1965 GIBSON MELODY MAKER

Absolutely stunning Gibson Melody Maker from 1965, in irreproachable original condition.

Unveiled to the public at the 1958 NAMM show, the Melody Maker was, 4 years after the Les Paul Junior, a second major milestone in Gibson’s offering of quality instruments intended for neophytes and young guitarists for a listed sale price below the $100 mark – like the Junior, the Melody Maker appeared in the 1959 catalog for only $99.50! This new model came in light of the obvious need for a truly economical guitar in a booming market, while the Junior which previously held this place had seen its cost increase by more than 30% over the course of the decade: thus, the Melody Maker completes the bottom end of the Gibson solidbody range.

The construction characteristics are relatively close to those of the Junior, with a solid mahogany body, a set neck and a rosewood fingerboard, making for an extremely light and compact guitar. However Gibson condensed the manufacturing process even further by doing without the added winglets glued on either side of the headstock, and mounting the assembly including the pickup and electronics directly on the pickguard which covers a single cavity on the front of the body. The pickup, somewhat incongruous in the well-established landscape of P-90s and humbuckers, is a borrowing from the Skylark lapsteel introduced shortly before. PU-380, its nickname, is a single-coil pickup whose appearance is reminiscent of those used by Gibson’s Californian competitor on their own student models! In any case, the model was a great success and sold in its first 6 years of existence almost 40,000 copies of all variants combined, a truly colossal number when considered in the industrial context of the time.

Between 1959 and 1965, the year of production of the guitar presented here, the Melody Maker experienced several successive aesthetic variations, ranging from a Sunburst finish with a single cutaway body, to a double cutaway body from 1961, then from 1965 with an even more pronounced double cutaway and a standard Cherry Red finish. This iteration was the last before the model adopted the SG body shape typical of the 1960s, in which it would appear until its ultimate withdrawal from the catalog in the early 1970s.

This instrument comes to us today exceptionally well preserved, with all of its original parts and hardware, including its compensated bridge and its Short Vibrola tailpiece, its tuners, its pickup and its electronics. The Cherry color is perfectly preserved, with very slight marks but as flashy as on its first day. Another sign that this guitar has been kept in optimal condition, its original cardboard case is also present – it is very common for these fragile cases, ironically marketed under the name Durabilt, to have been reduced to shreds after even normal use. The guitar stopped through our workshop where we carried out the complete optimization of its setup – work including the planing and polishing of its frets, the adjustment of the nut as well as the action and intonation at the bridge.

Sold in its original chipboard case.