MEET THE BUDGET CLASSIC THAT SAVED GIBSON’S NECK, SURVIVED THE DEPRESSION-ERA DUST BOWL AND PLAYED A ROLE IN THE VERY MYSTERIOUS LIFE OF SATAN’S GUITAR HERO.

BY ED MITCHELL

THE GREAT DEPRESSION of early 1930s America spared no one. Things were so bleak that the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan, reduced guitar production to make wooden toys or anything else that could keep its workers employed. Ironically, at a time when the guitar was eclipsing the piano, accordion and banjo in popularity, few could afford to buy a quality Gibson instrument.

The fact that the company survived the country’s toughest decade at all is down to Gibson president Guy Hart, who held the position from 1924 to 1948. Hart’s legacy has been obscured by later president Ted McCarty (of Les Paul, SG, ES-335, Explorer and Flying V fame), and only true vintage geeks know the man’s name. Yet, his decision to pull together a new range of budget archtop and flat-top guitars, as well as banjos and mandolins, kept Gibson afloat when the rest of America was struggling to keep its head above water.

Hart’s solution was the affordable Kalamazoo range, the source of the beautiful KG-14 flat-top acoustic shown here. Today, it’s typical to romanticize a stripped-down blues machine like the KG-14 as a portal into sinister deals made at the crossroads, and raucous nights in a back-roads Delta juke joint. But Hart was just thinking in dollars and cents. In the early 1930s, a Gibson L-1 acoustic cost $37.50. The new KG-14 sold for $12.50, exactly one third the price of the L-1.