Lloyd Loar

Lloyd Allayre Loar (January 9, 1886 – September 14, 1943) was a Gibson sound engineer and master luthier in the early part of the 20th century. He is most famous for his F5 model mandolin, L5 guitar, H5 mandola, K5 mandocello, and A5 mandolin.

Loar was also a well-regarded musician on mandolin, viola, and musical saw. He traveled the United States and Europe in several musical groups. In one group, he performed with his future wife, Fisher Shipp. A surviving playbill shows that Loar performed in a chatauqua that also included a speech by William Jennings Bryan. Loar performed in many other groups that promoted the Gibson company, whose products Loar endorses in early Gibson catalogs.

Loar worked for Gibson from 1919 to 1924. His contributions include building the instrument top with F-shaped holes, like a violin; introducing a longer neck, thus moving the bridge closer to the center of the body; and floating the fingerboard over the top, a change from prior Gibson instruments that had fingerboards fused to the top. He also pioneered the use of the Virzi Tone Producer, a spruce disc suspended from the instrument top that acts as a supplemental soundboard.

According to A. R. Duchossoir, Loar designed experimental electric instruments while at Gibson. Loar's views on the importance of the development of electric instruments were supported by Lewis A Williams, one of the founders and major stockholders of Gibson as well as its secretary and general manager.

None of Loar's original electric instruments appear to have been preserved—but Walter A Fuller, who joined Gibson in 1933 and later became Gibson's chief electronic engineer, found some of Loar's original devices when he first set up his R&D lab in the mid-1930s. He claimed that Loar's electrics had electrostatic pickups, but because they exhibited very high impedance they were extremely susceptible to humidity. According to Fuller, the pickups were round, about the size of a silver dollar and had a piece of cork on the back, by which they were glued to the underside of the top of the instrument.

Duchossior's book, Gibson Electrics, The Classic Years, features a photo of a Gibson L5, serial number 88258 of 1929 (after Loar left Gibson), one of the original Loar-designed L5s, with fitted electrostatic pickup and factory-fitted jack socket in the tailpiece.

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