Luthier Dan Erlewine claims to have owned a
re-necked Moderne, but no longer has the guitar and never photographed it when it was in
his possession. According to Erlewine, “A guy
brought it into my shop on the outskirts of Ann
Arbor and wanted to sell it. He said his dad
sent it to Kalamazoo to have a Melody Maker
neck put on it, because he liked the feel of his
buddy’s Melody Maker and wanted his guitar
to have the same. I thought it was an Explorer,
which I’d never seen, and I had never heard of
the Moderne or the Futura. I paid $175, which
was a lot of money at the time.”
THE MYSTERIOUS
GIBSON
MODERNE
to requests and officially introduced the
Moderne in 1982. Howard Leese, formerly
of Heart, was given the first prototype,
which was painted Candy Apple Red. He
also purchased one for his guitar tech. Both
later sold the guitars for a tidy profit. Only
183 Modernes were produced in this run,
and the public reaction was generally negative. Other than the Korean-made Epiphone
copies, Gibson has refused to manufacture
the Moderne since.
“George knows more than I do about
vintage guitars,” Erlewine states. “I’d say
he didn’t see it. He bought it through his
employee, Ranger Doug.”
Dan Erlewine has never seen Billy Gibbons’
Moderne, either: “Only recently did I see a
glimpse of it in the photo of Billy in the convertible filled with guitars in the Ron Wood
book. How would I know if it’s original? What
does ‘original’ mean anymore, especially with
a guitar that has never been proven to exist.”
“When I removed the pickguard,” he continues, “I found some routing had been done,
and I believe different pickups had been
installed—maybe someone started a third
pickup and never finished. I filled the unwanted rout with plaster of Paris, of all things, and
painted black over the hole. I sold the guitar
immediately to Ann Arbor Music to get my
money back. They sold it to Doug Green, who
worked for George Gruhn. I think the parties
got into some pretty good arguments over it.”
“I have no idea why Billy has been so secretive
about it,” he adds. “I’ve never met Billy. He’s
a big star with lots of valuable guitars, and if it
were me, I’d be protective about them, too. He
hasn’t shown it to anyone because he doesn’t
feel like it; he doesn’t have a need to. I don’t
think Billy claims to be an expert on vintage
guitars. He’s an expert at playing them!”
This brings us to Ronald Lynn Wood, a guitarist originally from Flint, MI, and now of
Gainesville, FL, who became fascinated by
the Moderne as a young man and set out to
unravel the mystery of this elusive guitar. His
new book, Moderne: The Holy Grail of
That guitar was supposedly sold to a Japanese
businessman. George Gruhn claimed to have
examined it and deemed it a fake.
Erlewine doesn’t subscribe to the theory that
an original Moderne would have surfaced
by now: “If there were only three allegedly
made, it’s possible the owner doesn’t even
care about guitars, or have a clue what it
is. It’s a big world, and lots of strange
things happen all the time.”
“I never thought about the Moderne
myth very much. The most I thought
about it was a couple of years ago,
when a man flew to Athens, OH,
to show us a ‘real’ one that he
had come across—he was writing
a book about it and wanted verification. He and the guitar’s owner paid to
have experts Phil Jones, Tom Murphy and
Michael Stevens flown in for the weekend
as part of the inspection team. Michael was ill
and couldn’t attend, but Phil and Tom came.
We had seen at least fifty photos of it before
the get-together took place, and they were
good enough to warrant us looking at it. Once
the case was opened however, we could tell it
wasn’t real. Probably some of the color photos
in Ron Wood’s book are of that guitar.”
Summing it up, does Dan Erlewine think the
Moderne ever existed? “I have no idea,” he
answers, “but I’m starting to doubt it.”
Can you spot the Moderne with Billy Gibbons?
One Man’s Quest for the Truth
As previously mentioned,
Gibson relented
