As you probably recall, in May last year Nashville suffered devastating floods, and the Gibson factory was inundated.
But the workers at Gibson didn’t give up – they worked hard to restore the factory and rescue and fix as many of the guitars that were in the factory at the time as they could.
And back in October we brought you the story of how the Gibson workers lovingly restored Keith Urban’s ’77 Les Paul Standard after it was badly effected.
Then came the incredible story of how Gibson happened upon a new finish for the Firebird X.
When the waters finally receded, the factory workers found that the flood had caused paint to be swirled around the factory floor in some rather interesting patterns.
So ‘artistic’ were these that the Gibson workers preserved the markings on the floor, and perhaps in response to this suggestion on their CEOs forum at 4henry.gibson.com/index.php?/topic/585-new-les-paul-finish, they decided to use these flood markings as the basis for the new finish on the Firebird X.
Here are some of the floor flood damage pictures in the Gibson factory:
And now this style has been used for the Gibson USA Anniversary Flood Les Paul Studio which comes in two high gloss nitrocellulose finishes: Marbelized Blue Swirl Burst, and Marbelized Green Swirl.
The main features other than the finish are mostly what you’d expect from a Les Paul Studio with carved Maple top and Mahogany body, 490R neck pickup and 498T bridge pickup, Rosewood fingerboard with acrylic trapezoid inlays, and chrome Grover tuners with 14:1 tuning ratio.
The MSRP is $2,389 – for more information go to Gibson.
Related News:
Gibson Nitrous Les Paul Studio
Gibson Les Paul Studio ’70s Tribute
Trust Gibson to make bucks out of a disaster what a sham,
Regards
Ray.
To be fair to Gibson, they suffered quite a lot of damage and their workers suffered by seeing so much of their hard work destroyed.
I think it’s totally reasonable that they would want to create a commemorative guitar – both for emotional and financial reasons, and I doubt this guitar will pay back anything like the losses they incurred.
Were they not insured ? they will have claimed a packet
But of course, they turned around and released the same damn finish which made the Floods unique to the public with their new line of studios. Didn’t even hear bout this till someone posted in UG about it.