In its earliest days, Guitar World ran a number of columns authored by the late Merle Travis. One of the greatest country guitar players of all time, he was so influential that one of the more common styles of fingerpicking is named after him.
Travis was one of the ultimate “been there, done that” guitar guys (though he was always incredibly humble), and had stories aplenty, some of which he kindly shared to Guitar World readers when the magazine was still in its infancy.
In Guitar World’s second ever issue (September 1980), Travis paid tribute to his late friend, Paul Bigsby, inventor of the revolutionary vibrato tailpiece that still bears his name.
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Travis had already known Bigsby – who, in addition to his luthiery hobby, was a motorcycle designer and racer – for years when he asked him to take a look at his Vibrola, the earliest guitar vibrato device. Fitted to Travis’ Gibson L-10, the Vibrola was fine mechanically, but it often pulled the country legend’s strings out of tune.
Bigsby had impressed Travis when he crafted a guitar for his friend, Joaquin Murphey. Travis wrote in Guitar World that when he asked Bigsby if he could fix the Vibrola, “Without hesitating a second, he roared, ‘I can fix anything!’”
Only, things didn’t quite go according to plan at first.
“In about a week he brought it back,” Travis wrote in the 1980 column. “With a flourish he pitched the thing to me and said, ‘Now, see how it works.’
“It was as bad as ever. We all kidded P.A. [Bigsby]. He turned a little red around the ears. His only comment was, ‘The damn thing’s made wrong in the first place.’
“‘You’re just a big blowhard,’ I kidded him,” Travis recalled. “‘Let me see you build a vibrato contraption that works.’ ‘By god, I’ll do it,’ Bigsby said, and had a hearty laugh.”
Bigsby was confident, determined, and innovative, and had no intention of striking out twice.
“In a couple of weeks he brought over a neat-looking thing with pegs sticking out of a roller for the string ends, and a handle on it. A triangular affair went back to the guitar where the tailpiece fits,” Travis wrote.
“On it was the name ‘Bigsby’. A ‘Bigsby Vibrola’. I put it on my Gibson L-10 and it worked like a charm. There was no way I could pull the strings out of tune.
“I still have that Vibrola. I see its great grandchildren on every kind of guitar imaginable. Later P.A. sold his gadget to Ted M. McCarty. His name is still on it, as it should be.”
