Gibson and B-Bender innovator Joe Glaser join forces to create an all new beast, the
Gibson Music City Jr with B-Bender Electric Guitar! This incredible guitar is designed to be a country and rock player’s dream. The Music City Jr. with B-Bender guitar gives a new look, voice, and feel to the world of faux pedal-steel bending, while loaded for fat, driving Gibson P-90 tone - along with coil-tap switching to access brighter single-coil tones.
The Music City Jr. with B-Bender is constructed a traditional Gibson 24 3/4 inch scale length, a glued-in neck, a 12 inch fingerboard radius, and a 1 11/16 inch neck width at the nut. Gibson also gave this guitar crucial elements from traditional B-Bender guitars such as a light ash body, a maple neck and fingerboard, and through-body stringing courtesy of a converted Gibson Nighthawk bridge. The result blends elements of classic twang tone with Gibson’s legendary thick, rich voice. To top it off, the Music City Jr B-Bender is superb to play and adaptable to a wide range of musical styles!
Gibson Music City Jr B-Bender Electric Guitar Features
Solid grade-A Ash body with high-gloss nitrocellulose finish
Solid Maple neck with slim '60s profile
Maple fingerboard with acrylic dot inlays
Pair of split-coil P-90 pickups in the neck and bridge positions
Built-in lightweight B-Bender system with adjustable bridge, can be converted to a G-Bender
Grover kidney tuners with 14:01 tuning ration
Body
Legendary for its gutsy lows, punchy midrange, and silky highs, in addition to its comfortably light weight, ash has been acclaimed as a tone wood for more than six decades. The Gibson Music City Jr. with B-Bender begins with a body of solid Grade-A ash, which is crafted in the shape of the single-cutaway Les Paul Jr., and minimally routed to accept the lightweight bender mechanism and through-body bridge. A distinctive tortoiseshell patterned pick guard beautifully tops off the visuals.
Neck
A solid maple neck is glued in traditional Gibson style, carved to a fast, slim ’60s profile that measures .800 inch deep at the 1st fret and .875 inch at the 12th, and topped with a Grade-A fingerboard with 22 medium-jumbo frets and black dot position markers.
B-Bender/G-Bender
What sets this guitar apart is the lightweight B-Bender mechanism hidden within the back of the guitar’s body: put downward pressure on the guitar so the strap pulls the neck-end strap button upward, and an internal lever-and-gear system bends your B string anywhere from a half tone to a full tone sharp, as determined by the player. With a few simple changes it can be a G-Bender, and a set of high-quality Grover tuners make tune-ups a breeze.
Pickups
Two of Gibson’s fat, growling P-90s yield a sound beloved by guitarists since these iconic pickups first hit the scene in the pre-rock’n’roll days, but this guitar holds further surprises: lift the push-pull switch on either pickup’s volume knob to access a coil tap that bleeds off a portion of the P-90’s coil windings, accessing a brighter, snappier tone more reminiscent of thinner single-coil styles. Between this switching, the independent volume and master tone controls, and Gibson’s classic three-way pickup switch, the Music City Jr. with B-Bender is packed with a tonal versatility that belies its outward simplicity, primed for blues, rock, jazz, or country.
B-Bender History
The ‘B-Bender’ has been an essential part of the Nashville sound ever since legendary guitarist Clarence White and drummer friend Gene Parsons installed their wild new invention, a B-string bender operated by pulling down on the strap button, in White’s old guitar back in 1965. The B-Bender gave guitarists the ability to imitate pedal-steel bends mid-flow on a standard guitar, and broadened the country vocabulary enormously. In the early 80’s Joe Glaser developed a new style B-Bender that was only installed at his personal ‘shop of the stars’ in Nashville.