Gibson Style O

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Gibson Style O Guitar ( 1902 to 1923 )

The gibson style O guitar has a primitive and old style mandolin design but they play a major and important roll in gibson's history, especially for acoustic archtop guitars .

These gibson guitars were considered the most prestigious guitars of its time and is known to be the base model design from which other future gibson archtop guitars derived from .

They were based on original archtop designs from Orville Gibson himself , and were actually introduced in the late 1800s .

Early style O gibson models had wide paddle shaped pegheads with one piece neck and sides , mahogany back and sides , oval soundhole , banjo style tuning pegs , black top finishes , and were 18" wide .

In 1906 slotted pegheads were added with "The Gibson" slanted logo on it , fingerboards were made with a round pointed end that surpassed the sound hole .

In 1908 they changed the body shape , it had a trapeze tailpiece , a carved artistic twirl on its bout with a single pointed cutaway feature ( see pic ) which set the stage for future legendary cutaway guitars , notice how the pointed cutaway resembles the cutaway on the Es-175 , L-4 C , SG models and many others .

In 1911 elevated pickguards were installed , in 1918 a fleur-de-lis peghead inlay was added on the peghead and were available in red mahogany sunburst finishes .

A truss rod was added in 1921 and the gibson style o guitar faded away in 1923 , few models were sold in 1924 and 25 .

The gibson style O guitars looked very much like their line of mandolins ( see pic ) which were mainstream instruments during the early 20s ,

but they were short lived when the highly crafted Gibson L-5 guitar was introduced with F-holes in 1922 and dominated the guitar market. ( Pics Courtesy of frets.com )

Vintage Price Value For 2007 :
1902 - 1923 > $4000 to $4400

Avg Upward Trend Of 9% a Year since 2000