Madame Montreal

A lot of folks ask me about the big blonde guitar I play mainly with Bellevue Cadillac. So I thought I would give the back story, and facts as I know them. My road crew Named her Madame Montreal, because she was found in Montreal Canada.

Always on the lookout for cool vintage gear, they found it somewhere in the old city, told me how much it was and I bought it sight unseen, er..unplayed. It was sent to Boston and then brought to a show on Nantucket island in Mass. When I opened the case, there was a 1950, Gibson L7C, blonde bombshell!

Someone had taken the original acoustic guitar and added 2 Gibson humbucking pick ups from the 60s, and added 4 in a row volume and tone controls in chrome. To add to the misery of the rehab, the controls were too tight, and there was a hole for the input jack right on the front. Ugly! But, everything else about her was just right.

I had the input jack put where it belongs, and replaced those chrome knobs to the 1958 gold ones, added a vintage bigsby tailpiece whammy bar, and have been gigging with Madame Montreal ever since. The aftermarket schaller tuners are stable, and the neck seldom drifts. The amazing thing is, for a spruce top, she doesn’t feed back on stage…..rare! The neck is a nice fat comfortable C shape, and strong……the Madame has taken serious face plants on some pretty big stages, and she stays in tune for days at a time without retuning, doesn’t need to be handled with kid gloves. This is the workhorse of the Gibson line in my opinion, at least as far as arch tops go, not fancy like the L5, just plain works.