RAISING THE TONE Old Souls
Jamie Dickson meets Mat Koehler, the tone archaeologist behind Gibson’s resurgent reissues
One of the highlights of the January NAMM show in Anaheim – and doesn’t that feel a world away now – was the vibey display of custom colour SGs and Firebirds on show from Gibson.You couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement gazing at ’64 SG Standard reissues clad in Inverness Green and ’63 Firebirds in Heather Poly, historic custom colours that are vanishingly rare. But as Gibson’s resident vintage guru Mat Koehler explains, new technology has given Gibson the means to take an even more exacting approach to its reissues as the company enters a new era.
“We already did a lot of work on hardware,” Mat says.“Last year saw us move to more accurate potentiometers and unpotted pickups. We really felt like now was the time to develop these new models, so we did a ’63 SG Junior, ’63 SG Special and a ’63 Firebird that’s spot-on, using some of [curator] David Davidson’s input on the guitars he has at Songbirds Museum.We also did a ’65 non-reverse Firebird, because the vintage values of those are now five digits, and a ’67 Flying V.”
Mat says that a new laser-scanning system installed in Gibson’s Custom Shop has been a bit of a game-changer, revealing a treasure trove of fresh insights about how the guitars of Gibson’s past were made, enabling the company to tackle reissues more ambitiously. This proved especially true when it came to the company’s 50s and 60s semis, such as the ES-335 and its derivatives.
“The older reissues made in Memphis were fantastic instruments and they had a soul and a character that I loved,” Mat explains. “But, using the scanner, we found out that original 50s and early 60s 335s were quite a bit thinner than we previously thought,” Mat says.“Another challenge was getting the contours around the cutaways exactly right,” he adds, referring to the gentle arching of the top that extends into the horns of a 335.“It’s subtle, but it’s like the dish of a good ’Burst, where you see it and you know it’s right.”
Mat’s efforts to replicate the elusive shape of these contours proved harder than he expected, leading him all the way down the proverbial rabbit hole.
“The original 1958 press plates were still in use in Memphis,” Mat explains, referring to the tooling used to mould an arch into the four-ply maple/poplar/polar/maple laminate that was used for the 335’s top and back in all but the earliest examples.
“We discovered they had become worn out by years of use and had drifted away from the original shape,”Mat continues.“So we had to recut the press plates with a diamond cutter to get them back to the exact form they originally were. We didn’t really know how it would turn out – but the first new sets of tops and backs that we made with it were spot on.”
“The older reissues made in Memphis were fantastic instruments and had a soul and character I loved”
Despite having the technology to make reissues more accurate, Mat explains that discretion has to be used when choosing which features to slavishly recreate. For example, very early ES-335s made in 1958 – which featured unbound necks – are beautiful instruments but had niggling design issues that were ironed out in later 335s.
“The ’58 neck angle is often not very good,” Mat observes.“When I see the unbound neck [of an original ’58 ES-335] my first thought is usually,‘Oh, gosh, what’s the neck angle going to be like?’Sometimes they’re okay, but most of them are no good – so when Memphis did a reissue of the ’58 they made them with a better neck angle and they’re real fun to play.”
Also, despite the usefulness of scanning technology in mapping out the exact shapes of the past, it doesn’t deal with every problem – and is often only the starting point for figuring our how to make vintage dreams into reissue reality.
“What’s funny is that when we’re scanning old guitars, the cleanest examples are often the hardest to get good data from,”Mat explains.“When you’re scanning contours, you actually want the finish to be a little rough so that the laser isn’t getting confused by reflections, and black guitars are especially tough. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is: when you have that data, how do you apply it to production guitars? There’s no metric for how a good rolled neck binding feels – you just have to know how to do it.”
But, as Mat is happy to confess, nothing pleases him more than a deep dive into Gibson’s past.As well as arming him with a wealth of knowledge about what was typical in Gibson’s 50s and 60s guitars, his work also unearths some freakish anomalies, too.
“I have a pretty big, ravenous appetite for weird stuff and learning more about that.
I just like the different periods of Gibson’s history and relationships between different builders and influencers, so I don’t really know where to start, but if I just think of some outliers that I’ve seen, there are couple of J-200s from ’57 with the scimitar headstock you see on the Explorer. I saw an ES-175 and an ES-350 and a Byrdland all with a mandolin-style headstock, which was really interesting – they were factory originals. I learn something new every single day,” he concludes, with a smile.