1. Lloyd Allayre Loar was an American musician, instrument designer and sound engineer.
20 Facts About Lloyd Loar
1. 2.
Lloyd Loar is best known for his design work with the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg.
3.
The instruments were already unique before Lloyd Loar came to work for Gibson.
4.
Lloyd Loar "tuned" the tops of the instrument and the sound chamber so that the instrument's sound chamber was resonant to a particular note.
5.
Gibsons' and Lloyd Loar's mandolins were instrumental in displacing the round-backed instrument from the American market and influenced mandolins worldwide.
6.
Lloyd Loar was a well-regarded musician on mandolin, viola, and musical saw.
7.
Lloyd Loar traveled the United States and Europe in several musical groups.
8.
Lloyd Loar performed in many other groups that promoted the Gibson company, whose products Lloyd Loar endorses in early Gibson catalogs.
9.
Lloyd Loar taught at Northwestern University from 1930 to 1943, teaching vocal composition, advanced music theory and "The Physics of Music".
10.
Lloyd Loar's 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.
11.
Lloyd Loar pioneered the use of the Virzi Tone Producer, a spruce disc suspended from the instrument top that acts as a supplemental soundboard.
12.
Lloyd 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.
13.
Lloyd Loar claimed that Loar's electrics had electrostatic pickups, but because they exhibited very high impedance they were extremely susceptible to humidity.
14.
Duchossoir's book, Gibson Electrics, The Classic Years, features a photo of a Gibson L5, serial number 88258 of 1929, one of the original Lloyd Loar-designed L5s, with fitted electrostatic pickup and factory-fitted jack socket in the tailpiece.
15.
Duchossoir claims that Lloyd Loar spent time at Gibson working on a 'quasi-solid body' electric double bass, and that according to this instrument and several patents filed by Lloyd Loar between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s, he worked on pickups that were electromagnetic in nature.
16.
Lloyd Loar signed a rare subset of F5 mandolins called Ferns, of which approximately twenty are known to exist.
17.
The Lloyd Loar A5 was found by Tut Taylor and sold to a Southern California bluegrass musician in 1974.
18.
Lloyd Loar's request resulted in the production of the Loar A5 in 1923.
19.
In 2023 the value of a Lloyd Loar-signed mandolin was estimated at $100,000 to $175,000 depending on condition.
20.
The Gibson L-5 guitar was first produced in 1922 by the Gibson Guitar Corporation, then of Kalamazoo, Michigan, under the direction of master luthier Lloyd Loar, and has been in production ever since.