Gibson welcomes another signature guitar for “The Cars” guitarist Elliot Easton – The “Tikibird” Firebird, where classic looks meets modern features.
Although this new guitar comes with artist-approved specs, it will be quite a change of pace for Elliot, who is mostly known for using his Signature SG.
At first glance, this new signature fronts a traditional look – but if you look more closely, you will find that it has a lot of modern electronics and hardware to offer. It is a fitting instrument for Elliot’s unique playing style.
This new signature guitar has Firebird’s trademark reverse body shape, as seen on instruments released back in the mid-’60s. The center of the body is carved from solid mahogany. Mahogany body wings are glued on to the center part to create the guitar’s unique shape. The guitar features a “through neck” design, which means that the center of the body connects directly to the multi-piece mahogany neck.
The neck follows Elliot’s preferred profile, measuring 0.850″ at the 12th fret and 0.800″ at the 1st. It is topped by a rosewood fretboard that has 22 medium jumbo frets. Traditional trapezoid inlays provide classic visual embellishments to the guitar.
Being used to the sound of the SG, Elliot wanted to fatten up the sound of his Firebird signature. To do this, Gibson equipped the guitar with two ’67 Classic humbucking pickups. The two traditional sounding pickups are then modernized by a custom designed network of four slider switches mounted on the pickguard.
These switches control coil splitting, phase reversal, and Gibson’s Pure True Bypass switching – which bypasses the internal circuitry and routes the bridge pickup directly to the output jack. The coil-splitting feature is designed to maintain hum-cancelling in any position, the two pickups are in reverse-wound/reverse-polarity when in the center position, and their individual tapped tones are themselves hum reducing. Other tone shaping options in include dedicated volume and tone knobs, as well as a three-way toggle switch. For a simple retro looking two pickup instrument, the Tikibird is versatile.
The guitar comes equipped with a genuine Bigsby vibrato, modified with a Vibramate Spoiler string loader for more convenient restringing. The bridge adds both playability and versatility values to the guitar, and also improves the overall look. Other modern hardware features include a Tone Pros tune-o-matic bridge with nylon saddles and the Steinberger gearless 40:1 tuners – both help improve sustain and tuning stability even when using the Bigsby vibrato.
The MSRP for the Gibson Elliot Easton “Tikibird” Firebird is $3,332. It is currently available in both left and right handed models, and come with a Gold Mist poly finish. For further details on this guitar, you can visit Gibson.
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