Some Assembly Required looks at Gibson Les Pauls
Haven’t fired up the TV set in a WHILE. But I looked at my online TV guide, no not the TVGuide site, but the much more user friendly Zap2it.com . And I noticed that The Daily Show, The Tonight Show and Conan O’Brien were all having new shows, so I decided I would watch TV tonight. And I decided to start the night with a favorite show of mine, that was also having a brand new episode; Dirty Jobs on the Discovery channel. I was catching the second half of the show with intention of catching the first half during the midnight rebroadcast.
After that show went off some new show came on; Some Assembly Required . It’s hosted by an ex-Daily Show comic named Brian Unger . And I’m sure he wouldn’t be happy to hear this, but I recognize him by his rather notable nose! He’s a handsome guy but… Anyway, tonight’s show featured the Nashville, Tennessee Guitar manufacturer Gibson. They were showing how a Les Paul was constructed. I gotta say, it’s an expensive guitar, but having watched the construction-I think it’s worth it!
I’ll just touch on some of highlights of the construction. They use 5 kinds of wood, but the body is primarily mahogany and maple. Both beautiful woods. And the guitars are pretty much hand made. Meaning they’re not really made by robots, but people using their hands or machines. Each and every single fret (and a guitar has a lot) is placed on every Les Paul by hand. Can you imagine that?
Ok so lots and lots of human input on construction. But I also learned a little science; electric guitars are actually “electric guitars.” The audio pickups are basically magnets, and electricity is created when the metal strings are in motion above the pickups. In other words it should really be called an “electricity making guitar.” I have an interest, of course, in these instruments that you can real all about in my piece about AC/DC .
The second half of the show was casket construction, and I’ve been to 5 funerals in 2 years, plus the death of my relationship with my girlfriend. So I tuned out on that one!
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