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Thread: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

  1. #601

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Jeff Mando View Post
    Slash played his "boutique" handmade 59 Les Paul for most of his early career.....could be thought of as a tribute or counterfeit depending on which side of the legal aisle you are sitting........I guess it is legal to build and own and play in public, but not legal to sell. I guess he isn't selling......
    The trademark litmus test is "use in commerce." Since Slash, who ripped Nash the Slash's trade-dress, wasn't selling the guitars he wouldn't run foul of the legal stuff.

    Zappa also played a knock-off SG without consequence.
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  2. #602

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Hermann Winchester View Post
    Gibson did not create the "Les Paul" body shape. O. W. Appleton did...poor guy even presented it to Gibson who told him they couldn't imagine someone playing a solid body electric and then proceeded to steal it for the Les Paul and keep their company afloat!
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    The differences between that and a Gibson Les Paul are significant enough that I don't see a conflict.

    By the same token, Leo Fender ripped off Paul Bigsby's headstock design, bolt-on neck and tremolo concept without consequence, and has been able to defend it's headstock design as proprietary, so who knows?
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  3. #603
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Hermann Winchester View Post
    Gibson did not create the "Les Paul" body shape. O. W. Appleton did...poor guy even presented it to Gibson who told him they couldn't imagine someone playing a solid body electric and then proceeded to steal it for the Les Paul and keep their company afloat!
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    that's "authentic" for them. Just another bunch of scavengers.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

  4. #604

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Verne Andru View Post
    The differences between that and a Gibson Les Paul are significant enough that I don't see a conflict.

    By the same token, Leo Fender ripped off Paul Bigsby's headstock design, bolt-on neck and tremolo concept without consequence, and has been able to defend it's headstock design as proprietary, so who knows?
    That's like saying the wheel design of 3500BC is radically different than today's wheel because it's archaic in construction.
    At a time when it was the beginnings of these solidbody electric guitars, for Appleton to pitch his instrument in 1943 to Gibson, who essentially laughed at his design then nearly a decade later copy it and claim divine creation is bollocks. They (the friend Appleton had at Gibson that set up the initial pitch meeting) even sent Appleton a letter to let him know. Hubris...
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    Beyond that, Bigsby and Fender were friends. Surely Paul's instruments influenced Leo but so too did the Stauffer instruments, with the scroll style headstock and that was his claim for inspiration on his headstock design. But he didn't deny inspiration from Paul.
    I can consider there is far more creative difference in a flush mount tremolo than that of a body route tremolo...
    The bolt neck, sure...Leo copied the idea of holding two pieces of wood together using wood screws.

  5. #605

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Verne Andru View Post
    ....Slash, who ripped Nash the Slash's trade-dress.....
    Doubtful that Slash ever heard of Nash the Slash........

    although, yes, I do like the contrarian viewpoint......

  6. #606

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Hermann Winchester View Post
    That's like saying the wheel design of 3500BC is radically different than today's wheel because it's archaic in construction.
    At a time when it was the beginnings of these solidbody electric guitars, for Appleton to pitch his instrument in 1943 to Gibson, who essentially laughed at his design then nearly a decade later copy it and claim divine creation is bollocks. They (the friend Appleton had at Gibson that set up the initial pitch meeting) even sent Appleton a letter to let him know. Hubris...
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    Beyond that, Bigsby and Fender were friends. Surely Paul's instruments influenced Leo but so too did the Stauffer instruments, with the scroll style headstock and that was his claim for inspiration on his headstock design. But he didn't deny inspiration from Paul.
    I can consider there is far more creative difference in a flush mount tremolo than that of a body route tremolo...
    The bolt neck, sure...Leo copied the idea of holding two pieces of wood together using wood screws.
    To my eye I would consider the "Appleton" design derivative of Gibson's L5 and other archtop's with a Venetian cutaway that had been around for many years prior to 1943. Rickenbacker had already defined the "solid body" guitar years earlier so that was nothing new.

    AFAIK Gibson's first "Les Paul" was the SG, which Les didn't like. It wasn't until later that Gibson came up with what we now call the Les Paul, which Les did like.

    I see the current Les Paul as a solid-body derivative of Gibson's various Florentine archtop guitars like the 175, 330 and the 140.

    I think it is arguable [which doesn't mean it's a winning argument] that the various designs Gibson has used in commerce over its 100-odd years are part of Gibson's "trade dress" which may be protect-able. The positioning of the Gibson brand as a legacy innovator relies on it's past achievements to sustain, so we'll have to see how the arguments unravel.
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  7. #607

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Jeff Mando View Post
    Doubtful that Slash ever heard of Nash the Slash........
    I think between the "top hat" and the "slash" moniker Nash would have had a valid argument. The name alone, maybe. Copping both the hat and the name is more than a little stinky.
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  8. #608

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    The guys in Lynyrd Skynyrd all wore beaver felt hats, so you're saying Nash the Slash......

    (I might add, the Cafe has provided Nash the Slash with more press than he probably got during his lifetime......FWIW)

  9. #609

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Verne, not sure where you got the SG idea, but this was the first Les Paul.
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  10. #610

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Jeff Mando View Post
    The guys in Lynyrd Skynyrd all wore beaver felt hats, so you're saying Nash the Slash......

    (I might add, the Cafe has provided Nash the Slash with more press than he probably got during his lifetime......FWIW)
    I was in radio at the time FM hit the scene. Those were the early days of FM radio (in stereo) that had a unique university audience that wasn't confined to local demographics like AM was. They were one of the wave of prog bands that really broke the use of modern synthesizers. I still have their 2 albums from back then.

    FM made a huge splash and rode the top of the university charts in Canada and the US for quite a while. That was before G&R happened. I can't prove it one way or another and it doesn't really matter anyway. Just saying.

    (even though very familiar with FM, it wasn't until I joined here that it grokked on me that Nash played a mandolin. All the press photos from the release showed him as a violin player.)
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  11. #611

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Hilburn View Post
    Verne, not sure where you got the SG idea, but this was the first Les Paul.
    There was an article in Vintage Guitar magazine a few years back discussing the evolution of the Les Paul. It stated very clearly that the first guitar Gibson presented to Les Paul for consideration was the SG. I believe they created that around 1955? It was then that Les got involved and the one you picture above was released.

    So you are correct - that is the first official Les Paul. But it wasn't what Gibson originally designed to bear Les's signature according to the article in Vintage Guitar magazine.
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  12. #612

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    That's a 1952 and Les Paul was involved. His name was on it. The first SG, still called a Les Paul was in '61.

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  14. #613

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Here's what I can find on Vintage Guitar - it talks about what was going on from Les Paul's POV.

    https://www.vintageguitar.com/2908/les-paul/

    Here's one on the SG Les Paul - (I must have muddled them up - sorry)

    https://www.vintageguitar.com/32511/...ecomes-the-sg/
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  15. #614

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Here's Sister Rosetta Tharpe playing a 52 and then a SG LP.
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  16. #615

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Verne Andru View Post
    I think between the "top hat" and the "slash" moniker Nash would have had a valid argument. The name alone, maybe. Copping both the hat and the name is more than a little stinky.
    From an archived Swindle magazine article found via Wikipedia Link:

    When Saul was 15, his maternal grandmother gave him a Spanish guitar with just one string on it that she had in her basement...

    Soon after that, Saul became Slash, not just in spirit but in name, given to him by character actor Seymour Cassel. “I was friends with his kids, and he used to call me Slash because I was an aspiring guitar player, always hustling, never stopping to hang out. I was always in a hurry. So he started calling me that, and it stuck.”
    [Ed. note: This would be circa 1980 based on his age]

    ...

    ...Slash bought himself a top hat from a store on Melrose Avenue in preparation for his first gig with GN’R, June 6, 1985, at the Troubadour, billed as “a rock ‘n’ roll bash where everyone’s smashed.”

    That would be quite the long game if the presumption were true. And to keep somewhat on topic after becoming an unwitting shill for a guitarist I stopped listening to years ago [from Guitar Shop Magazine, Oct 1996]:

    Ironically, the guitar which returned the Gibson Les Paul to prominence in the late-Eighties is actually not a Gibson at all, but an exact replica of a late-Fifties Les Paul Standard built by a luthier named Kris Derrig.
    Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven bought the guitar and gave it to Slash during the recording sessions for the band’s 1987 debut, Appetite For Destruction. “When I was in the studio doing the basic tracks for Appetite, Alan Niven brought this Les Paul for me to use because I was having a really hard time getting a good sound,” says Slash.

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  17. #616
    Registered User jdchapman's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    I'm listening to the Gueikian interview on the new Fretboard Journal podcast. The guy talks like a cartoon businessman, lots of cliche and jargon, but if I can pick through the weeds, sounds mostly like they're improving things.

    That said, there are lots of howlers. No willingness to acknowledge the possibility that the guitar market generally might be contracting. Instead, some weird abstract assertion that the market/culture generally was ripe for "authenticity." He went on for awhile discussing this airy notion, and then proposed that Gibson was surely the most authentic guitar company in the world.

  18. #617
    Registered User jdchapman's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Oh, the end is the best:
    "What is the most frustrating part of the music industry?"
    "Infringement. We've spent a century making these designs....."
    (We? We?)

    I believe in IP, but Congress has expanded the duration beyond all reason.

  19. #618
    Registered User John Bertotti's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    I'm on the outside looking in but from my perspective corporations should have no or limited IP rights. They hire talented people to create and design the companies foot the bill but did no creation. I think and legally this isn't so, but I think IP belongs to the individual and should be his or hers till they are gone. After that fair game. Nothing in this world was created without other people laying the groundwork before them. This IP crapshoot is nuts to me. If we left one person and anyone claiming it from that point on sole propriety we would never make any advancements. Look how things in industries where we are certain there are advancement but throttled back because of profits. This doesn't just concern the music industry but everything. The company I work for claims all intellectual property you develop for up to five years after you leave as their own if it deals with their industry, whether you developed it on your own or not. I can understand a logo or inlay as a logo but everything else I'm sketchy on.
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  20. #619
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    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Verne Andru View Post
    Copyrights enter the public domain. Trademarks become generic.
    And it happens more than people think: Kleenex, Q-Tip, Band-Aid, Plexiglas, etc.
    David Hopkins

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    The older I get, the less tolerant I am of political correctness, incompetence and stupidity.

  21. #620

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Verne Andru View Post
    To my eye I would consider the "Appleton" design derivative of Gibson's L5 and other archtop's with a Venetian cutaway that had been around for many years prior to 1943. Rickenbacker had already defined the "solid body" guitar years earlier so that was nothing new.

    AFAIK Gibson's first "Les Paul" was the SG, which Les didn't like. It wasn't until later that Gibson came up with what we now call the Les Paul, which Les did like.

    I see the current Les Paul as a solid-body derivative of Gibson's various Florentine archtop guitars like the 175, 330 and the 140.

    I think it is arguable [which doesn't mean it's a winning argument] that the various designs Gibson has used in commerce over its 100-odd years are part of Gibson's "trade dress" which may be protect-able. The positioning of the Gibson brand as a legacy innovator relies on it's past achievements to sustain, so we'll have to see how the arguments unravel.
    I'll clear up some things first then focus more on my point of Appleton's "The App" and it's importance of being the first solid wood bodied electric guitar; arguably the most important instrument in the Western world, possibly the world over, for the past 75ish years (by this last statement, I mean the solid-bodied electric guitar).

    - Referencing Ric as having "defined solid body guitars years earlier" is wrong. The aluminum Ric Frying Pan and molded bakelite body Electro (neither one being a solid bodied instruments) were neither a solid-bodied guitars and far from the solid-body wooden instrument that is "The App". Those two instruments came and have far since been gone. "The App" lives on in the Gibson Les Paul which copied its design.
    - It was actually Slingerland that made the first solidbody electric guitar and while it resembled a Hawaiian lap guitar, it had a rounded neck so to play in the traditional seated manner, upright with the back of the instrument against the stomach of the player.

    - Gibson's first Les Paul was...the Appleton copied Les Paul! In 1960, with sales of the Les Paul tanking, Gibson decided to "redesign" the Les Paul (moreso the Les Paul Jr., Special and TV double cut models) and it morphed into the SG instrument. Of course they did this without Les knowing and slapped his name on it without his permission for which he made them take it off because he didn't like it.

    With it's creation in 1941, "The App" was the first solid-body wooden electric guitar made that resembles the instrument commonly seen today and that is it's importance. Years later, in '48 came Paul Bigsby's solid-bodied instruments and Leo Fender's and had Gibson not copied it to make the Les Paul (remember, they were presented and scoffed at the instrument and it's concept already), there is a reasonable argument that they may not exist as a company today. The competition was leaving them in the dust with their affordable, electrified solid-bodied instruments. Again; the Gibson employee friend of Appleton's wrote him and told him such.
    And while this is my view of it and yours the opposite; I think the idea of "The App" being a derivative of the Super 400 Premier or L5 Premier (the only 2 Venetian cutaway Gibson's of the era) which had only been made for a total of 2yrs in '41 and made in ultra rare numbers (in total, for all production years, lesser numbers than all pre-war Martin D-45's), as well as being hollow-body, non-electric, very large instruments by comparison...well, it's rather not a derivative at all, is it? The point I'm making of it's originality is it being a solid-body wooden electric guitar of this distinctive design; something that after being presented it and in the midst of failing business, Gibson copied with it's derivative Les Paul.

  22. #621

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Gibson proudly displaying their original instruments at this years Summer NAMM

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  24. #622

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    My FM "Black Noise" album has a 1978 copyright date on it meaning Nash the Slash was using the "Slash" name and top hat "in commerce" since at least that date - probably earlier if they were gigging before they released recordings. But it matters not.

    Quote Originally Posted by John Bertotti View Post
    This doesn't just concern the music industry but everything.
    Couldn't agree more. IP concentration in the internet world is becoming a very dark and frightful place.

    And then there's this:

    https://guitar.com/news/industry-new...eim-trademark/
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  25. #623

    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Hermann Winchester View Post
    The point I'm making of it's originality is it being a solid-body wooden electric guitar of this distinctive design; something that after being presented it and in the midst of failing business, Gibson copied with it's derivative Les Paul.
    Then there the story according to Les Paul:

    https://www.vintageguitar.com/2908/les-paul/

    I wasn't there and it doesn't matter to me, but I'd give Les Paul's account a bit more weight.
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  26. #624
    Registered User slimt's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by Hermann Winchester View Post
    Gibson proudly displaying their original instruments at this years Summer NAMM

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    Ya. Strat look alikes. I think the investors want there money. Any way they can get it.

  27. #625
    Howling at the moon Wolfboy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gibson threatening the mandolin and guitar luthier community

    Quote Originally Posted by slimt View Post
    Strat look alikes.
    And hideous ones at that.

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