“I was getting calls from George Harrison and Eric Clapton’s group. They were working together. And what were they interested in? The J-180 and J-185”: Inside Gibson's Century Collection acoustics – and the role the Rolling Stones and Beatles played

“I was getting calls from George Harrison and Eric Clapton’s group. They were working together. And what were they interested in? The J-180 and J-185”: Inside Gibson's Century Collection acoustics – and the role the Rolling Stones and Beatles played

It’s hard to imagine a world without the Gibson flat-top. But as senior product development manager, Robi Johns, reminds us, you have to wind back the dials of the time machine a full century to find the Michigan luthier on the brink of arguably its most exciting quantum leap (at least, until the electric revolution of the ’50s). “It’s amazing to think that it’s 2026 now,” considers Johns, “and although they’d existed before that, for those in t…