Which Guitar is the Best?

 Most popular guitar used by the top 100 guitarists of the 60's and 70's

 It is generally accepted that the 60/70's were the best decades for guitar based music/bands. Although this may be debatable, I am going to use this as a starting point to find out which Guitar may be considered 'the best'.

These were the years that gave us such great riffs as:-

Purple Haze, You Really Got Me, I Feel Fine, Smoke On The Water, Paranoid, Roundabout, etc, etc.

 

I have taken a list from Spinditty and found out the guitar most associated with each artist

 

              56 GIBSON   23 FENDER (12 STRATS/11 TELES)  4 IBANEZ  2 GRETSCH 15 OTHER

So, what is it about Gibsons?

Orville Gibson (1856-1918)

You could say that Gibson have been around a lot longer than most other guitar models, giving them an edge. Orville Gibson started making mandolins in 1898 and in 1902, the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co. Ltd. was incorporated to market the instruments. Orville Gibson died in 1918,and a year later, an instrument designer called Lloyd Loar was hired by the company. Loar developed the Gibson L-5 guitar and in 1922 it was introduced onto the market. This was a favourite of the Big Band era. The electric models of this guitar did not become available until the 40’s.

Early players included Charlie Christian, Hank Garland, Eddie Lang, Maybelle Carter, Scotty Moore, Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt.

 

Groucho Marx with his Gibson L-5. A little known fact is that Marx was an accomplished and dedicated guitar player.

In 1936 Gibson introduced the ES-150, their first ‘Electro Spanish’ model. Ted McCarty joined the company in 1948 and become company President in 1950. And whilst Gibson was now making different types of musical instruments – mandolins, steel guitars and banjos, the guitar range of instruments greatly expanded. The guitar endorsed by Les Paul was introduced in 1952. These guitars offered Standard, Custom, Special and Junior models.

In the middle of the 50’s a Thinline Series was introduced, making models like the ‘Byrdland’, a guitar made for guitarists Billy Byrd and Hank Garland, more playable. Other models would have shorter necks and some models would be cheaper giving access to the wider public, increasing the number of guitar players.

Gibson always seemed to be ahead of the game by introducing models like the Explorer and flying V in the late 50’s and the SG and Firebird in the 60’s. Although Gibson themselves were bought out in 1944 by Chicago Musical Instruments, Gibson owns a number of other guitar manufacturers, Epiphone and Kramer, to name but two.

Fenders?

Leo Fender had been designing guitars, basses and amplifiers since the 1940's. He met an inventor and lap steel player called Clayton Orr 'Doc' Kauffman during the early 1940's. Kauffman worked for the Rickenbacker guitar company as a chief designer, he in fact, designed the first vibrato unit for a guitar! They set up a company together that was only to last 3 years and produced lap steel guitars and amps in small numbers. that company was K and F. After Kauffman left the company was renamed Fender Manufacturing and then Fender Electric instrument Co. 

However, Leo Fender was not originally an instrument maker but rather a radio repairer who had an interest, since young, in electronics. After starting up a repair shop,musicians would come to his shop and request PA systems, which he made and rented, and also, for amplification for acoustic instruments. Lap steel or 'Hawaiian' guitars were becoming popular in Country music.

 Solid body electric guitars began to rise in popularity as the need for power in the instrument to be heard over the horn sections. Fender realised that an electric guitar was required that would be, easy to hold, tune and not feedback at the volume required for dance halls. He developed a prototype in 1948 that would see the light of day in 1950 as the Fender Esquire. This guitar had one pick up. It was renamed the Broadcaster, and then the Telecaster one year later, with two pick ups. The popularity, particularly among country players was huge, and has become one of the most popular guitars in history. The space age looking design of the Stratocaster increased the popularity of Fender guitars, introduced in 1954. The space age looking design of the Stratocaster increased the popularity of Fender guitars, introduced in 1954.

Fender Broadcaster

Fender Stratocaster

The use by many of the days greatest guitarists including, Dick Dale, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, and in the UK, Hank Marvin increased the admiration for these instruments.

Fender also now owns other guitar brands such as EVH Guitars, Gretsch, Charvel Guitars, Jackson Guitars and Squier

 Gretsch and Ibanez.

A quick word about the other two more popular guitars on the list. Ibanez is one of the most favourite guitars for Jazz players. Gretsch had kinda gone out of fashion by the 60/70's. They were great guitars for the Rockabilly era but their pick ups were a bit too 'bright' for Jazz where players tended to want 'warmer' tones. The reason I mention this is purely that there were still many Jazz players in the list chosen at the start of this article.

As in most cases, great players can make almost any guitar sound great in their hands, and guitars that you would not immedialtely assume to be fitted for a particular genre can introduce a sound you would not expect... think Ted Nugent!

Here is Ted Nugent having the Riot Act read to him for using the wrong guitar for rock music 

Miley Cyrus taught him how to react to that one...

Other guitars on the list 

There are 15% of guitarists on the initial list that are classed as usin 'other' guitars. What could these be and how dare they not use a Fender or Gibson!!! 

These are a mixture of lesser known guitar brands and even in one case, a homemade guitar! Some of these guiatrs are the makes by Dean, Epiphone, Hohner, etc. There is, and should be, at least one acoustic guitar player - Paco De Lucia, who plays a Hermanos Conde.

Conclusion 

As we have seen in the chart, although Fender were a strong competitor to Gibson in the race for the ‘best guitar’, personally I think that with the history of Gibson behind them, plus the fact Gibson had a chart topping act in Les Paul personally involved with the company, they were on a winner straight away. I know that Les Paul was popular in the 50's but I think that the effect, when kids had more availablity and access to guitars, increased the admiration of these guitars. Another factor I believe, is that the sound produced by the PAF pick ups suited the sound of the 60's and 70's more than the single coils of the Fender instruments popular at the time.

Can I just say finally, that I personally own both a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul (ok, and an Ibanez) and all the comments I have made are my own observations. I will go further into instruments, companies and artists in further posts. Feel free to comment, make observations, agree, disagree, ask questions, reflect, cry, moan, complain

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