Empty Pockets
BadHairDayologist
If you don't know, you'd best find out.
Class starts tomorrow in case you don't.
Class starts tomorrow in case you don't.
Gibson Marauder
- Thread starter Empty Pockets
- Start date
ImmortalSix
John Mayer's Mankini
Re: Gibson Marauder
SirJackdeFuzz
New member
Re: Gibson Marauder
Nice idea, but i am not a fan of the Flying V style head stock !
Nice idea, but i am not a fan of the Flying V style head stock !
Re: Gibson Marauder
I bought one in 1979 (or 80?) while I was stationed in Germany. It was my first "real" electric. (The first was a crappy LP copy.) When I got to Fort Polk, La. I sold it to the other guitarist in my band and bought a Gibson ES-335-S (solid-body doublecut Firebrand model). I sold the Firebrand in the late 80s when times were tough. So, my only 2 Gibsons were both oddball models!
I bought one in 1979 (or 80?) while I was stationed in Germany. It was my first "real" electric. (The first was a crappy LP copy.) When I got to Fort Polk, La. I sold it to the other guitarist in my band and bought a Gibson ES-335-S (solid-body doublecut Firebrand model). I sold the Firebrand in the late 80s when times were tough. So, my only 2 Gibsons were both oddball models!
Empty Pockets
BadHairDayologist
Re: Gibson Marauder
Lesson One: Basic Overview and First Impressions
Well mine is a 1980 Gibson Marauder...these were among the cheapest Gibsons available at the time (retailed new for about $499!) so you'd literally get bodies made of the scraps of alder, maple or mahogany that were leftover from everything else. Mine is lucky enough to be made of two pieces of fairly tight-grained mahogany with a three-piece maple neck (more like five pieces if you count the wings added for that V-style headstock). I like how there's enough room between the neck and body to stash a few important things -- y'know, a few dollars or picks or a credit card or something, just in case :smokin: (we'll see if my tech can't fix that)
When I met the guy to test her out the electronics didn't work -- she'd been sitting in a case under a bed for about ten years. I negotiated a nice discount and took her home, popped the pickguard off and cleaned everything up and got it working again. When i popped off the guard i was pleasantly surprised to find a massive swimming pool route! So I can drop any pickups i want in here as long as i have a pickguard to mount them in!!
Didn't take but 20 minutes to get the stock circuit back to how it was...strung it up with some 10's and gave it a quickie set-up; she plays like butter!
The stock pickups are really cool, Bill Lawrence designs. The humbucker is big and fat but maintains good definition. The single coil is apparently a relatively high output (for a single coil in the 70's) rail-magnet single coil that kinda sounds like an angry P90. Been using it for palm-muting chugging riffs with no problems. I'm having a love / hate experience with the chicken-head pickup selector potentiometer...it's good for adding a little bite to the neck pickup or adding a little fat to the bridge pickup but it's terrible for switching on the fly, which is something i like to do. Won't be too hard to drop a 3-way in there if i want to but if it comes to that i'll probably just wire up a whole new pickguard with some newer pickups in it and maintain the vintage integrity of the old circuit :smokin:
As a dude who mostly plays Fenders but has discovered he prefers the feel of Gibsons, and has been wanting a 72 Deluxe Telecaster almost as badly as he's been wanting a Les Paul Special, this guitar comes as a cool surprise and a unique combination of a lot of things i want in a guitar. Is she a keeper? Maybe. Is she awesome? Definitely!
Family pix coming soon.
Lesson One: Basic Overview and First Impressions
Well mine is a 1980 Gibson Marauder...these were among the cheapest Gibsons available at the time (retailed new for about $499!) so you'd literally get bodies made of the scraps of alder, maple or mahogany that were leftover from everything else. Mine is lucky enough to be made of two pieces of fairly tight-grained mahogany with a three-piece maple neck (more like five pieces if you count the wings added for that V-style headstock). I like how there's enough room between the neck and body to stash a few important things -- y'know, a few dollars or picks or a credit card or something, just in case :smokin: (we'll see if my tech can't fix that)
When I met the guy to test her out the electronics didn't work -- she'd been sitting in a case under a bed for about ten years. I negotiated a nice discount and took her home, popped the pickguard off and cleaned everything up and got it working again. When i popped off the guard i was pleasantly surprised to find a massive swimming pool route! So I can drop any pickups i want in here as long as i have a pickguard to mount them in!!
Didn't take but 20 minutes to get the stock circuit back to how it was...strung it up with some 10's and gave it a quickie set-up; she plays like butter!
The stock pickups are really cool, Bill Lawrence designs. The humbucker is big and fat but maintains good definition. The single coil is apparently a relatively high output (for a single coil in the 70's) rail-magnet single coil that kinda sounds like an angry P90. Been using it for palm-muting chugging riffs with no problems. I'm having a love / hate experience with the chicken-head pickup selector potentiometer...it's good for adding a little bite to the neck pickup or adding a little fat to the bridge pickup but it's terrible for switching on the fly, which is something i like to do. Won't be too hard to drop a 3-way in there if i want to but if it comes to that i'll probably just wire up a whole new pickguard with some newer pickups in it and maintain the vintage integrity of the old circuit :smokin:
As a dude who mostly plays Fenders but has discovered he prefers the feel of Gibsons, and has been wanting a 72 Deluxe Telecaster almost as badly as he's been wanting a Les Paul Special, this guitar comes as a cool surprise and a unique combination of a lot of things i want in a guitar. Is she a keeper? Maybe. Is she awesome? Definitely!
Family pix coming soon.
Travis H
New member
the guy who invented fire
Fuzzy. Guitars
Re: Gibson Marauder
I had one years ago...mine had been mistreated for a long time and was pretty much falling apart but it sounded pretty cool.
Someone had shoehorned a Tele lead pickup in the bridge position and some kind of unknown bucker in the neck...
Mine was a maple neck and fingerboard with what I htink was an alder body...the guy that I got it from said it was all maple but I'm prety sure it was an alder body.
Overall a neat guitar, I wish it had been in better shape but it got the job done either way.
I had one years ago...mine had been mistreated for a long time and was pretty much falling apart but it sounded pretty cool.
Someone had shoehorned a Tele lead pickup in the bridge position and some kind of unknown bucker in the neck...
Mine was a maple neck and fingerboard with what I htink was an alder body...the guy that I got it from said it was all maple but I'm prety sure it was an alder body.
Overall a neat guitar, I wish it had been in better shape but it got the job done either way.
Ashurbanipal
Well-known member
Re: Gibson Marauder
A guy I went to school with had one - rosewood fretboard, some kind of trans black finish, normal selector switch. Played it when he came to my house for a jam and it was a pretty decent guitar.
They can be had for pretty cheap, and I guess with a bit of work can be made into good players. Most people are put off by them because they see them as a pinup for everything that was wrong with Gibson in the Norlin era. Only thing that makes them ugly is that scratchplate, imo, otherwise they're fairly cool. I like the frosted green cover of the bridge pickup, makes me thing of art nouveau for some reason.
A guy I went to school with had one - rosewood fretboard, some kind of trans black finish, normal selector switch. Played it when he came to my house for a jam and it was a pretty decent guitar.
They can be had for pretty cheap, and I guess with a bit of work can be made into good players. Most people are put off by them because they see them as a pinup for everything that was wrong with Gibson in the Norlin era. Only thing that makes them ugly is that scratchplate, imo, otherwise they're fairly cool. I like the frosted green cover of the bridge pickup, makes me thing of art nouveau for some reason.
That90'sGuy
DyzaBoyzologist
Re: Gibson Marauder
All I can think of is the band Sum 41 when I think of those guitars:
All I can think of is the band Sum 41 when I think of those guitars:
Empty Pockets
BadHairDayologist
Re: Gibson Marauder
^^ HAH Didn't know he used them! I read Josh Homme used them and any guitar used by John Paul Jones' guitarist is instantly worth a quarter million dollars so it was definitely a score for me.
^^ HAH Didn't know he used them! I read Josh Homme used them and any guitar used by John Paul Jones' guitarist is instantly worth a quarter million dollars so it was definitely a score for me.
Gingrel
New member
bard2dbone
New member
Re: Gibson Marauder
Back in the early '80's I used to jam with a guy who had one. It had been refinished in a just-lighter-than-TV-yellow, and had about a million pickups stuffed in the pickguard. It might have only been something like three humbuckers and a single coil, or two humbuckers and three singles maybe. But it looked like millions of coils to me back then.
That was the first guitar I ever saw with a total custom switching set up. I think he could do any, all or none of the p'ups in series or parallel, with some kind of taps on the buckers available as well. We called it 'Mission Control' or 'NASA', depending on the day.
Strangely it still wasn't as wierd as his main guitar. His main was a Roland guitar synth in a bizarre silvery metallic and black finish, with a bar connecting the body to the headstock so that the guitar had an enormous handle. He didn't have the synth controller so the synth was just a wierd looking guitar. But he loved that hideous thing.
Back in the early '80's I used to jam with a guy who had one. It had been refinished in a just-lighter-than-TV-yellow, and had about a million pickups stuffed in the pickguard. It might have only been something like three humbuckers and a single coil, or two humbuckers and three singles maybe. But it looked like millions of coils to me back then.
That was the first guitar I ever saw with a total custom switching set up. I think he could do any, all or none of the p'ups in series or parallel, with some kind of taps on the buckers available as well. We called it 'Mission Control' or 'NASA', depending on the day.
Strangely it still wasn't as wierd as his main guitar. His main was a Roland guitar synth in a bizarre silvery metallic and black finish, with a bar connecting the body to the headstock so that the guitar had an enormous handle. He didn't have the synth controller so the synth was just a wierd looking guitar. But he loved that hideous thing.
Petrovsk Mizinski
New member
Re: Gibson Marauder
Looks like ****
Looks like ****
sosomething
Seymour Duncan Customer Support
Re: Gibson Marauder
I've been digging those for a long time.
They're just Norlin Fugly enough to stay off the radar of most vintage compulsionists so the price hasn't been inflated beyond reason yet.
It's a hilariously awesome design.
It's like the movie Twins with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, where they genetically engineered a super human (Arrhhhgnold) and the genetic refuse was funneled into the embryo that was DeVito.
Like, if your typical Tele-Paul design is Arnold Schwarzenegger, then all the leftover parts got slapped together into Danny DeVito - the Gibson Marauder.
I've been digging those for a long time.
They're just Norlin Fugly enough to stay off the radar of most vintage compulsionists so the price hasn't been inflated beyond reason yet.
It's a hilariously awesome design.
It's like the movie Twins with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, where they genetically engineered a super human (Arrhhhgnold) and the genetic refuse was funneled into the embryo that was DeVito.
Like, if your typical Tele-Paul design is Arnold Schwarzenegger, then all the leftover parts got slapped together into Danny DeVito - the Gibson Marauder.
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