Gibson Firebird

2008 Gibson Reissue Firebird V in 'Vintage Sunburst'
Manufacturer	Gibson
Period	1963 — present
Body type	Solid
Neck joint	Through-body; some models have set necks
Scale	24.75"
Body	Mahogany
Neck	Mahogany and Walnut
Fretboard	Rosewood or Ebony with trapezoid, block, or dot mother of pearl inlays
Bridge	Tune-o-matic ABR-1 style, after 2008 Nashville style
Pickup(s)	1, 2 or 3 Mini-Humbuckers, Full Size Humbuckers, or P-90s
Classic White, Ebony, Pelham Blue, Heritage Cherry, Vintage Sunburst, Antique Natural

The Gibson Firebird is a solid-body electric guitar manufactured by Gibson from 1963 to the present.

The Gibson Guitar Corporation released several new styles during the 1950s to compete with Fender's solid-body instruments, such as the Telecaster and . After success with the Les Paul in the 1950s, Gibson's popularity began to wane in the 1960s. Fender's colors, shapes and multiple pickups were endorsed by notable guitarists. Gibson's guitars, most of which were hollow or semi-hollow designs, seemed old-fashioned. Coupled with higher prices, this contributed to a decline in sales.

Gibson had made forays into radical body shapes - the Flying V and Explorer in the 1950s - which met limited initial success. The president of Gibson, Ted McCarty, hired car designer Ray Dietrich to design a guitar that would have popular appeal. Under Dietrich, the Firebird took on the lines of mid-50s car tailfins. Dietrich took the Explorer design and rounded the edges. The most unusual aspect is that the guitar is "backward" in that the right-hand (treble) horn of the body is longer than the other. Thus, the original Firebirds were unofficially referred to as "reverse". The Firebird looks like an Explorer with softer "points," or maybe a reverse Fender Jaguar or Jazzmaster.

The Firebird is the first Gibson solid-body to use neck-through construction, wherein the neck extended to the tail end of the body. The neck itself is made up of five plies of mahogany interspersed with four narrow strips of walnut for added strength. Other features were reverse (with the tuners on the treble side) and "banjo"-style planetary geared tuning keys. The special original Gibson Firebird humbucking pickup(s) - single, dual or triple - were smaller footprint versions of standard Gibson humbucking pickups, but were unique in that inside each of their smaller bobbins contained an AlNiCo bar magnet (standard humbucking pickups AND mini-humbucking pickups have one bar magnet that activates the 6 iron slug poles of one bobbin, and 6 iron screw poles of the other bobbin). Original Firebird pickups were also built without any specific bobbin fasteners - their bobbins (and possible "reflector" plate under the bobbins) were held onto the frame during both the wax potting process (to reduce/eliminate feedback and unwanted noise) and the solid metal cover that was soldered to the frame base. There are no screw poles on Firebird pickups. Some Firebirds from 1965 featured Gibson's single-coil P-90 pickup.