Gibson partnership gives boost to ‘Guitar Lab’
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A unique class at Purdue Polytechnic Institute in West Lafayette is getting support from one of the most well-known guitar makers in the world.
The institute’s School of Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) is partnering with Nashville, Tennessee-based Gibson to support students in the school’s Guitar Lab.
Gibson said in a news release the goal of the program is to foster a direct pipeline of future luthiers and engineers and open up avenues for collaborative research and innovation in guitar design and manufacturing.
Mark French, professor of engineering technology at Purdue Polytechnic, told Inside INdiana Business the partnership is mutually beneficial.
“The most important part for me is they’re helping fund the Guitar Lab. Purdue has been very generous about giving me space and building the lab in this nice new building, but it’s up to me to run it, and so I need ongoing funding to keep the place open,” French said. “They’ll get support from Purdue. I want to build an ongoing relationship with them that includes my students, so that they’ll have a ready supply well-trained engineers.”
The partnership centers around the class known as “Stringed Instrument Design and Manufacture,” led by French, that Gibson said is currently the only one of its kind in higher education.
The class has nearly 60 students that are split into groups that design and build their own guitars for every person in the group. But French said the overall theme of the class is about product development, which will make the students better engineers regardless of the field they pursue.
“They’ll benefit whether they go into the guitar industry or not, because the class is product design and manufacturing class. The product happens to be guitars, but it could be anything,” he said. “It’s not hard at all to get students interested in guitars. But while I got them, they’re gonna learn some other things.”
But for those who do want to get into the guitar industry, French said the students will graduate with specific skills that are translatable and allows them to hit the ground running when they get a job with a guitar company.
The monetary support through the guitar maker’s philanthropic arm, Gibson Gives, will not only ensure the Guitar Lab is operational throughout the year but also facilitate the hiring of undergraduate teaching assistants.
Gibson will also provide essential lab supplies and materials needed for making stringed instruments, as well as insight from the company’s own trained luthiers and executives throughout the semester.
“Orville Gibson started Gibson in 1894 based on his innovative ideas of how to build mandolins and later guitars that would sound bigger and better,” Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian said in a news release. “At the Gibson Labs we apply Orville’s principle that anything we do has to be in service to sound. Therefore, partnering with Purdue Polytechnic’s MET program, and its Guitar Lab led by Dr. French, is a natural evolution and consistent with our heritage of innovation.”
Gibson Gives will also gift several guitars from the company’s collection to be showcased in the lab.
French said he will provide his expertise to Gibson to help the company solve any challenges it is facing as they arise.
“When I first started this, it was very rare for a guitar company to have an engineer. And for some of them, frankly, it was me or nothing,” he said. “That’s changed. The big companies now have an engineering staff. They’re usually manufacturing-related, some are design, and now what’s happening is their engineers now need more advanced training to do their jobs better. That’s where I can come in.”
The partnership began at the start of the current semester and will continue throughout the school year, with both partners seeking to renew and fortify the partnership in subsequent years. French said he hopes it’s the beginning of a long and productive relationship.
As for the Guitar Lab and the class themselves, French said he wants to see the whole program grow.
“It’s tough to get external funding for a class like this. The joke is that everybody loves the Guitar Lab, but everybody thinks somebody else should pay for it. And it’s, it’s not terribly expensive as university facilities go, but it does take money to run, and it’s always a struggle to secure funding for something like this.”