Gibson's Weirdest Guitar | What Is The Firebird Sound?

[Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] the gibson firebird is a weird guitar we've never played one it's big bulky awkward to play the control layout's weird it was designed by someone that wasn't a guitar designer and didn't seem to know just about anything about guitar design but they stumbled into something truly great the firebird is one of the coolest looking best sounding guitars in my opinion of all time not like its other solid body electric counterparts of the early to mid 60s the firebird was adopted and loved by a wide variety of different players but i think it sort of flies under the radar for a lot of guitarists today it's weird it's unlike any other gibson pretty much ever and it has a truly unique sound nothing quite sounds like a firebird so in today's video we're gonna talk about that what is the firebird sound [Music] so [Music] three now the firebird story the way this guitar came into existence is one of my favorite stories in all of guitar history and i feel like to really understand this guitar you have to know the back story and you have to know about the people that designed this and brought this thing into existence so back in the early 1960s gibson based in kalamazoo michigan was kind of losing they were falling behind fender in a number of ways models like the les paul just weren't great sellers and compared to what leo finder was doing with the stratocaster and the telecaster and the esquire at the time gibson was just falling behind so they needed something new they were redesigning the les paul to become what we now know as the sg and they also were kicking around some new ideas they were looking for new ideas now i think you have to keep in mind the context of 1961 1962 we think of the 60s as the decade of rock and roll and and the electric guitar and fuzz and all this stuff but that really didn't start until about three or four years later than this 1961 62 still was kind of an early age for the solid body electric guitar people were still sort of figuring it out the stones hadn't really blown up yet the beatles weren't really a thing yet and hendrix wouldn't hit the scene for another five years or so so at the time the electric guitar was still kind of in its infancy people were playing them and they were becoming more and more popular but they hadn't realized their full potential yet and people like ted mccarty the head of gibson at the time were experimenting they were trying new things so ted mccarty was looking for something new something that was exciting and different something that would grab the attention of a potential fender buyer and bring them over to gibson but the design team at gibson weren't really hitting the mark in around 1962 ted mccarty meets a man named ray dietrich now ray dietrich is the reason the firebird exists and he's a very interesting character see he wasn't a guitar builder a musician or guitar designer at all he was a car designer a coach builder now coach building is this thing of uh years gone by in the early days of automobiles in the 1920s where you didn't have a lot of options in terms of cars you couldn't go down to any dealership and just pick something up off the lot and pick your color you could go and buy a ford model t or if you had a little bit more money to spend and wanted something a little more luxurious you would buy a chassis and then go to a coach builder like dietrich who would then custom design and build the car's body and interior to your specification it's actually really cool now dietrich cut his teeth as a coach builder and then in the 1930s he went to work designing cars for packard and chrysler and lincoln and that was his career he ended up his career in kalamazoo michigan and retired in 1960 after designing the famous checker cab he was instrumental in that car design so dietrich who is this prolific car designer meets ted mccarty who is looking for something new and different mccarty approached dietrich about designing a completely new guitar a clean sheet blank slate design so in 1962 ray dietrich agrees to come out of retirement to work with gibson to design the firebird and this is it this is his design now if you ask me i think you can completely see the automobile influence in the design of this shape you think about the late 1950s and the huge cadillacs and lincolns and the fins and the taillights it's all here it all works [Music] now if you're interested in learning basically everything there is to know about the history of these guitars i recommend my friend keith williams from 5 watt worlds video a short history of the gibson firebird he put that video out a few months ago and i actually got to be a part of it i played this guitar in that video for the backing track and this guitar is not mine it's on loan from gibson i've had it on loan for about a year this video is not sponsored in any way by gibson i may have to give this back at some point but in all honesty if they ever come knocking and asking for it back i'm probably just going to buy it from them but this is a custom shop recreation of a firebird 5. this is one of their namm guitars from 2020 and i've had it for the last year and absolutely love this thing now like i said at the beginning of the video this guitar is weird and i meant that it's completely different than anything else gibson has in their lineup and that is a direct result of a car designer designing the guitar and then them building it basically straight off of the sheet now if you've never played a firebird you probably don't know how big these guitars are this thing is massive i'm six foot three and it's even big on my frame in fact it doesn't even fit in this shot over here now aside from the size there's another major sort of ergonomical quirk that comes from ray dietrich's design and that is everything is shifted to the left the first time i ever played a firebird i sat down with one and went to strum it and my hand literally hit the bridge because if you're used to something like a strat or a les paul or 335 this is where the playing area of the guitar normally sits but not on the firebird everything is shifted about four or five inches to the left the other thing is when you start to play down here in the open register the lower register of the neck it almost feels like you're playing a bass the neck is so far out in space compared to a normal guitar another weird quirk about this guitar is the control layouts now if you're used to a two pickup guitar with four controls you might think it's volume for the bridge volume for the neck tone for the bridge tone for the neck that's how les pauls are that's how 335s are basically everything in gibson's lineup at the time had that layout but not the firebird for some reason they decided to go neck volume bridge volume neck tone bridge tone this still crosses me up just about every time i pick up this guitar to play i have to sit and fiddle with where the controls are it really trips me up and then instead of using normal tuners they put banjo tuners on this guitar i'm not really sure why maybe it was just an aesthetic choice but it is classic firebird to me it's not a firebird unless it has the banjo tuners and then if that wasn't enough this guitar has two strap buttons in the neck position now that is to alleviate another design problem with the firebird and that is because the neck is so long and you have these massive chunky tuners on the end this guitar neck dives like crazy so you end up having to put and subsequently use the second strap button on there to keep it from doing so but to me that's not the most interesting thing about this guitar's design this is a neck through gibson this is something they hadn't really ever done before and something they don't do a lot of today now if you're not familiar a neck through design means that the neck and the body are all one piece of wood so if you follow this line from the body all the way up to the neck and the headstock that is one singular piece of wood and then these wings here on either side are glued on and interestingly gibson at the time decided to leave this ridge in the middle now it's an interesting design choice i actually really like it i think it's cool it's classic firebird but this is one of the most important parts of the firebird sound and why i think this guitar sounds so different than just about any other gibson design out there see the tailpiece the bridge the pickups the neck the fretboard the nut the headstock the tuners everything that is attached to a string and everything that vibrates and resonates with the guitar is all on the same chunk of wood this is all one continuous piece there's no neck joint there's no glue there's no screws nothing separating the resonant parts of the guitar the string from the body and i think that's huge but arguably the best feature and the biggest part of the firebird sound are the firebird pickups these are not mini humbuckers they look like mini humbuckers but they are completely different than any mini humbucker that you might find in a les paul deluxe [Music] so although they look like many humbuckers the firebird pickup shares absolutely nothing in common with the mini humbucker that was originally developed by epiphone and then gibson acquired it when they bought uh epiphone and then that's how we got the les paul deluxe that's a whole other video though the firebird pickup was developed for this guitar and it has become one of my favorite pickups of all time because it's completely unique now in terms of construction you can think of a mini humbucker like literally just a miniaturized paf you have two coils uh bar magnets surrounded by copper wire the mini humbucker is essentially just the smaller version of the paf however the firebird pickup instead of using bar magnets or posts it uses rails so you have magnetic rails for each bobbin which are wound with copper wire and because they use rails instead of the bar stock of traditional pafs and mini humbuckers you can't wind as much copper wire around the bobbins which means you have a lower output pickup this really is kind of gibson's closest thing to a traditional fender single coil you know p90 aside therefore you have a pickup that is unique doesn't sound like a humbucker it doesn't sound like a single coil or a p90 it's really its own thing the neck pickup on this firebird has become one of my favorite sounds i've played over the last year again it doesn't sound like a strat neck doesn't sound like a 335 or a les paul it's got its own thing same thing with the middle position [Music] and then the bridge pickup gives you the attack and bite that you get out of like a telly but it's not that bright again it's its own thing [Music] and they take overdrive really really [Music] [Applause] well [Music] just to show you how different this sounds i'm going to play just a simple riff on this and then my les [Music] paul [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] uh completely different obviously they're different guitars and different pickups but those firebird pickups in that guitar is such a unique sound and i don't know of any other guitar other than the firebird 5 that will do that thing and i think that's really special now we can't talk about the firebird without talking about the players that made these guitars legendary because much like other gibson models of the time period the firebird actually wasn't a huge commercial success they didn't sell a ton of them but there's a handful of players that really put these guitars on the map through the 60s all the way to today first and foremost the stones pick these up keith richards can be seen playing one as well as clapton playing uh firebird one which is the single pickup model with no vibrato at the cream farewell concert howlin wolf was known to use the firebird as one of his main guitars and i actually learned this from the five watt world video but apparently sunny landruth who i've only ever seen play a strat says that the firebird is actually his favorite guitar but he doesn't tour with one because they're too unwieldy and i can absolutely agree with that i've taken this thing on the road once and the case is massive it doesn't fit in a typical gig bag or normal guitar case it has its own proprietary case which is feels like it's almost the size of a twin mattress but the one name that comes to mind whenever you talk about this guitar is johnny winner johnny winner i think almost single-handedly made these guitars what they are today these firebird pickups through cranked twin reverbs on stage was a huge part of that searing johnny winner blues sound and that's how i first got turned on to the firebird i'd never seen one until i saw a picture of johnny winner holding his sunburst 64 i believe it is so that is the firebird sound you ever played one of these guitars do you own one let me know in the comments section down below don't forget once again to check out the 5 watt world short history of the firebird i have it linked in the description box down below and there you can find all the links to support this channel my video courses my digital products everything is down there in the description box if you haven't done so already be sure to subscribe and click that bell icon down below to be notified when i'm posting new videos and going live here on the channel that's it for today's video hope you enjoyed it my name is rhett shaw thank you for watching and remember there is no plan b

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 291,092

Rating: 4.9423175 out of 5

Keywords: gibson firebird, gibson firebird v, gibson firebird x, gibson firebird review, gibson firebird 2020, What Is The Firebird Sound?, Firebird, rhett shull studio, rhett shull fuzz, rhett shull slide, rhett shull live, rhett shull amp, Rhett Shull, les paul, joe bonamassa, electric guitar, rock & roll, guitar player, gibson firebird guitar, gibson firebird non reverse, gibson firebird custom

Id: R2Uu_F0h57s

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021

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