Brad Paisley is a great player who had a ton of custom-made Tele’s - all gone
Keith Urban is a great player with some great vintage guitars - reported gone
Vince Gill is a freakin’ monster of a top session player as well as a respected artist in his own right and was known for having one of the best vintage collections around, including a gorgeous first-year '54 Strat, and tons of vintage Martin and Gibson acoustics. MSNBC is saying that they appear to be involved in the flood.
They’re just tools and the health and safety of the folks in the area are far more important…
Absolutely - human lives are far more important than possessions any day of the week.
That being said, these ‘tools’ aren’t just two dollar Crappy Tire multi-head screwdrivers. This is like losing the stuff that Norm Abram uses to do his fine finishing work in the New Yankee Workshop.
His most famous, “Pink” is a '68 Fender Pink Paisley (which apparently was not in the flood), but the rest are custom-made by a fella named Crook(link to website - really great stuff…)
This was the last story on NPR’s Morning Edition today leading into the 8:00 a.m. news. They even played a bit of a Brad Pailsey song for the outro. It certainly sent a chill through me.
Unlike some of the guitar geeks here (whom I hold in awe), I’ve played the same 1966 Fireglo Rickenbacker 360 exclusively since 1975, and have owned only a handful of acoustics over the years. But I sure know how I would feel if something like this happened to me.
And let’s not even think about the only amp I’ve owned in my lifetime, a Fender Vibrolux tube model that I bought new in 1968. For me, its tone is irreplaceable.
My sympathies to all the great players mentioned, and all others affected by this too.
It’s a 1923 Gibson F-5 Mandolin (link to photo), one like Bill Monroe’s and signed by the chief designer and builder at the time at Gibson, Lloyd Loar. Yep - legendary, beautiful and worth loads of cash…no clue if it was affected.
Gibson’s website doesn’t have any updates but their main factory for electrics is in Nashville, along with their HQ…
Anyway, this thread makes me sick and I wish I hadn’t opened it. Of course, lives and homes and businesses are more important, but man, what a horrible loss!
Is it possible some of this stuff is salvageable? The instruments are “gone” in the sense that they’re submerged, but they’re still wherever they were before the flood. For at least a solidbody guitar, would the instrument be damaged beyond any repair? Could someone salvage a neck and body, and replace all the corroded electronics and rusty hardware? Obviously, it would no longer be substantially the same instrument, but is all totally lost?
Yeah, pretty much. The wood will have absorbed water and toxins and skwik and stuff, and some of what makes some guitars so great is the electronics. Certain components have never been made the same again as they were in such-and-such year or they simply stopped making things a certain way because we can do better with other components, IC chips, etc.
These wonderful instruments are most likely just gone forever.
Honestly, I have no idea, but am inclined to agree with Snowboarder Bo. I know they will go to herculean lengths for pariticularly special instruments to restore them - but even that will mean hassle and grief and I am inclined to think that they won’t be the same…the thought of trying to make a '54 Strat or a priceless pre-war Martin acoustic that has been waterlogged sound true again…
Oh - hey diku! I remember you - you work at Gibson in some capacity, right? Thank you so much for letting us know.
That is truly awful - I am so sorry to hear what Gibson is dealing with. I know you have been dealing with other big setbacks like that issue with the FTC about proper handling of imported woods (which I believe turned out fine for Gibson but was a big hassle) - wow, what a lot to overcome.
Hope you and your family are okay and Gibson gets on the road to recovery soon.
Makes me want to invest in some guitar cases that have rubber seals around the rim or other waterproofing. Then when the floods come all I’d have to worry about is the darn cases floating away in the stream.
