Very Interesting! I enjoyed reading about the history of guitar finishes at Gibson.
I definitely remember seeing the early spray sunburst finishes that are mostly dark brown going to a small yellow oval center at guitar shows and in photos.
Yup. The paint suppliers back then were part of the problem as well. Brushing lacquer had been around for a while, but in opaque colors only, and was mostly available in very few colors; the paint was mostly used in Detroit after Henry Ford scrapped all his other methods. The large industrial compressors he needed were the very first to use for spraying car bodies. Ford never offered any colors except for black, and he continued that practice after he abandoned painting car bodies with a paint brush, and later dipping them in a vat of black.
The first compressors Gibson used weren't the same size as Ford's, but they were still enormous in comparison to today's, and the colors used in finish all had to be hand mixed into clear lacquer to get some transparency to the colors.
The learning curve for these guys was very steep, and it was all trial and error for them all at a time in Gibson when the company's investors were only interested in getting their investment checks once a year.
In the Depression. Back then, it wasn't unusual for a floor manager to go up and slug a worker for no other reason than to keep his authority over them intact. If a worker complained, he was fired and on the street. Everyone took crap like that, just to keep their jobs.
To Gibson's credit, the company did everything it could to keep its workers working. Gibson offered several lines of guitars that all lacked the famous and patented truss rod, a Gibson invention, and they made an entire line of wooden toys, went into producing violins and bass viols, and some remarkably nice model toy sailboats that were actually sailed in wading ponds.
The other guitar companies of the time didn't do this. They simply cut their crews down to the bare bones and tried to ride the Depression out.
This actually helped the finish crews- the spraying mistakes were made on the toys and the other non-Gibson brands instead of being made on their most expensive products. By 1935, Gibson came out of the Depression with a full crew, all well exprerienced, just as the popular music of the time abandoned the banjo as an orchestra's rhythm instrument for the archtop guitar.
The Super 400 literally rocked the entire industry when it was introduced. It cost $400, over twice as much as the entire competition's best product, and Gibson couldn't meet the demand for them.
That was when the spray gun proved its worth to the industry. By today's standards, even Gibson's production was quite low, so the workers weren't rushed to supply product, and the color sprayers of the time could take all the time they needed to create some very beautiful sunburst finishes as the standard finish for Gibson. The sunburst made their big archtops very distinctive as a contrast to all the brass horns in the orchestras of the day.
The company has a very interesting history for sure. For a very long time, only Gibson took on all comers when it came to making guitars. It was one of the first to use pickups, made excellent flat tops, and established it's lasting reputation for the best archtops money could buy, and Gibson also made solid body steel guitars, banjos, ukuleles, and the entire mandolin family throughout the 1930s.
One of the coolest things was for the list price of any model they made plus a $50 surcharge, a customer could order a guitar that was custom-made. (or any of their other instruments too). The company built its own pickups in-house, and did all the design and production in-house.
$50 was a lot of money back then, but I once saw some photos of a custom 10-string steel guitar that needed a pickup. Making that single pickup must have cost Gibson more than $50, but even at a loss, the fact another steel player could order one like it made up for the loss. The company made money like Jack Dempsey boxed back then.
The only items Gibson farmed out to other manufacturers were the tuning pegs and their metal banjo parts. The legendary banjo tone rings that went into their Mastertone banjos were all made by Kalamazoo Foundry and Tank. A small outfit in town. It mostly made castings for the heating industry, back when radiators were the big thing in home heating.
And all of it came from the floor. The workers did it all with almost no management from above.