This time we are going to look at an old guitar (48 years old) loaned to me by a friend who is a diligent collector of old stuff. Neither of us buy into the whole load of vintage bullshit, we either like or don’t like older gear. In this article, I will explore a guitar from the dark days of Gibson when it was under Norlin ownership but when the company actually was trying to do some different pieces. The guitar in question is a Gibson Marauder from 1975, a slab body guitar with two pickups, limited finish, Norlin build quality (Yuck) that nearly fifty years later still stands as a really interesting guitar that went nowhere.

The Marauder Concept and Story

Gibson wanted to get in on the single coil, bolt on neck market place dominated by Fender. Fender was at the time owned by CBS and was producing a slew of really horrible instruments with a good one being a massive rarity. Gibson hired renowned guitar maker and pickup designer Bill Lawrence to help with this project.

The Marauder is a Les Paul shaped guitar, narrower in width than Bill Lawrence’s earlier L6-S (another rare and fabulous instrument despite Norlin). It has a bolt on neck and two humbuckers. The neck humbucker looks like one, except the coils are enclosed in a transparent plastic cover. The bridge noiseless single coil is angled like a Stratocaster bridge pickup but is actually a humbucker comprising two narrower than standard bobbins side by side. It definitely sounds more Strat like than Gibson like. There is a three way switch on the lower front bout and a single shared volume and shared tone control. Unlike most other Gibsons of the day and still, rolling off the tone, did not result in a volume drop and an sudden bullet to the head of the treble.

The neck is moderate C carve with a visible scarf joint to mount the headstock. The guitar has a Flying V like headstock with Kluson closed back tuners. The instrument I have for the article has the original Gibson Kluson-like tuners which is rare as most tuners of the day got swapped for the finer control and smoother action of Grovers. The stop tail is the generic string through Gibson stop tail and the bridge is called the Harmonica and was built by Schaller. It’s kind of wide but does provide for individually intonatable strings, but only two string height bolts at either end of the bridge. The body is a three piece unit, and the one I have in hand appears to be Alder, but Norlin was not exactly particular so you could find Marauders with Alder, Mahogany or even Maple bodies. For Norlin it was all about the cheapest construction to sell at the highest price. The necks were maple, and the fretboards were either maple or rosewood and were not bound. You could special order a bound rosewood finger board at extra cost. A few Marauders had ebony fingerboards. Marauders were advertised shown in the hands of both Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley of KISS, but neither is known to have played them live to a great extent. In !976 a third knob was introduced to allow blending between the two pickups, a function not available in the 1974 introduction or the 1975 models.

The Marauder was cancelled in 1979 but models kept coming out of the factory until 1982. These later models are assumed to be parts-marauders, cobbled together from leftovers and seconds.

There were 7,111 Marauders built according to Gibson records. 4,758 were in the natural satin finish, a nice look when new but susceptible to dirt attraction. 1,368 in wine red, 460 in ebony and 240 in Tobacco Sunburst. Bear in mind that these were Norlin sunbursts where the bursts looked more like stripes and the burst blend was a rare thing indeed. There were 202 Marauders shipped without any colour indication on the shipping docs, consistent with the shoddy Norlin work model. There were 85 Marauder Customs, basically just an uncharge for Tobacco Sunburst towards the end of life. There is a similar guitar with three Bill Lawrence single coils called the S-1 but only 3089 were sold. Despite these being good guitars, the market turned away from Gibsons that were more like Fenders, a sad narrow-minded attitude that pervades today about any Gibson that is not a Les Paul or SG.

Playing the Marauder

Because the body is so lightweight (7 pounds 5.5 ounces) the guitar is very easy to hold and the neck is comfortable. I put fresh Slinky 9-42 strings on the one that I have borrowed because I removed the strings on it for the significant effort I put into cleaning, waxing, buffing and set up work I did because I wanted it to be as close to 1975 as possible. I admit to a bias for the Marauder. When I was 13, in mid 1974, I nearly bought a new Marauder, but waited until the next summer where I worked to afford a used Les Paul, the 1972 once Deluxe that I still own today.

The sound of the neck pickup is really nice and warm without getting thick. It’s actually a really nice tone for jazz lines. The bridge pickup on its own is much quieter in volume than the neck and is really Stratty and there is no out of phase option to put some girth back. In the middle position, the neck having higher output is dominant, but the overall tone is quite pleasing. The Marauder does not sound like your typical two humbucker guitar, a testament to the talent of Bill Lawrence in building a guitar that looked Gibson-ish but has its own tonal palette.

The natural satin finish has not worn well. On the flat portions of the grain it’s fine but the end grain has opened up and is sticky. Where the lacquer is worn off the back of the neck it’s not bad but where the lacquer persists, the neck gets sticky. My usual guitar wax process has been not optimal so I will be trying an alternate today. Getting the dirt off it was a labour intensive job, but it paid off and the body looks great. The headstock has yellowed significantly and an earlier owner for some unknown reason tried to remove the Gibson logo with what I suspect was a set of car keys. Most of the metalwork shows some corrosion and both the bridge and the stop tail have severe pitting. This is explained by poor storage prior to acquisition by the current owner. The strap lugs are Norlin factory, small and rough. If it were my guitar, they’d get replaced with lugs of quality because I play my guitars and always use a strap that stays on the guitar.

The Sound

After I spent a good half day on resurrection, I plugged the guitar into my David Kowalski Dark Gene Red which goes into a PRS Stealth 2x12. As regular readers will know, I love that little amplifier because it is all tube and being only 0.5 watts gets plenty loud without devastation. I found the pickups were really nice in the clean channel and pretty decent on the dirt channel but the bridge pickup was lacking something. I then used it with my Strymon board that ends in a Strymon Iridium that feeds a pair of JBL FRFR speakers. The guitar was brilliant using the Fender Deluxe and 1x12 amp sim, less so with the AC30 and 2x12 amp sim, but that’s a tough one and I struggle with it with any guitar. Kicking in some overdrive with a Strymon Sunset produced a really nice overdriven tone, and running the bridge pickup up to ten from eight where I tend to top out on humbuckers gave a really nice burn but were I could still hear the unique bright trebles. I cannot say that it’s like 1975. I only ever played that Marauder in the day through a Gibson LAB series amp and to be honest, did not know what I was really listening for. I like that sound of the 1975 instrument in 2023 in general.

Samples

The three sample tracks below were recorded with the 1975 Gibson Marauder, through my standard studio pedal board. All pedals are out of the loop except the final sample called Marauder Bridge Duke of Tone which engages an MXR Duke of Tone. The amplifier used is my Fender Blonde Deluxe Reverb Tone Master direct into the Clarett 8+ Pre. Each track was recorded, then duplicated and panned left and right respectively. All tracks went through the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor as I typically use for electric guitars.

The first sample has three parts to provide bridge only, both pickups and neck only. Marauder Bridge alone is quite bright and does not have much bass and the overall output is pretty low, so the guitar volume was set to 10 and the guitar tone at 10. Marauder Both brings the bridge and neck with the guitar volume rolled off to just below 8 because the neck pickup provides more output. Tone stays at 10. Marauder Neck has the volume at 5 and tone at 10.

This next sample is the Marauder neck pickup alone with both the volume and tone at 5. It is beautifully warm and does a nice job with a more jazzy passage.

The final sample runs the bridge pickup at 10 and the tone at 10 through the MXR Duke of Tone overdrive. It has a real early to mid sixties overdriven tone, that is I think, unique among Gibson instruments.

The reverb is about 5 on the Tone Master Deluxe Blonde Reverb. I did not use any compressor, delay, chorus, or reverb pedals. It sounded ok with the Origin Effects Halcyon Green and had a nice bit of warm bite with the Warm Audio Centavo, but for that early sixties feeling, the Duke of Tone was my personal preferred choice. I’m not big into either distortion or fuzz so did not bother with either.

Summary

Despite coming from a time when most North American built guitars were in the pit in terms of quality, the Marauder and its brethren the S-1 and the L6-S were attempts by Gibson to take on new markets and new players at very attractive price points. When I looked at the Marauder in 1974 it was selling for about $350 CAD. Today you can find them on Reverb selling for about $1200 which is much lower than the typically delusional asking price. The Marauder was not a success, but it was very different for Gibson and delivered tones that Gibson had never done before. And that, is why I like them.

Thanks as always for reading. Feel free to post a comment or send in a question. Until next time, peace.