A Retro Rebel Gets a 21st Century Revamp.
For its superb marriage of tonal versatility and revolutionary style, the "Non-Reverse" Firebird of the mid to late 1960s has long been a favorite with rock, blues and fusion players looking for an alternative to the mighty triumvirate of Les Paul, SG and ES-335. Now Gibson USA introduces the Firebird Studio, a guitar with all the eye-catching style and flair of the original 1965-'69 "Non-Reverse" bodied Firebird III, enhanced with added sonic versatility to bolster its vintage-certified tones. Crafted from Grade-A tonewoods, loaded with three of Gibson's amazing new Tapped P-90 pickups for both original fat P-90 tones and brighter, snappier "narrow single-coil" tones, and upgraded with stunning new five-way pickup switching, push-pull tap and phase switching, and a Tune-o-matic bridge with stopbar tailpiece, this is arguably the fiercest Firebird ever created.
Mahogany has a long and storied history as a Gibson tonewood, and it forms the core of the Firebird Studio from Gibson USA. The guitar's body is crafted from solid Grade-A mahogany, and dressed in an authentic high-gloss nitrocellulose finish in your choice of Pelham Blue or Vintage Sunburst. Its quarter-sawn, Grade-A mahogany neck is carved to a thin '60s profile, glued in, and topped with a hard-wearing baked maple fingerboard with 22 medium-jumbo frets and a 12" radius for smooth, choke-free bending. Beyond the PLEK-cut Corian nut, it carries a traditional "hawk's head" six-in-line headstock with high-quality Mini Grover kidney button tuners, while down at the body end a Tune-o-matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece—considerable upgrades from original components—help to ensure optimum resonance and sustain, while facilitating pinpoint intonation adjustments. With such a solid foundation beneath it, the piece de resistance of the Firebird Studio's tonal arsenal lies in its complement of three great new Gibson pickups and hotrodded electronics to make the most of their sonic potential. A trio of Gibson USA's revolutionary new Tapped P-90 pickups provides all the fat snarl, crunch and bite that vintage P-90s are known for, with the option of the brighter, twangier sound of a thinner single-coil pickup accessed via the push-pull switch on each pickup's independent volume control. Not "split coil" switching as used on humbucking pickups, the switch on each of these single-coil Tap P-90 pickups accesses a genuine tap wired into the coil windings of each unit, grounding off part of its output to produce a brighter, more focused tone when the switch is pulled. Combine this with the push-pull switch on the master tone pot which puts the middle pickup out of phase when combined with either the bridge or neck unit, and five-way switching to access bridge/bridge+middle/middle/neck+middle/neck pickup selections (either tapped or full), the Firebird Studio offers an unprecedented tonal range.
