Standing still it looks like it’s going fast! And that’s no real surprise, as the Firebird was created by one of America’s most famous car designers, Ray Dietrich.
Ray Dietrich and Ted McCarty
Having created some of America’s most striking motor vehicles of the twenties and thirties – many of which are still legendary today – Dietrich continued producing great designs right through into the late 1950s, eventually retiring to Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1960. As fate would have it, Kalamazoo was then home to the Gibson guitar company, and one legend having come to know another, by 1962 Gibson’s Ted McCarty had talked Dietrich into coming up with some solidbody guitar concepts that they could take head-to-head against Fender. So it’s no accident that the Firebird’s looks bring to mind those cool early sixties cars with the big tailfins.
Brian Jones to Johnny Winter
The Firebird was Gibson’s first neck-thru model, and players will avidly tell you just how much sustain and resonance a ‘Bird gains from the one-piece neck-thru design. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was an early Firebird fan, and big name players have been picking them up ever since: Eric Clapton; Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera; Ronnie Wood; Warren Haynes, (Govt Mule); Dave Grohl; and Allen Collins, who utilized a Firebird on one of the most revered solos in rock music – Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Free Bird’. Perhaps the best known Firebird aficionado was the recently departed blues legend Johnny Winter, (shown in pics 1 & 5).
DO NOT change the pickups
Now, here’s something we think is a really dumb thing that people do with Firebirds – they yank the Gibson pickups out and replace them, with anything from p90s to Duncan Firebird replacements – and why do they do it? Because the stock pickups don’t sound like a Les Paul! Here’s a great clip of Johnny Winter from 1974, showing why a Firebird is a Firebird is a Firebird, and that you should not try and make it something it’s not! (If you’re impatient, jump to 8:15, or to his fantastic solo in ‘Brown Sugar’, from 11:05) Sure, not every Firebird sounds as good as Johnny Winter or Ronnie Wood, but we reckon this one’s got in it spades – click our LISTEN button, buy the guitar and DO NOT change the pickups!!
The Firebird has a more wide-ranging palette than a Les Paul: incredibly detailed highs; mids that range joyously up-and-down, rather than just loitering in a muddy centre position; and low-end notes with the same detail and precision as the highs. Ray Dietrich may have designed the body, but someone else at Gibson got the electronics package 150% right!
An absolute delight to play
In Excellent- condition, the frets are perfect, electronics are clean and smooth, there’s no tarnishing of the metal parts and only very light playwear here and there in the paintwork. The 12” radius neck is an absolute delight to play on – again, listen to the soundfile – and the Firebird headstock design, complete with traditional ‘banjo tuners’, (which Gibson have now discontinued), ensures second and third looks the minute you walk onstage.
Free courier delivery
Complete with its original Gibson hard shell case, (see pic # 8), your killer Firebird V includes FREE COURIER DELIVERY to any address in Australia. ($100 airfreight to New Zealand, $175 to the USA, Canada, UK and mainstream European countries)
NOTE: This NOT the remodeled Firebird V 2010, which many players believe to be something of a failure by Gibson, particularly in the adoption of Steinberger tuners over the traditional ‘banjo tuners’. This ‘Bird is the real deal!