Matt Koehler, Product Specialist, from Gibson Custom Shop, delves into the company’s history. Guitar and car design cross paths for a brief moment, and the result is still turning heads today. Matt reminds us, if you can design a car, you can pretty much design anything! Especially if you happen to be Ray Dietrich.
Images and interview by John Grafman
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Matt Koehler: Looking back, if the goal is to establish a connection between the automotive industry and our brand, Gibson Guitars, there is a clear connection that happened in 1962. The then President of Gibson, Ted McCarty, was interested in creating some new guitar designs to complete with Gibson’s biggest electric solid body guitar competitor at the time, Fender. And, Ted liked outsourcing designs from both design firms in New York and Chicago, and trying to contact nearby designers as well (Michigan), one of whom came from the automotive industry. Not only did he come from the automotive industry, he’s the one of the most legendary and iconic designers in automotive history, Ray Dietrich.
In October 1962, Ray Dietrich submitted a portfolio of designs (to Gibson) using parameters that Ted McCarty gave him
Ray had a home right outside of Kalamazoo in 1962. In my understanding, the two of them met casually and Ted McCarty basically asked Ray if he would be interested in collaborating on some guitar designs and amplifier designs. In October 1962, Ray Dietrich submitted a portfolio of designs using parameters that Ted McCarty gave him, like the scale length of the guitar – It’s a 22-fret guitar. It needs to have a tailpiece and it needs to have at least two pickups. He probably showed him competing guitar designs of the era to go off of, and riff off of.
What Ray Dietrich came back with, and this is kind of proprietary knowledge, which I’m willing to share on Gibson’s behalf, was a design portfolio of eight different designs drawn over a period of nine days. So, every day Ray Dietrich was going to the drawing board and pulling both from his imagination and his knowledge of French curves and designing cars, and just came up with eight very wacky, futuristic shapes for a guitar. Both the body and the head stock design were like nothing ever seen at Gibson before. And the reason he made eight is because presumably when he made that last one that was the one that Tim McCarty said, “There you go. That’s the one,” because that’s where it stops. That’s the exact design that Gibson ended up using.
Gibson had never seen the body and the head stock designs like this before
Just that process is pretty representative of the golden era of Gibson, and I guess, their design team mentality. But, also it’s that literal connection between automotive industry and the guitar industry. It remains today because the Firebird is one of our most popular models at Gibson. It’s been a core model pretty much continuously since 1962!
Matt Koehler on Gibson guitar design
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About Raymond Dietrich: Ray Dietrich wasn’t just your average automotive designer. Ray launched his career in styling with Brewster and Company in 1914. He then landed an opportunity with Chevrolet three years later. In 1920, the 26-year old Dietrich had enough know-how to form his own coach-building company, LeBaron Carrossier. His clients included Packard, Franklin, and Studebaker, and Murray Body Corporation (which bought out LeBaron, and counted Ford as a customer). Dietrich also did one-off and limited edition production.
The custom car industry hit a wall with the great depression. Ray turned lemons into lemonade. Dietrich pivoted with the economy to become the first head of design for Chrysler until 1938. He remained in Michigan to work on a number of projects after Chrysler, including Gibson. And the rest is history.
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