Johnny Smith

In 1950, he began a legendary relationship with John D’Angelico, who at the time produced the New Yorker and Excel. Smith’s first D’Angelico was an Excel-sized instrument with the more-ornate features of the New Yorker, and a floating DeArmond pickup. Unfortunately, it was lost in a house fire the following year, after which he used a ’30s D’Angelico lent to him by John Collins. The guitar had a notably wider fingerboard, which Smith initially found unwieldy but then came to appreciate.

In 1955, Smith took delivery of his third D’Angelico, commissioned to unique specs including a 20-fret fingerboard on a shorter 25″ scale neck that continued under the length of the fingerboard into the cross bracing. The shorter scale length facilitated his trademark stretch chords without loss of tone, while the extended neck and cross-bracing resulted in a better balance of tone and volume. Many of New York’s jazz guitarists were so enamored of this guitar that they placed orders for identical instruments.

Arguably, the finest JS signature model with the greatest notoriety is the early sixties Gibson version; Gibson contacted three important jazz guitarists in 1960 – Johnny Smith, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel.

Unlike the limited role that Barney Kessel had in developing the BK model, Johnny Smith was extremely involved in the development of the Johnny Smith model. Smith insisted that the guitar be one that he would play full-time before he would associate his name with it.

Guitars, Amps, Strings – and Attitude For someone so identified with archtop guitars, Smith had a checkered, often unfortunate, history with his instruments. When he got the letter in Portland to report to NBC, his Gibson L-5 had been stolen from a check room. So he arrived in New York with no guitar. He met Harry Volpe, a guitarist on staff at Radio City Music Hall who also owned a music store.

By 1989, Smith had become frustrated with certain methods at Gibson, particularly its refusal to produce consistent necks, and he awarded his endorsement to Heritage, which manufactured the Johnny Smith Rose per his original Gibson design.

The Johnny Smith model was based largely on Smith’s D’Angelico New Yorker...

Johnny Smith worked in conjunction with Jess Oliver of Ampeg to design the second incarnation of Smith’s signature amp in Ampeg’s professional “Guitaramp” series. The unique Fountain of Sound was named as such due its upward pointing 15”, high efficiency, JBL or Altec Lansing speaker. The idea behind the design was to use a higher powered amplifier — 35 watts RMS was a lot of power by mid to late 1950s standards — with the speaker pointed at the ceiling so that no one in the band or audience would have the misfortune of being seated directly in line with the amp’s speaker cone. Oliver also worked closely with Smith to satisfy his desire for a guitar amp with a flat frequency response. The Fountain of Sound had a closed back and a Baxandall tone stack more common to hi-fi sets of the day than to guitar amplifiers.