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Gibson Maple Hummingbird

Gibson introduces a new breed of Hummingbirds, this time featuring maple wood for the neck, sides and back.

Gibson Maple Hummingbird

The Gibson Maple Hummingbird features the same appointments as the original, with the brighter tonality of maple wood.

The Hummingbird is Gibson’s first flat-top dreadnought acoustic, introduced in 1960 to compete against other dreadnought manufacturers. Its overall artistic look was soon embraced by many popular guitar players, the instrument’s adaptable sound was found to be capable of handling folk, country and rock guitar duties.

To give a fresh new twist on this classic acoustic guitar, Gibson decided to go beyond the traditional pairing of Spruce top and mahogany, and opted for using maple for the back and sides. This instrument offers a unique tone option for those that want the Hummingbird design, but prefer the brighter resonance of maple. Although the tonal effect of this wood maybe debatable, it is hard to deny that maple simply looks amazing on guitars.

Aside from the maple back and sides, the guitar also uses maple for the neck, with a round profile that measures 1.725″ at the nut. It is topped by a rosewood fretboard that has a scale length of 24 3/4″ and a radius of 12″. The neck is joined to the body via a compound dovetail joint at the 14th fret.

The guitar retains the current Hummingbird’s design and specifications. This includes the traditional CF-100 angled headstock, Grover Rotomatics 14:1 tuners, Belly-up rosewood bridge, tusq saddle and tusq nut.

For plugging in, the new Gibson Maple Hummingbird is equipped with an L.R. Baggs Elements preamp and pickup system. This discrete pickup system features unobtrusive sound-hole mounted controls that will provide transparent plugged in tones without messing with the guitar’s structure and aesthetics.

This new guitar won’t be labeled as a Hummingbird without the expected visual embellishments. The tortoise pickguard with the Hummingbird motif is its most distinct feature, it will let you easily identify this guitar among other dreadnoughts. Other aesthetic appointments include multi-ply top and back binding, double ring rosette, pearl Gibson logo and crown, and mother of pearl parallelogram inlays.

Each Gibson Maple Hummingbird comes with a hand-sprayed nitrocellulose lacquer vintage cherry finish, with an MSRP is at $4,300. For more information, you can head over to Gibson.

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