if you look up you can see what looks like steam is actually just water vapor that we're pumping in we get hourly readouts on the humidity of our facility and we need to maintain between 40 and 50 percent humidity or else wood could split or warp or move right so as the humidity fluctuates will the water misters will turn on and and with neck fitting you know we use cnc machines now to carve the neck tenons and body mortises however that wood can still expand and contract sure and and if we were making our guitars out of plastic or metal we wouldn't have to neck fit them like this we could just machine them accurately so they fit proper sure but we intentionally have to make the neck tendon too large so they get to the neck fitter they have to use their chisels to fine fit it okay to the neck and and if you're not careful that's what they're doing there yeah if you want to get footage here now he's already did his initial chiseling so now he's verifying the pitch with that gauge and that'll that'll show him the height off of the surface of the body okay and then he'll take the glue and apply it to the neck tenon and this is where it's critical you saw him already fitted in if you're if you're not skilled yet in doing this or if you're new you may think you're gonna like go above and beyond and make it super tight but if it's too tight to fit you'll apply the glue and it'll swell up and you won't be able to get it in there gotcha so that's where you know you develop that skill to know how much material to remove okay to anticipate how much it'll expand and contract still so much of an arctic craft to it i mean yeah that's a field thing yeah there is our experience comes in but and then you notice he's using one clamp to glue it up yeah now he'll remove the excess you know with the brush and water we use a conventional wood glue so clamp time is only 30 minutes okay one clamp is done because if you use two clamps you might have a risk of putting a curvature in the fingerboard okay and then once he's done cleaning it up then he'll put it on the clamp tree to dry 30 minutes later they can pull it down and then it'll go down the line to get sanded and then machined you notice none of the guitars are machined for bridges tailpieces or pickups and i'll explain that later on in the process okay so that's pretty quick 30 minutes of drive time that's nice yeah the full strength cure is 24 hours but that would mean you couldn't string the guitar up after 30 minutes right the full strength so clamp time all that's required is 30 minutes and by the time all those you know same clamp time is gluing the top together gluing the top to the back it's all 30 minutes per process by the time the guitar goes through manufacturing everything's fully cured so that's where you don't have to wait 24 hours just 30 minutes these are necks as they're supplied to us from the rough mill oh wow so at the rough mill we'll we'll get the mahogany and cure it in the kiln and then we'll glue on the peghead ears you can see a very slight color difference here the reason we do that a lot of other makers who have that style of headstock if you didn't do this you'd be wasting a lot of wood that's a great shot through here right right that's straight through here and then you just glue the ears on that's interesting okay i haven't thought of that yeah that you'd be wasting twice as much wood literally so we rough machine it to this point and we blew in the truss rod the truss rod is an interesting story too a lot of people don't realize gibson invented the truss rod in 1921. not only does it reinforce the neck and allow adjustment but the cool thing that i like to talk about is it also enco coincided with the timeline of adding a pickup electrifying the guitar right so prior to the truss rod and pickups guitars were played in a finger style classical or parlor or strumming folk method right with a truss rod that allowed us to have a thinner neck and prior to that necks were a lot deeper and typically v-shaped so they wouldn't be too cumbersome and that allowed us to use steel strings with a truss rod now we can have a thinner neck and that thinner neck allowed pioneers like charlie christian to now play single note lines up and down the neck people didn't do that prior to that oh fascinating so it was the truss rod as well as the pickup that facilitated that modern lead guitar sound okay so that's why a classical guitar will still have that thicker neck yeah and a classical is more d-shaped you know flat because they typically play with the thumb on the back of the neck on steel string guitars before the truss rod they're typically v-shaped to cut down on the circumference and they typically played with their thumb you know like that you know if they're strumming sometimes in the bottom if they're playing things down there sure not necessarily classical style right so yeah that's kind of the evolution of that shape i i never put that two and two together you know but that makes total sense yeah 1921 gift and invented the trust ride yeah and everybody also that's why if you have a trust rod break so to get at it that's interesting to see that too is how you glue it in so to repair a crestron what would you have to do take the fretboard off yeah so you'd take the fretboard off with typically with heat you know heat clamps and uh remove the spline and then you can access the rod and take that out okay there are some methods if it only snaps you know at the end you can counter-bore that and re-thread it and sometimes get by with it there but the theory of how it works is there's a slight curvature in it and it's held captive by that spline and then the fingerboard on top of it so as the neck pulls forward and you tighten it it wants to straighten itself out right so it's pulling itself straight like that so uh yeah so it allows that adjustment and allows the neck to be thinner because of that reinforcement virtually everyone uses a truss rod and when other makers like uh fenders started making their first guitars patents are only like 17 years old right you know they only last for 17 years so then they were naturally able to adopt the truss rod so we glue on the headstock veneers over here i love them those are fun they look like it could be a good light switch or something you know light switch cover oh that's a good idea i might borrow that yeah we're setting up our r d lab over here i might have to yeah great idea there you go so we'll have the inlays already done in in the veneer and then we glue them on the neck here and then they go into the following machine to get the final neck car great idea [Music] t-birds and firebirds oh wow wow we're just talking about this wow and so is that is it i mean is it all the way through or do these join somehow here where does that work it's it's nine plies of lamination this way mahogany and walnut like that okay and we'll typically when we glue them up you know it's a very large section and it's very thick and you can typically get two of them out of one you know blank okay it's almost like a railroad tie kind of size so we can get two out of one blank so we we glue it up in that direction but then we carve it out in that direction wow so the stringers reinforce the neck so not only do you get that extra sustain because it's neck groove but because of the uh stringers as well can i see that absolutely so this is it's almost like when you're playing a firebird this is actually kind of what you're playing right right and the wings are almost just there for obvious support and rounding it out yeah but like this is the actual we like firebird they even have it in our logo oh yeah right yeah yeah so really you could you could take this next section and put pickups in it in a bridge yeah and then put your controls on the side you know and you have to play like the log or something you know yeah can i can i set it down sure sure i'll let you do it okay we'll let the pro do it so here is the last cnc machine carving operation that next go through this table is divided into two halves of ten so now it's machining ten next on that table and she'll go ahead and load up this table okay we have locator holes that will locate [Music] ah right okay so that holds it in place oh how cool and then that's a vacuum and then that vacuum holds it down that is so cool so once you load it up then you select the program turn the program on and then it machines it like over there so not only is it higher capacity but it's greater consistency and most importantly more safety because the operator is back here yeah and it's doing everything there in the old days this was done with pin routers so an operator had a template that they had to move under this moving pin router a lot of times there'd be operators with missing fingers they're very dangerous [Music] if you want to shoot you can see the router has an accent [Music] thank you [Music] so when they get done they'll be about at this level yeah but there's still more work to go so after that we'll glue the fingerboards on over here the fingerboards also have holes for locating like the machines do and at this point we put doll rods in to locate them on the fingerboard we also have a rfid under here so we could track it through the plant oh wow so she'll take a glue roller and apply glue to the neck put the fingerboard on and then [Music] that rack here is filled with fire hoses so once she gets that glue spread on the neck and the fingerboard on she'll put it on a clamp call install it into that machine get one valve and that fire hose inflates with air and that's what clamps the neck to the fingerboard so that's what gives the pressure but doesn't damage the neck because it's just inflated it's like an inflated backpack yeah and then yeah basically inflate it back and now you don't have individual hot spots or any voids because it's uniform pressure okay and and we invented that process and made that machine genius yeah that's cool and again necks only have to sit in there for 30 minutes and then they can proceed you can feel how much pressure it's not like a bicycle tire where you can squeeze it it's a lot of pressure oh yeah yeah you think it was like a sandbag or something right yeah can you believe this here is where we shape the mustache you can see how headstocks don't have that gibson mustache or open book this is the mustache yeah that's a shaper table in one pass wow in one pass it'll cut that shape of the top of the headstock oh my god the one and only open book huh yeah yeah we more formally we'll call it the open book but a lot of the folks inside the plant will call it the mustache hey guys we're just gonna cut through here for a little filming is that okay thank you so here we have the hand rollers wow so this is the neck a thunderbird base neck after the fingerboard fingerboard's glued on so you can see it's been shaped on that last cnc machine but now we have to blend in the side of that neck to the fingerboard and remove any excess material here and blend it into the heel so you purposely have too much and then you take that down to be a perfect fit yeah okay so they use these belt sanders here and then they'll do that final what we call the hand roll on the back of the neck and that'll blend not only this smooth but blend in the headstock into the neck and into the heel yeah wow so there again you know we like to say the machine you know we use machines where applicable but where it's important to have skilled craftsmen do their work the machines allow us to spend more time for that sure so i like to say machines make great guitar parts but people make great guitars because the people make the difference yeah they're doing what we're feeling yeah right yeah it's just amazing and i mean you know the slightest little wrong move there and the thing's probably scrapped right so that takes a lot of skill yep that's amazing and though you know even though we have the cnc's and it's accurate there's still going to be slight variation which is why you know it kind of gives them personality you may find a few different les pauls and one feels particularly good to you you know this cnc machine does all our pick guards and uh fingerboard machining for inlays okay so you can see here oh and headstock veneers okay oh wow so these this was a sheet that cut out all the headstock veneers under there are sheets that have cut out uh explorer and firebird pickguards so we have all the different forms here there's an explorer they'll put that down on the table and then bolt it down and then it pulls a vacuum to hold the material down now you've got lightfoot covers and you got a poster frame hey there you go now right let's get through here so here are guitars sgs the reason in the old days with pin routers it made sense to run for your pickups bridge and tailpiece before the neck was glued on because while you're at the pin router you want to do as much work as you can we figured out it was more accurate to glue the neck in and we have a cnc machine that has self-centering clamps so we glue the or we set the guitar in the machine the sole centering clamps will center the guitar up it bumps up against the nut which gets the stale scaled correct for the scale length and then it machines the pickups bridge and tail piece so everything is exactly accurate in relationship to the neck into the neck yeah that makes a lot of sense that's why in the old days two pneumatic bridges didn't have notches on them because there's that variation let it slide so they'd put the bridges on in final assembly and then string them up and then they'd center the strings on the fingerboard tap it with a hammer and then file all the notches now we can have the the notches pre-notched on center because everything's going to be on center technology yeah here he's loading the machine so you can see the self-centering clamps and then the gate locating it at the nut and here it'll and then you can see all the different cutters on the machine so it'll swap the cutters as needed and then this is the pickup routing and everything is what you're talking about this is the clamp self-centering yeah that's the self-centering clamp and then this gate locates off of the nut so the scale length is determined okay oh so it's going to route out the pickup cap wow [Music] how long how many years did you say you were at gibson it'll be 10 in june and before that i was with fender for 11 before that pb for 12 and then a shot for 9. a little bit about that that's fascinating so this is uh going on my 42nd year wow and an interesting thing is when we drill for the tail pieces or anything that has a hole instead of drilling it we'll use a router bit that's smaller and interpolate it so that way we can use one tool to do a variety of different hole sizes and then if the cutter lasts longer because it's not just a tip doing all the work is that awesome or what wow and that's it so that's going to be an sg61 yeah sg61 i was i'm looking at the tailpiece holes i was thinking it was a vibrato but it'll be it'll be a 61 without the vibrato okay now it's doing the mounting ring holes yeah if it didn't have the big stop tail piece holes then it would be either the sideways trim or the vibrola sure i just played my first sideways trip i didn't realize that was the case on the first uh yeah i guess it would have been the left ball at that point yeah yeah and you know it's kind of a quirky thing but it does have a particular character you know it affects the way the guitar balances and it just has a very unique look billy gibbons has been really enamored with him and puts him on all his guitar a lot of his guitars so that's interesting too that when people talk about occasionally when they talk about sgs having headstock diets i mean really the cases that have that heavy hardware that's why initially it kind of passed right it would have been balanced because it would have been down there right interesting when you take that off now that's when that happens which is why derrick trucks like to have that faux tail piece on his yeah so now that's it there it is that's pretty cool [Music] then here's the firebird with the wings glued on i doing rick so we're in the pluck room now so the plex are the machines that do the fingerboard leveling you know they level the the frets and then they profile the frets and then lastly they slot the nut so we started using these in the early 2000s we started with one machine now we have eight in this room and we have two more that we're expanding the room so we're going to have 10 of them in this room each machine is over 200 000 so it's a big investment but it it's very very accurate because now all this is you know cnc controlled and then uh it's just a lot faster than people can do it you know because this average cycle time is only eight minutes so again every gibson whether it's you know gibson usa or custom shop or montana all gibson guitars go through the collect machine one of them yeah so we have that guaranteed accuracy so how it works we'll put it in that fixture there and there's gauges on there and that'll be will adjust the neck to simulate that string string tension on the neck and specific fixtures for each model are installed on the guitar loaded in the machine tension and then the guitar is located uh put in the pluck machine the pluck machine then scans the neck and it has a plunger that follows the string path of every string and just like my finger is doing it hits a fret and every every time it hits a fret it's moving up and down and it records that movement and then when it's done it'll come back and start machining each fret it'll level it and profile it at the same time so it took all those readings and then comes back yeah when it's done it has a complete digital topographical map of that fret surface which is a lot of information and then it comes back one at a time and it might take one thousandth off of this side maybe two thousand there maybe skip in the middle and come back and take three thousands here yeah and then it does that to every fret and then lastly it'll slot it to ensure that all strings are on center with that neck and it just saves time then when we get into final assembly then the adjusters will do the final shaping and then take it home so that's a lot of work in eight minutes you know if you don't have the plug machines you have to do it by hand so there you know you'd put the guitar on a work surface and you'd use a honing block so it would be similar to doing it like this and you'd have to get a straight edge and adjust your neck straight hone it manually like that and then come back with a crowning file which is concave and then file each fret to get that profile without hitting the very top so it's very laborious and prone to human error not to say you can't do it that way uh i still take great pride in my fretwork but uh you know when you're running uh production in guitars when it's very critical you want optimum playability the plaque will facilitate that how many guitars will you typically have about a year a day per day right now we're looking at around 400 or so might be a little bit more we have an initiative to raise it you know because we have a lot of back orders yeah so uh and and it determined it's dependent on the product mix too uh you know some years ago we were doing upwards of you know 700 guitars a day but there were a lot more satins okay now with more satins you can get more through okay so right now it's round four yeah you say that so you're getting a few more plucking machines but the backlog is ultimately in trying to train some extra well it's it's everything it's everything so it's it's the plant cape uh capacity and it's the employees you know they take a long time to train and depending on the department and you just can't arbitrarily get x amount of people off the street and then turn up the daily number right you got to make sure that your quality is maintained that all the skill sets are in place and gradually increase it like that and 2020 in your experience in 42 years that surge in sales is unprecedented have you seen anything like that in your career where so many people wanted to start planning no that was that was uh that was completely unheard of and and with gibson prior to that uh we had certain years where uh the previous leadership felt we needed to be more technology centered so we had a lot of features that kind of fell short in the public's uh expectation of what we should be doing right so things like infamous robot tuners the robot tuners and things like that we had this adjustable nut and very wide necks things like that that were people the bottom line was no one was asking for it they just felt that the market should have it so once the new leadership you know started coming into place i created a bucket list of things i wanted to change and then once you know i met cesar and jc we had a meeting told them about the list and we said yeah that's the direction we need to move and then later on then we started implementing that then then i had the idea let's split the product line between original and modern so that way the people who want our historic models can have them and and we appease everyone who is asking for that for years and then that allows us to do modern guitars and satisfy all the younger players who want newer features and newer colors and things like that that maybe their dads or uncles didn't have you know that they want to cut their own path so now we have freedom to do both so that was really really huge so ever since we debuted that it's been unprecedented unprecedented growth and then uh our quality levels you know have been tightened up you know because of all the awareness and then this past year with the pandemic created a incredible guitar boom for everybody uh you know because people were quarantined so that just inspired a lot of people to play a lot more sure so uh yeah it's been a crazy couple years for sure is there anything on your short bucket list now things you want your shopping list that you're really looking forward to in the next couple of years that you think you guys have hit i mean i think your product makes and you guys are like firing on all cylinders yeah and it makes so much sense and it's some of the greatest guitars we've ever played from gibson there's there's uh there's several models that we've already initiated that we'll be bringing in in the near future but we got to wait for the timing because it's not fair for our dealers and customers to just put out new models when we still can't fulfill the orders on the old ones right so we're trying to balance that and uh so we have a lot of things already in progress and then there's a lot of stuff in discussion so yeah we're still looking to the future for sure but we just have to bring it to the market at the appropriate time so it's it's an answer to your question yeah there's a lot of stuff and then i have certain features and certain things i would still like to do but uh when the timing is right yeah it's a good time for gibson well it goes both ways because yeah there's a lot more people wanting to play guitars but a lot more people are buying gifts and guitars because they're just making fantastic guitars yeah yeah the product mix really seemed right yeah that that was very very important and and really all that was uh for me was just listening to dealers and customers and reading forums and it's like i said i created that list you know this bullet point list of features that i i'd hear over and over and over you just give people what they want that's interesting that's as simple as it is the forums are making an impact on production i mean that's listening to the yeah well when when you hear people vocalize what they want to see or what features they want or what features they don't want you have to listen so uh you know it's just real simple and honest is that this is so cool yeah so so after plaque then guitars go into color prep they get their final sanding and then wood filling wood filling is a paste wood filler that has the viscosity of pudding and that packs the pores so when we lacquer it we don't just shrink into the grain and then on transparent colors we'll tint the wood filler to stain it and accent that grain they go up on the carousel to free up floor space and dry heat rises so they cure quicker but they still have to dry for eight hours before we can pull them down and then send them into finishing you need everybody in here first right yeah yeah we have double doors so we can help keep contamination how you doing bud [Music] you got the best hair in the plant i gotta say [Music] coming from me that means a lot now you're going to smell nitrocellulose i'm kind of desensitized to it but i know every time i bring people in when we walk through that door they notice it so yeah everything we do is true nitrocellulose lacquer you know it's it's what we've always used except in the very very very early orbital days when we're still using varnish but all the historic models you know since from the 20s on have been nitrocellulose lacquer we feel it's the best instrument finish it provides a gloss and patina you know as it ages and it's very thin and and as it ages it becomes more brittle it's more resonant so it doesn't just encapsulate the guitar and inhibit resonance and letting the wood breathe as well yeah yeah it does you know it's very thin we try to maintain no more than 10 mils of thickness okay so we don't want it you know you could put just tons on but you know that's not good the more finish you put on the more it's going to inhibit the resonance and then it it won't give that clarity and so uh you want to make sure you have it thick enough to look good and and be durable but not too thick so guitars enter finishing they'll get a sealer coat of sanding sealer and then we start applying color on the other side of that wall we have a spray booth that does only metal flake like gold and silver and so forth felon blue sparkling burgundy things like that anything with metal flake up on top we have another spray booth that does light colors like white yellow light colors to keep those isolated from other colors that can contaminate down here i call it general population so we'll do all our sunbursts and all that down here how you doing george so in finishing we have two quality control inspection points one after the color is applied and then one at the very end of the line after all the clear top coats so here is the the color line quality control so these guitars have had all their shading done and they've had the binding scrape and but there's only one clear coat that seals on the color after they do the burst so we still have to do all the multiple clear coats but we inspect them at this point to make sure if they need any repairs we can do it so that it's more effective to do it at this point than after all the clear top coats are applied did you see that nitro is in two layers the uh nitrocellulose will be multiple coats so it'll be right now i think we're doing five coats of nice clear nitrocellulose lacquer like the shaders is still nitrocellulose but the clear top coats is clear nitrocellulose and it'll be typically five coats now so be careful of the hangers yeah be careful we can cut through hey could we film you [Music] hang on make sure we get the cameras rolling thank you so he's going to start a sunburst he's going to spray that center yellow right yeah so that's yellow transparent shader that gives it that center yellow burst that we all know and love and then inside there's a color code that tells them what color that burst is going to be or whatever shade he's doing and then if you look you see all the different spray guns yes so he'll look in the inside that pickup pocket and then grab the appropriate gun and start the finishing process [Music] so not only does it take a lot of dexterity to follow that perimeter of the body and spray that shade very evenly but it's a lot of eye uh skills also because that wood can vary so he has to know how quickly or how forward or backward you know he has to lean that gun in to achieve that same shape that's so pretty what are your guys operating production well it depends on the department typically finishing comes in early and leave early so uh i can't exactly remember what time i think it's four or five and then they leave like at 1 30 or 2 30. because it's better for them to come in early and then other departments are later like typically final assembly will be you know 7 to 3 30 they'll start later so that way they can be fed work from the other department how long has that guy been doing this job actually he's one of the newer guys yeah so he's only been here a few work from a guy that's been doing it yeah yeah we typically have a few month process of changing over and learning that that's the standard list paul once he gets the burst done then he's gonna give it one clear coat just to seal in that color and then it'll also pop the color so he'll he'll be able to verify that he got all the shade right when that clear go well yeah it's like turning the switch on right what type of leftover that ultimately would it be a standard yeah that's the les paul standard uh let me look inside oh no that's a tribute i'm sorry yeah i was thinking it was bound but it's not so there we go that'll tell you the skew so the skew is in there and then the color code okay i did my first sunburst in 1980 wow and i'm still proud i can still do a good sunburst but you saw how quick he can throw that down right like in 30 seconds it'll take me five minutes because i don't do it all day every day so i'll do it i'll take a pass and i'll stand back and look at it and squint and then do another pass right but that just goes to show you you build up that that repetition you know on muscle memory and you can just blaze through it it almost seems like something has to be that flowing automatic movement like if you stop and think about it you're gonna ride right too late yeah oh if you stop now you're gonna have a hard stop and start line you're not gonna be able to make up for that yeah that was incredible thank you so that's where that's where you have to have skilled people right thank you so you have skilled people doing what skilled people need to do so then when it comes time to the clear coat the clear is just building multiple coats of clear right so what we do there you know here if you notice the guitars are hanging by an eyelet on the butt end of the guitar when we put clear coats on then we take it over here now they're hanging by the headstock and you see that wire dangling from the hanger to the truss rod this is an electrostatic process that's normally only used in metal working like automotive so the guitar is given a low voltage electrical charge and the finish is opposite low voltage and it attracts really so now we can automate this so if you look inside the boot you see three spray heads like that yeah so oh wow there's not a person in there it's all automated zack you said that that blue cavo's electro charge that pulls the finish to the card it's kind of like powder coating right yeah exactly right so that's typically only done in metal but uh we're able to use it here because that truss rod spans the length of the guitar or the neck and and that still allows us even to use it on the body there's enough charge throughout there even the custom shop doesn't do that because there's the the size you know we do about 10 times the output is custom shop here but for them it doesn't make sense because for that low volume you know this is too costly of an operation but for us you know with high volume this is the most efficient way and then you have uniform coverage with less overspray and then you don't have to have operators do that you have operators do the critical things like all the shading another benefit of the truss rod we'll take a look at silk screening so here are all the silk screens we'll use so conventional silk screens right that we all know we always use silk screens but there's a period of time in the 70s when we went to a water slide decal and with all the vintage awareness by the late 70s early 80s we went back to silkscreen and i don't know why it i scratched my head because i don't know why you would want to do a water slide uh because the silk screen is so much quicker more accurate you're going to have less of that potential wrinkle or breakage of a water slide and then at the same time it's historic when it when the lacquer settles you're not going to see that uh outline or halo of that water slide and it's just quicker to apply which one did they go back to they went back to the silk screen the silk screen so they went to a water slide in the 70s during the dark ages and then back to silk screen after that could you flip that up one more time that's the silk screen of the that's beautiful so what we do on a les paul standard we'll silk screen the les paul model but we won't silk screen the gibson because that's in pearl so what we do is we put the guitar here and these pins locate on the headstock then we close that we'll apply ink to the silk screen and then we have a squeegee and then squeegee that ink and it goes through them small holes onto the guitar right so the cool thing you know silk screens have been around for you know since the 1800s i believe used for posters and printing and things like that my favorite trivia do you know when they first screen printed on t-shirts right beetlemania really beetle mania was the first use of screen print on t-shirts it was a modern fan shirt yeah so that not only did they invent the the concert t-shirt but just that concept of screen printing on t-shirts what made you want to play guitar uh well my buddies were i was always interested in the music you know i grew up with the older brother and sister so it was kind of a beetle household and uh and then later you know other things like cream and hendricks and stones and deep purple and then uh when i was about 14 or 15 you know i was really into skateboarding and i'm back into it again oh wow and uh and a lot of my friends were starting to play guitar and i lived outside of chicago so i thought you know guitar would be cool to learn when i can't skateboard the winner so uh so i i was able to get like us yeah so i i got a gibson sg uh which is a long story but i was fortunate to start out on a gibson sg as my first guitar and it's surreal that i'm here now and i built my first guitar uh like six months after that because i was in my second year of wood shop in high school so i had to do something more accomplished and so uh i didn't explore because i thought it just looked cool and then i got hired by the local music store i was taking lessons at right so that was kind of how i got into this business so it's beetle inspired and then when i decided i wanted a guitar i was going through a beetle book and saw a picture of george harrison with his cherry red sg and i said yeah that's the kind of guitar i want so that's that's what you know kind of prompted me into it right what part of the chicago area uh actually munster indiana north west corner yeah so uh we're from west of chicago oh yeah western suburbs oh no kidding yeah i'm out in batavia so oh yeah right right right yeah i got friends out there so uh yeah that was my stomping ground there was a store at the time called djs that's where i got my first guitar wow that was in uh oh i forgot the name of the sound now oh we're catching them between ships this is scraping so in scraping what they do they're packing up in between shifts they'll have a scraper blade they'll hold it between their thumb and finger and then they scrape the color off of the binding because you can't effectively mask it and yeah that's amazing that's what we saw over at custom yeah so this takes many months to learn that skill and they have all their and that's why they pack them up because each of these craftsmen shape and sharpen their own blades really so when they leave after their shift they put their tools up and then the next shift comes in and they get their tools and uh all those files are what they sharpen their their scraper blades on so it's very very skilled uh because they have to maintain the the proper distance without getting into the wood right so yeah yeah thanks for letting us peek yeah thank you these would be the finished guitars you can't effectively mask use masking tape and and have a line that clean so that's why you have to scrape it you have that surface and then the face so it's very critical it'll still bleed a little bit right yeah and on cars and things like that you can get away with using that and on a big car you don't notice that little bit but on a guitar you'll notice that bleed or that very slight fuzz sure thank you so with that step there the fitting is done it's been straight the binding has been scraped yeah so after the binding scrape then it goes to get that qc approval so all the color is done and then once they pass there then they get the clear top coat okay karen today is her last day here oh wow she's going to custom shop so i got to make sure i give her a hug before she leaves so i got to make sure i give you another hug before you leave what time do you actually leave today i'm leaving at 3 30. okay normal time i'll try to get back for some more hugs thank you yeah we're very very proud of karen she's she's like the star here but she's going over to custom so we wish her well but we're going to miss her but she's still part of the family congratulations congratulations thank you yeah all right karen excuse me i love all the smells in here yeah now these guitars in here are guitars that didn't pass the qc at color so they'll go back and get sanded and re-sprayed and then brought back in the demo on thursday is that where those go right here well some of them will go to demo it depends on the level of what's required yeah some of them can if it's not too bad they may go over there and get a little touch up and then get processed but the majority of them will go back out in the color preference process like these will go to demo they're slated for demo oh wow but a lot of them will just go to uh oh actually those are too but a lot of them will go back out to uh color prep and then back in i think the reason those because they're es and that would be more time-consuming to repair than to let them do them they have a great team over there they do they were cool noah gave us a tour yeah they're doing a lot of fun stuff yeah seems like it it's almost like they're their own little custom shop yeah it feels like you're getting a curated you know it's it's a blend but they're kind of curating the restoration and getting it back into yeah and their spec and then it ends up being a one-off kind of one yeah exactly yeah like a mini custom shop exactly yep hi shannon guitars come out of finishing and go into neck prep and then neck prep they remove the masking tape off of the fingerboard and then clean and polish the frets and fretboard surface because even though it's masked you'll get a little bit of lacquer bleed onto the fingerboard so they've got to clean all that off so this is a les paul that this is how it looks after it comes out of neck prep so they've already cleaned and polished the fingerboard but they put tape on it so when they buff it they don't get buffing compound on the fingerboard and you can see while it's glossy it still has a certain amount of residual orange peel and maybe some grain texture right so what they do is sand it down level with fine grade sandpaper down to 1200 grit and it'll look like frosted glass all dull but smooth and then they buff it out on all the buffing wheels progressing through various grades of buffing compound and that'll bring that glass-like shine and gloss to the finish so again very labor-intensive and very physical you know you think of the weight of the guitar now force it into a moving buffing wheel and press it in there so if you look around these guys i always joke these are not the guys you're going to get in a butt kicking contest with no no because they're the brutes and then they're also the younger guys i call it the under 40 club because if you're wearing progressives it'll wear your eyes out because as you're buffing you have to monitor your work and it's very very taxing on your eyes a lot of time goes in that's that's what you know and again that's another signature of that gibson lacquer finish yeah it's beautiful how many uh grits so to speak of the buffing wheels are there there's three different grits we have uh the initial is a red wheel and then we go to a yellow wheel and then a white wheel so between those three and that white is basically a clean wheel and we'll use polish okay so really just two different compounds and then we also do uh satin finishes so with the satin finishes you avoid binding or you avoid buffing and then a lot of satins won't have binding depending on the model so that's where you can offer uh you know american-made gibson guitars at lower price points would that be like the kind of like the tribute yeah the tribute series yeah the les paul uh tributes things like that that's called a satin finish yeah like this is one here so now you don't have binding on the neck and you just have this worn satin finish you know it's showing the grain kind of like a modern version of that tv but in a white instead of that yellow where you can see the grain so now you don't have the time and expense of all the clear coats that go on or applying the binding or buffing is satin a stila nitro yeah still nitro yeah so it's still nitrocellulose it's just thinner because you have less layers okay but the bones of this is basically the same as like our 50s les paul special right so it's still a mahogany body in this case it's a maple neck we use maple on these models because it's less expensive maple is a fine wood as we all know but it's about the quarter of the cost of then if we use a mahogany net so it's a great money savings then guitars come into final assembly in final assembly we'll have the the material handler handlers assemble the parts kit so now you have all your your controls and we'll do the controls as a sub assembly at our electronics department which is next door in the same building as the demo shop yeah so they'll wind all our pickups and do all our control sub assemblies and then here we can drop it in and then just solder the pickups to the controls and install the tuners and knobs and so forth so this bin coincides with this first guitar second guitar and so forth that's handy so then once they're at a station they just pull a bin pull guitar yeah and it gets on here they'll drill out for the tuner holes jack plate holes clean out the bigger tuner holes you know from the paint build and then they'll install the tuners uh and then it'll end strap buttons and then it'll this slides down the line this workboard with all the parts oh wow oh how cool so then it comes to this point so now it's got the the tuners but they'll put the screws on at this station and then install the controls as they come down here once they get down here then they start the assembly process i'm not assembly but the setup process so you're sitting here and it's kind of a surprise in terms of what you're going to get next coming down the line or do they have some kind of here's the next one yeah they do have kind of a basic product mix and they'll have morning meetings to find out what to expect but it's not literally like okay i'm done with this les paul now i'm going to look forward to an sg it's just kind of how it flows so when it gets to the adjusters these are really even though we have a ton of guitar players throughout the whole process this is really the first station where you literally have to be a guitar player yeah because you have to be able to set it up and play it to know that it's set up to spec we'll pre-populate tail pieces with strings not only does it save time but more importantly you're not going to potentially scratch the surface of the guitar so you can just drop it on string it up and then start the setup process so they'll have to be responsible for doing that final nut shaping and the final nut filing to get it to the appropriate height sure then they'll uh you know adjust the action adjust the neck uh adjust the pickups any and all adjustments uh are done by them once it leaves it's set up to our specs and criteria then it will go to the cleaners the cleaners will then give it its final polishing and install the truss rod cover and control covers if they see maybe handling scratches or things like that they'll give it to a spot buffer to shine up bring it back give it a final polish and then give it to the final inspector the final inspector then again has to be a player he has to give it that final playability test he can look up spec sheets on his computer if he has to verify a certain set of electronics or hardware and he has to verify that the electronics function correctly that their appropriate assembly is on the guitar that all the hardware is correct for that model once he verifies it he'll take a picture we keep a digital copy synced with that serial number in our records and then we print one out and then he'll sign off on the inspection tag and then that photo accompanies the signed off inspection tag with the guitar and then it goes to the packer the packer will then sign off on the tag and then put it in the appropriate case with the appropriate case candy which are adjustment tools straps and so forth and then he'll put it in the carton and then that's the end of the line so if you're working here you're paid to play gifts and guitars all day long that's right and be the gatekeeper yeah the final one and it's a lot of responsibility because your name is going on that tab and and at the same time it's kind of cool for them too because then they'll kind of have their little following yeah and you know in some of the forms you'll see people say oh i got this guitar done by patrick that's the second one he did or maybe stacy oh stacy did mine you know so so they have their little following which is very cool and that's kind of the payoff for having that that responsibility and and carry the weight of doing that job i always loved the photo in the case it was yeah cool to see that and and it's funny too you know we started that as a for one it just creates this nice you know birth certificate type of thing right and then two it's a great quality control tool because now we have a photo and that's proof of what it looked like when it left the bench so if we get someone out in the field say hey i think you put the wrong color knobs on or something like that we can look up that photo and verify based off the serial number and uh so sometimes you know you may say hey it left the factory right maybe the dealer and maybe the dealer broke a knob and just decided well we don't have a full set of those we'll put these other ones on or maybe it did slip right and so hey our bad will replace the knobs so it's a great quality control tool and uh and it just makes everyone feel better about the whole process but the funny you know sometimes we'll get people they'll call up you know customer service saying hey i bought this guitar from a dealer and i opened up the case and i think they sold me a used guitar they're like well why do you think that well because there's a picture the previous owner took on his table like no no that's how i left the factory oh they don't know they don't get it yeah good to know yeah and then that's the end of the line they get boxed up and then they go in the warehouse into the line can i take a peek at somebody sure yeah so these are some guitars that have come off the line that require additional work oh okay so they're red tagged jam there's a jam on the rim so in here they'll have to do a repair there before they can then reinspect it and fix it so that'll be a finish type repair sometimes you can straighten the box if it passes yeah yeah if it when it reaches that table it'll go from that table into a case into a carton yeah well i can't thank you enough for giving us the full tour this was really a bonus yeah my pleasure and an amazing opportunity to see uh gibson gibson usa gibson nashville maine plant can we do a quick sign off with you here absolutely all right well hey for plane trade guitars i'm john that's zach behind the camera we're here with jim decola of gibson nashville gibson usa this has been an incredible opportunity to get the tour from somebody who's been in this industry for 42 years congratulations thank you thank you and uh thank you so much for hosting us and having us here we're very happy to have you thank you so much make sure you hit subscribe and drop a comment what do you think of gibson these days um we have been just overly excited to come and see these facilities because the guitars that are coming out of gibson nowadays are some of the best we've ever played and i think the company should be very proud and we're thrilled to play them so thank you so much beautiful opportunity hit that subscribe button hit like see you guys soon thanks for watching thank you all right i really appreciate that man i do too much i appreciate it right now all right thank you it's it's always a good uh i feel good you know i mean i'm very proud of what we do and uh and you know especially you know folks in your situation i mean you're supporting us and it's just a great thing you know it's just this great relationship we have so hopefully uh hopefully we get to come back and do some more uh filming uh in the near future always welcome thank you yeah cool all right oh yeah [Music] he's rocking out man [Music] hey could we um can we show you two of our guitars on the way out when we get back up front [Music] all right we have a gibson custom firebird that we got last year but it seems to be a one-of-a-kind finish and i wanted to get your take maybe you know what that finish color might be it's like a it's kind of like a green burst i mean i guess like inverness green but something seems unique about it i bought it locally i actually bought it from a guy on craigslist he was the original owner that got it from gibson custom oh wow and i believe he said it was a special order but it ended up being just a really special guitar to us so i figured i'd have you take a quick peek at it now this will be our new r d work cell oh okay so the idea is now we can actually make all of our own prototypes instead of like ordering through production and say hey give us like so many neck blanks or give us so many bodies now we can do it all in there okay that's uh research and development back there where they do their own prototypes in-house and everything yeah so that's cool down here in chicagoland area yeah can we can we get one picture with you against that big gibson wall should we do that you want to take a picture of us against that gibson wall zack it's too cool without masks i've had my vaccination is that okay i've been vaccinated too so is that if if you're good without mass i'm good okay we can do it without cool i mean to have a boss like cesar and jc yeah and and they're like on the same sheet you know that we are yeah yeah awesome very good oh that's so great thank you yeah so i growing up you know i'd go to the aragon ballroom and yeah uh international amphitheater which says closed rosemont horizon all those places i worked on randy rose guitars wow oh my goodness yeah it's very cool wow he said he worked on randy rhodes guitars what you know the iconic picture of ozzy hold randy by the leg yeah was done at that rosemont horizon show by a photographer named paul matkin who was chicago based really but he went on to do a lot of other you know rock photography and became very notable you know in that world but he saw it there at that rosemont horizon show that i worked on randy's guitar wow wow and it was just so tragic that two months later you know he was gone how sad and then later on you know when i was at pb i designed the van halen wolfgang so i'm very proud you know to me though really the two guys of that whole genre and era and i got to work with both oh my goodness he designed the the pv uh van halen wolfgang yeah wow did you have you had an association with the fender custom shop right well i was hired in defender in nashville which was the custom trap okay and so then uh i worked there for 11 years and then for about a year and a half of that time they were trying to get me to move to corona to work in r d okay and uh back and forth between uh nashville and corona and then sometimes scottsdale yeah but uh i didn't want to make that move so beautiful and the cost of living and everything there just wasn't sure a good balance for the family yeah so i opted to stay here i'm gonna show you just real quick i'm sure you take a peek at this yeah you like so you like nashville and just one of them yeah yeah so this is our 1990 um custom firebird oh wow isn't that unique have you seen something like that before no i haven't i have not did you show the custom shop folks we did yeah what did they say um i showed uh cesar and it sounded like there was there wasn't a consensus on what that finish is but um wow he said maybe it was a dealer like a special order from a dealer it looks like it was a seafoam green with a darker green shade you know because here and you would expect seafoam with the mother of toilet seat right yeah wow and that's true celluloid too wow a very 1990 thing to do someone swapped it out with the gold bridge the original yeah and the uh in the case here wow but yeah it's got that reverse headstock matching that same green fade it's just yeah that's very unique yeah yeah original owner wow we went shopping for a custom shop guitar used and of all the places we checked you know online everywhere all over the country you know you don't know where you're gonna find one it just happened to be on craigslist seven minutes from my house wow what a fortuitous fine right wow so we love that guitar it's important on our channel and it's made our logo and everything yeah yeah i just wanted to show you that one because i thought maybe uh yeah it's like total seafoam with that that you know fade that you know more lime fade around it that's very cool yeah and then this one actually we just picked up from the demo shop when we visited look at that yeah oh wow yeah so i guess we like green guitars in case you can't you can tell but that's a that's an r7 i guess we'll call it a green top instead of a gold top yeah wow that is cool yeah and we're pretty excited to find that one r7f wow or seven up there you go kyle's on it that's perfect thank you for thank you for everything yeah absolutely all right okay well hey thank you very much yeah a pleasure it really is a pleasure man thank you yeah all right great to meet you all have a great day that was an experience that was an incredible incredible tour jim was so kind 42-year veteran in the guitar industries seems to have done it all we're getting we're getting it gibson's treating us right so [Music] [Applause] [Music] grace claw

Channel: Play and Trade Guitars

Views: 590,578

Keywords: gibson factory tour, touring gibson, gibson usa, gibson usa factory, gibson nashville tour, touring gibson nashville, jim decola, jim de cola, gibson tour, guitar guitars, gibson 2021, gibson 2022, gibson les paul, gibson sg, gibson firebird, play and trade, guitar giveaway, gibson process, gibson the process, how gibsons are made, how guitars are made, made in a day, luthier, guitar building, gibsontv

Id: 1zXJtkDstH0

Length: 96min 42sec (5802 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021