URBANE RENEWAL

FOR SEVERAL DECADES, Tom Murphy has hand-aged Gibson Custom Shop guitars as an independent contractor, and has long been acknowledged as the leader in that field. Now Gibson has embraced Murphy’s talents by creating a flagship collection in the form of the Murphy Lab, a department designed, trained and headed by the man himself. As the Gibson exec who pulled the “Let’s do it!” lever on the Murphy Lab, brand president Cesar Gueikian sees it as a crucial part of returning the company to what players are really seeking in a Gibson guitar.

“That’s why I thought the Murphy Lab was so important,” Gueikian tells us. “It started with the Custom Shop and redoing those collections, and having a collection that was a true representation of cloned, original instruments by year. As for re-creating how those original vintage instruments from the golden era have gracefully aged, we wanted to take it up to the next level. And who could be better to lead that effort than Tom Murphy himself?”

In this way, Gueikian says, Gibson