The F-5L Mandolin - A turning point in the history of Gibson's ac

[siminoff]

My deep appreciation to each of you for your kind and generous comments; I'm glad you found the story to be informative. I would also like to thank Scott Tichenor for recognizing the value of this piece and bringing it into MCs archives. Regarding Steve Carlson, when Gibson began its move from Kalamazoo to Nashville in June, 1984, the company began outsourcing certain models to outside firms, and Flatiron Mandolins (Steve's company in Bozeman, MT) was selected for mandolin production. As a result, for about two years, the F-5Ls were not made in Kalamazoo, were not deflection tuned, and were somewhat different from those made before and after the move. (I have no idea how Steve Carlson could have signed an F-5L with a 1982 date.)
Roger

[MikeEdgerton]

Roger wrote: "Regarding Steve Carlson, when Gibson began its move from Kalamazoo to Nashville in June, 1984, the company began outsourcing certain models to outside firms, and Flatiron Mandolins (Steve's company in Bozeman, MT) was selected for mandolin production. As a result, for about two years, the F-5Ls were not made in Kalamazoo, were not deflection tuned, and were somewhat different from those made before and after the move..."

Now there's a historical nugget of information.

[f5loar]

I remember it like yesterday one summer night in 1986 when I was sitting down at the Station Inn in Nashville and in walked Charlie Derrington and some other big wheels at Gibson with Steve Carlson. Charlie told me that night about the deal with Flaitiron and I knew a new era for Gibson mandolins had begun. A Steve Carlson signed 1982 F5L? Impossible I say.
Steve working on a 1982 F5L later on say in 1987 and back dating a signed label? Not likely. Somebody else having a name similiar to Steve Carlson and signing in 1982. Possible as it seems the floor sweepers would walk by the F5L bench and sign the labels.

[Bernie Daniel]

Roger: "Regarding Steve Carlson, when Gibson began its move from Kalamazoo to Nashville in June, 1984, the company began outsourcing certain models to outside firms, and Flatiron Mandolins... was selected for mandolin production. As a result, for about two years, the F-5Ls were not made in Kalamazoo, were not deflection tuned, and were somewhat different from those made before and after the move....

As Mike notes that is a great piece of information.

I'd be interested hearing about how Gibson handled QA/QC issues for the mandolins during this period.

My point is NOT to question any aspect of production or to suggest quality faded or even changed. I'm merely curious as to how this might have been done.

The Flatiron produced F5-L's were not "deflection tuned" but were they at least tap tuned? (Reading Roger's article it would seem that the deflection tuning something the Gibson mandolin crew developed and was neat way to remove listener bias and subjectivity from the tap tuning process)

But even if they did not have the deflection tuning jig in Montana I would guess the Montana luthiers could still tap tuned them by ear. Even if they did Roger's point is certainly well taken -- these 1984 - 1986 F5-L were not made exactly like the 1978 - 1983 instruments and then post 1986 models.

Who is going to pick up and continue Roger's F5-L story?

[banjer23]

Wow,,amazing reading,,a lot of history from Roger,,thanks to all!!!

[Bernie Daniel]

f5loar: "...A Steve Carlson signed 1982 F5L? Impossible I say. Steve working on a 1982 F5L later on say in 1987 and back dating a signed label? Not likely. Somebody else having a name similiar to Steve Carlson and signing in 1982. Possible as it seems the floor sweepers would walk by the F5L bench and sign the labels."

With no disrespect at all intended to the member stating the existence of a 1982 Carlson-signed F5-L -- it is noted that this claim seems to be based entirely on memory. All memories are subject to error. Without a picture or a written statement of record it is pointless to go much further with this because the odds seem high that somewhere along the line an error exists.

As per Roger's article, Gibson's serial number system in the period 1970-1985 was an eight-digit code. So if it was a 1982 Gibson F5-L the instrument (thus made in Kalamazoo) the serial number would have been of the 8_ _ _2 _ _ _ format. In this formula the first three spaces were for the Julian day of the year (155 = June 4th) and the last three spaces a number from 0 to 499 (Kalamazoo plant).

Say it was the 145th F5-L made and it happened to be June 4, 1982 -- this would be a serial number of: 81552145. Seems to me it would be pretty easy to get a number like this scrambled over time -- say 81525145 -- instrument number 145 made on June 1, 1985. It sure would be easy for me anyway!

[Mark Walker]

Wow - what a great story! Thanks Roger! Thanks Bill, and thanks Ken.
And Bill - small world. I never put 2 and 2 together until this article, that you're THAT Bill Halsey! And just down the road from me here in West Michigan! Great stuff here!

[jan burda]

What a story. Being a friend of Bill H., and a maker, I've heard much of the story up until the 1980's. It would be interesting to hear about the Steve Carlson/ Rem Ferguson involvement up to the present day evolution of the F5-L. Jan Burda

[Bill Halsey]

Jan, welcome on board the MC! As I recall, you have a very nice Carlson-signed F-5 in your shop...
Let's get together and abuse a couple of flat picks!
Soon...

[mandoisland]

Great story! Thanks!

[MandoNicity]

Thanks for such a fact filled and informative article. Totally fascinating to hear the insiders story on all the Gibson going ons. Amazing, simply amazing.

JR

[GRW3]

Periodically, someone will post about the percieved poor quality of '60s and '70s Gibson mandolins. This usually brings on a lot of controversy. Yet in paragraph 4 Mr. Siminoff says essentially the same thing and one of the other contributors talks about collapsing tops as a common occurence. So which is it, were there bad years that need to be avoided or is he mistaken too?

If there was a bad period, what did it span? The Sam Bush mandolin is an F-7 isn't it, made several years after Loar left? Maybe some good mandolins cme out of the lean years so wouldn't it be good to really discuss the issues. And based on his efforts with the guitar, would it be possible to rebuild/recarve a problem instrument into a decent performer?

[Bernie Daniel]

GRW3 stated: "Periodically, someone will post about the percieved poor quality of '60s and '70s Gibson mandolins. This usually brings on a lot of controversy. Yet in paragraph 4 Mr. Siminoff says essentially the same thing and one of the other contributors talks about collapsing tops as a common occurence. So which is it, were there bad years that need to be avoided or is he mistaken too?

If there was a bad period, what did it span? The Sam Bush mandolin is an F-7 isn't it, made several years after Loar left? Maybe some good mandolins cme out of the lean years so wouldn't it be good to really discuss the issues. And based on his efforts with the guitar, would it be possible to rebuild/recarve a problem instrument into a decent performer?"


In my opinion I think most acknowledge (including even some associated with the Gibson company) that mandolin quality suffered for a time which might roughly be the period you suggested early 50's to mid 70's. So, I personally do not see this as a particularly "controversial" or a taboo subject.

Likewise, most will also note that some very good mandolins were also made during this period - but indeed the quality was "spotty" or less consistent than it might have been. That is the issue Roger was trying to help Gibson to correct.

Sam Bush's main mandolin, is a Gibson F-5 (not F-7) and it was made over two decades after Loar left. Further as far as I know it was not re-carved only the finish was scrapped off the top.

However, many Gibson mandolins from these years have been re-carved or re-voiced -- this is well known also and has often been discussed in detail on this board -- again you imply there is an problem with discussing this matter and I would say clearly there is not. Some of these mandolins have been dramatically improved by re-graduation -- others not so much -- at least that is my view.

You mentioned a guitar but that is something I am not familiar with.

[Jordan Ramsey]

Hey Bernie, Hoss was re-graduated by Randy Wood.

[hank]

Seems like I remember Sam talking about his mandolin on his Homespun Mandolin Method. I believe he said it belonged to Norman Blake and that Norman had randomly sanded on the top and later had Randy Wood rework the top, tone bars and refinish with varnish.

[woodwizard]

Ahhhh yes... I believe the expression was hippie sanding. Am I wrong...

[Bernie Daniel]

Seems like I remember Sam talking about his mandolin on his Homespun Mandolin Method. I believe he said it belonged to Norman Blake and that Norman had randomly sanded on the top and later had Randy Wood rework the top, tone bars and refinish with varnish.

OK, I stand corrected on that. I knew about the sanding but if I ever knew about the re-grad I forgot.

I had a 1952 F-12 re-graduated in Randy Wood's shop some years ago. I think it improved it significantly -- but the sound was not like like my F-5 Fern -- it was darker and deeper.

David Grisman has that mandolin now -- or he did have it anyway. If I ever get the chance I'd like to ask him how he thought it sounded.

[f5loar]

Hoss is a 1937 F5 that had already been refinished by the factory in the 50's. The 50's lacquer finishes were rather heavy at times so Blake felt it was holding it back and removed the finish and sold it to Sam who had Wood put the finishing touches on it as you see it today. I know of the 1937 F5 that is still all original that belonged to Dave Apollon and it is a "hoss" too so yes there were some gems during the 30's and 40's and on into the 50's. The mid 60's is when things started a downward spinal in quality and sound but they still played fine. By early 70's when the new "redesign" going back to a thick varnish and thinner necks they reached a peak in the dark era for the F5 until Roger got the F5L redesign going in 1978. And if I remember correctly you could still get the bad F5 in 1978 and 1979 as well as the new F5L. The worst F5L ever made was far superior to the best 70's ever made so that speaks highly of what Roger did accomplish in his involvement at Gibson. I have a question for Roger. Bill Monroe was given F5L serial no. 11568197 signed on June 1, 1978. Was that one of the 3 prototypes and if so which one of them?

[mandolirius]

Ahhhh yes... I believe the expression was hippie sanding. Am I wrong...

Random hippie sanding. You need all three words for the expression to attain its full comedic value.

[Bernie Daniel]

.... so yes there were some gems [Gibson F-style mandolins] during the 30's and 40's and on into the 50's. The mid 60's is when things started a downward spinal in quality and sound but they still played fine. By early 70's when the new "redesign" going back to a thick varnish and thinner necks they reached a peak in the dark era for the F5 until Roger got the F5L redesign going in 1978. And if I remember correctly you could still get the bad F5 in 1978 and 1979 as well as the new F5L. The worst F5L ever made was far superior to the best 70's ever made so that speaks highly of what Roger did accomplish in his involvement at Gibson....

Thanks for that additional bit of information. Your information along with Roger's article, reading of past comments on the Cafe, as well as some PM's I think I am finally starting to see the complete outline of the entire "rise,fall, and revive" story of the Gibson F-5.

Someone really needs to write a book or a least a long essay -- like Roger's but taking the story back and then forward from where Roger started and ended -- including the Flatiron/Carlson and Nashville/Derrington parts of the story.

I agree the early 1970's was, apparently, the lowest point in the F-5's evolution. I owned two of them -- a 1972 F-12 and a 1972/3 F-5. Both had the straight slot neck joint and the "intermediate" slope or rise of the fretboard (relative to the top plate). (This fretboard elevation pattern started in 1951 and was intermediate between the F-2/F-4 (and the pre-1951 F5/F-12) fretboards that laid ON the top and the original Loar F-5 that raised the fingerboard high off the top board.)

(It seems to me that for some reason when Gibson restarted F-style mandolins after WWII they completely abandoned the Loar F-5 template for a while? I have seen at least 4 post-1948 and pre-1951 F-12's that had the F-2/F-4 style fretboard. So was it Roger than that finally brought the high rise (Loar-style) fretboard back with the F-5L?)

These two early '70's mandolins of mine were beautiful mandolins to look at but in addition to the neck joint and "inferior" fretboard raiser they had very thick top plates and were covered with a heavy finish coats. As a result both of mine from this time sounded pretty dull and "thuddy". In fact my Morgan Monroe MM-3 was essentially equal to the two Gibsons.

[Scott Tichenor]

Roger asked me to post this because the content included an image and the ability to post those within this section commenting on news articles is turned off.

This post Roger authored references this image:
http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/at...1&d=1274463299

===
The story of what happened to the F-model line in the early '70s is interesting, amusing, and sad. While the change of each feature has its own unique story, the one that intrigues me the most is the modification to the shape of the soundboards and backboards, and the resultant removal of the recurve (thus making the boards too thick in that region). Early on, the soundboards and backboards were carved on a pattern carver, lengthwise, one at a time, as the company did its carved guitar models (see photo ca.1972 - a Citation guitar soundboard is ready to be carved). In the interest of production, someone got the bright idea that the bed of the pattern carver was large enough that two mandolin patterns could be set up at once if the patterns were simply turned 90° - basically carving two boards side-by-side. This would cut the machining time in half. On the carver, the table moved back and forth and the cutting head and following wheel (joined together as one unit) moved up and down; basically, as the following wheel rolled up and down over the pattern, the cutting head moved up and down in unison over the piece to be cut. Well, the carver's head was rather delicately balanced - heavy and sturdy as it was. So, when the bed began moving, the following wheel would come out of the recurve of one pattern, skip over the recurve of the neighboring pattering, land with a clunk about 2" into the work, and the cutter would put a ding in the neighboring soundboard (or backboard). And, of course, this happened again when the machine's bed began moving in the opposite direction. So, someone (I'll leave names out of this story) got the brilliant idea to "just fill in the little low area [i.e., recurve] and the cutter won't bounce!" The recurves were filled, and the problem was solved - at least from a production standpoint. Sad, but true. (Dealer and owner complaints eventually forced the modification to be reversed but the replacement patterns were more poorly graduated than their predecessors.)

As to the F5L gifted to Monroe, yes, it is in the hands of a private owner, and I'll check with him to see if he wants to chime in.

Thanks for all your interesting viewpoints on this story...
Roger

[Bill Junior]

I am the current owner of the 1978 F5L that was given to Bill Monroe by the Gibson Company as a peace offering. Roger Siminoff asked if would chime in with what information I have on the instrument. Here is all that I know. If anyone else has any information about this mandolin, I would love to hear from them.

After the NAMM show, Roger encouraged Gibson to present a new F5L mandolin to Mr. Monroe as a gift to help mend fences with the ‘Father of Bluegrass.’ Sometime later, the Gibson Company gave Monroe one of the F5L prototypes. This mandolin was signed by Gibson luthier Aaron Cowles on June 20, 1978, and bears the serial number, 71568197. According to Roger, this mandolin was finished on June 5th. “And, if that's the case, yours had to be one of the first three (and I think I remember Aaron completing his first).” On the first half-dozen instruments, Roger tap tuned the mandolin before the body was closed, so this one would have been tuned personally by Roger.

When I first acquired the mandolin, all I knew is that it had been owned and used by Monroe. As a Big Mon disciple, that was good enough for me. But one day I got a call from a friend of mine, Tom McKinney, of Asheville, North Carolina, and he said, “There’s a publicity photo of Bill Monroe holding your mandolin.” I confess I was skeptical, but Tom was right. After carefully comparing the headstocks of the two mandolins, specifically the inlays, I realized it was the very same mandolin. I didn’t know of any publicity photos of Monroe with anything other than his 1923 Loar—especially late in his career. That started me on a little research project to find out what I could about the instrument. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way I do about this, but most of us go through dozens of vintage instruments in our lives and don’t know anything about the provenance or history of these things, and that’s a shame. So, I wanted to find out all I could.

Last year, the Mandolin Café posted a little audio clip of Monroe on stage where he talks about mending fences with the Gibson Company. Monroe mentions acquiring the 1923 Gibson mandolin in a barber shop, the subsequent feud with Gibson, and how in 1978 Gibson convinced Monroe to have the Loar-signed instrument worked on back in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At the end, Monroe says, “And in the deal, they give me that new mandolin there in a brand new case.” This F5-L mandolin is what he refers to as “that new mandolin there.”

Monroe played the 1978 F5L mandolin quite often when his number one mandolin was unavailable, such as in the 1980 White House concert for President Jimmy Carter. In December 1981, I saw Monroe using the F5L to play “My Last Days on Earth” at an Orlando concert. So for at least some of the time, Monroe had the F5L in that alternate mandolin tuning.

Monroe used the F5L as his primary instrument after the infamous November 1985 “vandal” incident, in which an intruder smashed both of Monroe’s Loar-signed mandolins. Curtis McPeake verified that Monroe used the F5L for a year or more until his 1923 Gibson was repaired by Charlie Derrington. As evidence, Monroe was filmed using the F5L at a 1986 Colorado concert in the Scott Wright documentary titled, “High, Blue, and Lonesome.”

So how did I come to acquire the mandolin? Bill Monroe was good friends with a Nashville-area police officer, Bill Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins was not a professional musician, but played locally as an avocation. Hawkins did a lot of favors for Monroe, such as helping to feed livestock when the Blue Grass Boys were on the road. I understand Officer Hawkins was one of those called to the scene after the vandal incident, and helped gather mandolin pieces up into a paper bag. Sometime in the late 1980s or early ‘90s, Bill Monroe saw Mr. Hawkins in town and called him over to his vehicle. Monroe said, “I have something here I want to give you.” It was the 1978 F5L mandolin. Bill Hawkins treasured the F5L mandolin and played it until his passing. In the summer of 2005, the mandolin was brought to McPeake’s Unique Instruments, in Mount Joliet, Tennessee, and made available for sale; I purchased the mandolin from Curtis.

Sometime during its life, the mandolin lost its original pickguard, tailpiece, and bridge. I repaired a crumbling bone point on the lower bout. Other than that, the mandolin is intact and includes the original case. I recently took the F5L mandolin to Bruce Weber in Logan, Montana, for a review. After looking the instrument over for quite some time, studying the smallest details, Mr. Weber said he was impressed with the workmanship.

I have played a few Loar-signed Gibson mandolins over the years, and I think the power and tone of this F5L mandolin is comparable. As Big Mon, himself, would have said, “it’s a wonderful instrument.” I’m glad the behind-the-scenes story of the F5L’s development has been revealed. Roger and everyone involved in making those early Gibson F5L mandolins should be proud of what they did.

[carleshicks]

I would love to see some pics of this mando. Also another note Aaron Cowles is still alive and building archtop guitars and mandolins in Vicksburg Mi. His instuments are built using the name Jubal .

[Danny Clark]

i agree with F5Loar ,about the bad years for Gibson, i have easily owned over 100 Gibson mandolins ,everything from 20's F-5's to 2010 F-5's , i have experienced good and bad from almost every decade, some of the worst i remember were a 1949 F-12,and a 1981 F-5,and surprising i also owned a killer sounding 1976 F-5,
good or bad i am still a Gibson fan.

[Bill Halsey]

Bill Junior, that is an important addition to the F-5L story, very well-written. Thank you so much for joining us!