Take A Look Back At Some Of Tom Murphy’s Earliest Contributions To The Gibson Custom Shop!

While the guitars from the Murphy Labs at Gibson Custom Shop now showcase Tom Murphy’s work in developing the painting and aging techniques Gibson uses to replicate the finishes on its limited-run historic models, Murphy’s contributions to the Custom Shop started long before the establishment of Murphy Labs, going all the way back to the first years we opened up shop!

Now, in addition to CME’s existing inventory of some of the best guitars Gibson has to offer, The CME Collection gives us a look back at a tradition of excellence that Tom Murphy helped begin at the Custom Shop, including models that have been aged and painted by the man, himself!

Made to Historic Measurements

Not long after Gibson officially founded the Custom Shop, it was moved to a separate building from the Gibson USA plant in Nashville, becoming its own entity. In 1993, with Rick Gembar at the helm, Gibson hired Tom Murphy hired alongside J.T. Riboloff to spearhead the Gibson Custom, Art, and Historic division within the Custom Shop.

Together, with the Custom Shop’s team of master luthiers, Murphy and Riboloff were granted access to over two dozen historic Les Paul Standard guitars, meticulously measuring and documenting the attributes of each. The Custom Shop team then combined their research to build exacting replicas—all the way down to recreating the same wear-and-tear that was typical on well-played guitars. 

SHOP CME COLLECTION MURPHY GUITARS

From the earliest editions onward, Tom Murphy helped lay the foundations for the Custom Shop guitars that Gibson has produced in the three decades since, throughout all these years we’ve been selling them, here, at Chicago Music Exchange! 

Where Artists and Historic Models Intersect

At the same time that the Custom, Art, and Historic division was creating its first replicas, the Custom Shop at Gibson began creating limited edition replicas of popular artists’ instruments, still based on these initial tried-and-true vintage designs, but also including modifications that particular artists.

The first in this series was the Gibson Custom Joe Perry '59 Les Paul Reissue, and The CME Collection has brought one of these editions—aged by Tom Murphy, himself—within our walls, in addition one of the Ace Frehley ‘59 Les Pauls from the limited Custom Shop run that followed the Joe Perry!

To see and play some of the earliest, most sought-after editions of guitar to come out of Gibson Custom Shop these past three decades, come to CME and check out the Tom Murphy aged and painted editions and ask about The CME Collection, as well as all our Murphy Labs guitars!

SHOP GIBSON CUSTOM SHOP MURPHY LAB GUITARS

Related Posts

Earthquaker Devices Life Pedal V2 at Chicago Music Exchange

No longer cloaked in secrecy, the Life Pedal V2 is the second distortion and boost with a blendable octave that EQD has engineered in collaboration with drone metal pioneers SUNN, housing it this time in an Earthquaker-style chassis with top-mounted controls. And you bet your life this will sell out in a flash, just like the first. 

Read more

Best New Keys and Synths from NAMM 2020

Arturia's powerful new KeyStep Pro sequencer and full-size KeyLab Essential 88 gives two types of players exactly what they want: control.

Read more

Vertex Steel String MKII Clean Drive Demo with Isaiah Sharkey

Nathaniel and Isaiah Sharkey trade tips on how to get the most out of the new Vertex Steel String Clean Drive MKII. The latest version of Vertex's clean drive, the Steel String MKII uses the Dumble String Singer #001 as the basis for its design, but it reduces the original's size by a third and adds "Rock/Jazz" toggle switching for bass cut control.

Read more