FS: Gibson MK81 acoustic guitar 1975 **SOLD** £800

[Beedster]

Very rare and lovely mid-70s Gibson. Very sad to have to sell this but I'm torn between this - which is very focussed and responsive, but at the same time quite unforgiving - and my Ovation which is far less focussed but far more forgiving. This has been played and shows sign of wear, but for a 40-something year old it's doing OK, and will give you hours of playing pleasure. The neck is an absolute stunner, and overall it really is a special guitar. 

I'd trade for a lower value Ovation electro-acoustic, ideally with a cutaway, with some cash my way

Cheers

Chris

Edited September 6, 2018 by Beedster

[Happy Jack]

It never for a moment crossed my mind that you might be active in the Marketplace, Chris.

 

[Beedster]

32 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

It never for a moment crossed my mind that you might be active in the Marketplace, Chris.

 

Just felt like the right thing to do Jack

[Beedster]

History of the Mark Series

The year was 1975 and Ovation guitars were taking the market by storm. Born of the war in Vietnam and their parent company's aviation background, Ovation took a material used for helicopter radomes and turned them into modern guitars with bowl-shaped synthetic backs. A revolutionary pickup system made it possible to finally take an acoustic onstage with a rock band and still be heard without having to use microphones. The high-tech plastic back, use of a raised plastic purfling ring around the soundhole, and no pick guard created an entirely non-traditional look to the guitars used by popular musicians. Glen Campbell, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, and many other artists appeared on stage with Ovation guitars.

Meanwhile, traditional guitar manufacturers like Gibson and Martin were struggling. In the 70's, giant corporations looked at the guitar industry and saw a product they thought they could reengineer and retool to make a tidy profit. CBS bought up Fender guitars and Norlin took over Gibson. The idea was that manufacturing a guitar was just like making "widgets." All you had to do was retool with modern components, streamline production, and crank out guitars to a waiting world. For the most part, the results were dismal.

Quality control problems plagued many manufacturers, including Gibson. Demand for traditional guitars was down. New upstarts like Ibanez and Takamine were creating foreign-built copies of classic instruments that rivaled the quality and undersold the established American brands. At the same time, these companies introduced numerous innovative and original designs that grabbed the attention of a new generation of players.

As the prices of most Gibson models continued to escalate, the Norlin/Gibson conglomerate tried to fend off the challengers with some new innovation of their own. Out of that effort came the Gibson S-1 and Marauder electrics, the Ripper and Grabber basses, and on the acoustic battle front, the Mark Series.

Emboldened by Ovation's success at marketing a very nontraditional guitar to a very traditional clientele, Gibson abandoned the classic dreadnought design for the Mark guitars. The guitar had a slightly rounded shoulder, a deeply curved waist (though not so much as a J-200) and a rounded lower bout. The shape appeared to be borrowed from the famous archtops of Gibson's golden era. The flattop's body was relatively deep and was graduated from the upper to lower bouts. Although this design had a fairly large sound chamber, the instrument was very comfortable to hold compared to a dreadnought or a jumbo. The smooth neck heel offered easy accessibility to the upper frets.

The headstock design was a unique shape for Gibson and the logo embossed on the guitars hearkened back to the old script of the "Orville" era mandolins and L-5 archtops. The bell shaped tuners were derived from the Les Paul guitars.

Some innovations were a direct challenge to Ovation. For example, Ovation guitars came from the factory with shims installed beneath the bridge saddle. If the player felt the action was too high for comfort, he could remove the strings, pull up the saddle and remove a couple of shims to lower the action to his preference, all without having to take the guitar to a luthier. The Gibson answer to this concept was to make the bridge saddle slide laterally into a slot, parallel with the bridge and open on the bass side. Three melanine bridges in varying heights shipped with the guitar and by simply loosening the strings (no removal required) one could slide the existing bridge out and install a shorter or taller one.

Ovation guitars had a unique appearance for their lack of a pick guard. To protect the top area most prone to pick wear, Ovation used a plastic, raised purfling ring instead of a traditional rosette. Gibson copied the concept and introduced a much more prominent purfling ring made of wood grained plastic that not only protected the top, but also gave the body more visual depth. However, knowing that some guitar players would want a pick guard, Gibson shipped the guitars with a thick plastic pick guard that could be attached to the top of the guitar with a non-marring, non-permanent putty.

Ovation's guitars were also renowned for their pickup system and a very balanced tone spectrum. Gibson teamed with Barcus-Berry and offered an optional "Hot Dot" piezo pickup system for about $100 more.

The Mark Series guitars used a very unusual Kasha bracing system and bridge design. The bridge flared dramatically over the bass end of the instrument and was rather high for an acoustic. A look inside the guitar with a mirror reveals a strange, asymmetrical bracing pattern unlike any standard design. Kasha was a physicist who turned his attentions to the transmission of sound through a membrane. His findings led to some very interesting experiments with piano and classical guitar. Gibson luthier Richard Schneider helped develop the designs that became the Mark Series. The intent is to more efficiently transfer vibration to the soundboard, using more area of the top to generate sound.

The Mark Series guitars achieved a breakthrough of sorts. The evenness of tone was remarkable, even from instruments fresh from assembly. The tone was steely, but not brittle; punchy, but not overbearing. Unlike bass-heavy dreadnoughts, the balanced tones the instrument produced made them suitable for fingerpicking as well as flatpicking. These guitars record wonderfully. (Ed. Note: Every recording session I've ever done with one has earned raves from the engineer.)

Unfortunately, although Ovation had successfully marketed a nontraditional instrument to a mass audience, Gibson's traditional clientele rejected the instrument. The Mark Series failed to grab any market turf and the instrument was relatively expensive to produce. The visible Kasha features were too much for aficionados of traditional designs that Gibson was famed for and for the most part, no "famous" artists openly played the instrument on stage. Without an artist endorsement, it was a hard sell to finicky younger guitar buyers. Some players felt the guitars lacked sufficient bass richness. Others commented that the guitar simply felt too heavy? (The guitar is very substantial and would compare in weight to an archtop instrument.)

Gibson discontinued the line in 1979. The instruments that remained in stock were sold to a company that turned them into CLOCKS! The Mark Series line, despite it's fine workmanship and excellent tone, remained largely ignored by collectors and the used guitar market. For many years, it was not even listed in the Orion Blue Book for musical instruments: the "bible" of used guitar appraisal by music dealers and pawn shops. Without a baseline for pricing, no one knew what to do with them. (I traded an old guitar amp and $150 for my first Mark 72. Brand new, it would have sold for over $900.) Periodically they show up on Ebay or other auction sites. They are an incredible value for someone seeking the quality of a mid-70s Martin or Gibson on a budget.


And some more........


Part of the fallout from the guitar boom of the 1960s was an increased academic interest in guitars that manifested itself in the 1970s.
This ranged from Ph.D. theses in musicology – yielding our best biographies of classical players such as Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani – to the involvement of scientists trying to improve the guitar based on principles of physics. The latter efforts were actually initiated in collaboration between Dr. Michael Kasha, a physics professor at Florida State University since 1951, and luthier Richard Schneider, an apprentice of Mexican luthier Juan Pimentel, that began in the mid-1960s. This collaboration eventually added a third partner from Kalamazoo, Michigan – Gibson Guitars – and yielded the Gibson Mark series of acoustics, including the beautiful 1978 Gibson Mark 53.

Michael Kasha became interested in improving the classical guitar circa 1965. Encouraged by the classical guitar establishment, including Andres Segovia, Sophocles Papas, Mario Abril, and Vladimir Bobri (the famous editor of Guitar Review), he began to measure the sound response of great classical guitars, with the help of one E.E. Watson. Convinced he could improve the response and volume of the guitar by applying scientific principles, he began working with luthiers José Fernandez and the young Richard Schneider.

By 1971, Kasha was publishing many of his conclusions, which were basically three-fold; 1) Kasha loaded weight in or near the headstock to increase the transmission of string vibration down through the neck. This was counterbalanced with a weight in the tailblock. 2) The soundboard received a radical revision to the bracing system. Systems varied for classical and steel-stringed models, but basically it involved two transverse bars under the bridge and above the soundhole, then a sort of hybrid X and fan system, X on the upper bout, fanned on the lower, with braces getting thinner as they moved from bass to treble sides. A few brace detours occurred along the way. 3) Finally, Kasha came up with an “impedance-matching bridge” that was basically wide on the bass side and tapered on the treble.

Other improvements were also attempted, including making the back more resonant, etc. These were hardly the first attempts at such improvements! Ever since guitars graduated from ladder bracing, and certainly since the time of Torres, luthiers have been trying to figure out how to get the most from the soundboard. Makers had been working on resonating backs at least since the 1920s. But this effort was probably one of the earliest to apply scientific equipment and principles to the task. While this whole process involved physical analyses of woods and movement patterns of various frequencies and so forth, the actual process was also heavy on trial and error. Art directed by science.

Around ’72, Kasha and Schneider worked together on Kasha’s classical guitar ideas and signed an agreement to sell them through the Baldwin Piano and Organ Company, owners and builders of Gretsch and Baldwin/Burns guitars. That arrangement lasted only about a year, and in ’73 the pair entered an agreement with Gibson to develop a line of scientifically designed acoustic guitars, with Norlin picking up the development tab. The result was the much-heralded introduction of the Gibson Mark acoustics in ’75.

The Gibson Mark line consisted of five steel-stringed models. All were jumbo-bodied, with more rounded shoulders and lower bout than a typical square-shouldered Gibson dreadnought. They could be had in either natural or a sunburst with dark upper bout and a fairly thin band of stain around the lower. All sported 251/2″ scales and had a plastic ring around the soundhole. The top of the line was the Mark 99 in spruce and rosewood with an ebony fretboard, gold hardware, and bow-tie inlays ($2,199). These were basically custom-made by Schneider. The Mark 81 was the top production model, differing only in large pearl block inlays ($999). The Mark 72, a plainer rosewood model with less binding, chrome hardware, rosewood fingerboard, and dots ($749). The Mark 53 was maple-bodied with rosewood ‘board and dots ($649). The Mark 35 had a mahogany body with rosewood ‘board and dots ($569). Cases were an extra $109. Two 12-strings were briefly offered, the Mark 45-12, probably made of maple (two made in ’79), and the Mark 35-12 (12 made in ’77). Another model offered only in ’75 was the Kasha B, probably a classical (21 made).

The Mark 53 is a fine guitar. It’s got the big, tight, booming sound you’d expect from a well-made jumbo, bright and crisp as you’d want from a maple guitar. The workmanship is excellent, with five-ply binding on top, a nice, flamey back, and a maple neck. It sets up great for playing.

All that said, does the science that created it make it special? Maybe it’s because once you get into the realm of manufacturing guitars, any edge derived from the science gets rationalized out. Maybe it’s because science only takes you so far when it comes to the art of building guitars. In either case, however good this guitar sounds and plays, it’s not really remarkably better than any other really well-made guitar. And Gibson Marks didn’t exactly fly off the shelves, though sales picked up toward the end.

The Mark guitars were only offered for four years, until 1979. Only one custom Mark 99 was ever produced and sold. Of the Mark 81s, 431 were produced. The second most popular was the Mark 72 clocking in at 1,229 units. The maple Mark 53 saw 1,424 produced. The most popular was the mahogany Mark 35, with 5,226 made.

Whether or not Gibson Marks would have ultimately become a successful mainstay of the Gibson lineup, by the late ’70s, Gibson was in turmoil and transition, including moving production from Kalamazoo to Nashville. And its parent company, Norlin, was showing definite signs of wanting to get out of the guitar business. So, Gibson pulled the plug on the Mark. Michael Kasha and Richard Schneider continued working together on well-respected, essentially custom-made guitars over the subsequent years. Richard Schneider passed away in 1997, and today, Gibson Mark series guitars are the primary evidence left from that hopeful time when dreamers thought science could trump – or at least, enhance – art. The jury is still out on that, but Gibson Marks are eminently worth seeking out.

[Beedster]

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