The Gibson Nighthawk was a short-lived electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

 model line, manufactured by Gibson

Gibson Guitar Corporation

The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

. The Nighthawk represented a radical change from traditional Gibson designs featuring many elements more commonly associated with Fender guitars. The Nighthawk superficially resembled the Les Paul

Gibson Les Paul

The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...

, Gibson's "trademark" guitar. It had a maple

Maple

Acer is a genus of trees or shrubs commonly known as maple.Maples are variously classified in a family of their own, the Aceraceae, or together with the Hippocastanaceae included in the family Sapindaceae. Modern classifications, including the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system, favour inclusion in...

 top, and mahogany

Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....

 body.

Despite the success of other Gibson guitars, the Nighthawk was never a great commercial success; production of all models was discontinued in 1998. In July 2009 Gibson reintroduced the Nighthawk 2009.

Regular models

• The Nighthawk Custom had a flame maple top with many decorations. The headstock
  Headstock
  Headstock or peghead is a part of guitar or similar stringed instrument. The main function of a headstock is holding the instrument's strings. Strings go from the bridge past the nut and are usually fixed on machine heads on headstock...
  
  , body, and neck were bound, and came with crown inlays. The color options were antique natural, fireburst, and translucent amber.http://www.gibson.com/products/gibson/Hawk/Nighthawk/Custom3P-FRose.html

• The Nighthawk Standard was only bound in the body and the neck. The fingerboard inlays had a split-parallelogram pattern. The color options were fireburst, translucent amber, and vintage sunbursthttp://www.gibson.com/products/gibson/Hawk/Nighthawk/Standard2P.html

• The Nighthawk Special was a low cost version of the guitar, cutting out some of the purely cosmetic features of the other models in order to reduce cost. The Special had the same components as the Standard and Custom, but only the body was bound, and it had dot inlays and no holly crest headstock adornment. The color choices were ebony, heritage cherry, and vintage sunburst.http://www.gibson.com/products/gibson/Hawk/Nighthawk/Special3P.html The price of a Nighthawk Special was about two hundred dollars less than that of a Nighthawk Standard.

Special editions

• The Landmark Series was a more sophisticated model of the Nighthawk. It used 2 M-Series Mini-humbucker
  Humbucker
  A humbucker is a type of electric guitar pickup, first patented by Seth Lover and the Gibson company, that uses two coils, both generating string signal. Humbuckers have higher output than a single coil pickup since both coils are connected in series...
  
   instead of the normal M-series mini-humbucker + M-Series Slanted humbucker.

• The Hawk was a low-cost alternative to the Nighthawk. It had normal alnico
  Alnico
  Alnico is an acronym referring to iron alloys which in addition to iron are composed primarily of aluminium , nickel and cobalt , hence al-ni-co, with the addition of copper, and sometimes titanium. Alnico alloys are ferromagnetic, with a high coercivity and are used to make permanent magnets...
  
   humbuckers instead of the M-series that the Nighthawk used, and it was plainer then the Special.http://www.gibson.com/products/gibson/AllAmerican/TheHawk.html

• The Nighthawk 2009 was a limited-edition reissue of the Nighthawk released in 2009. It features a translucent amber finish, a P90 pickup in the neck position and an alnico humbucking pickup in the bridge position, and a fixed bridge. http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Designer/Gibson-USA/Nighthawk.aspx

Pickups and controls

There were 2 alternatives to the Nighthawk Custom, Standard, and Special. The normal 2 pickup version, or the 3 pickup version that added an NSX single coil

Single coil

A single coil pickup is a type of magnetic transducer, or pickup, for the electric guitar and the electric bass. It electromagnetically converts the vibration of the strings to an electric signal...

 to the middle. The 2 pickup version only had 5 tonal varieties in all, but the 3 pickup had 10 tonal varieties due to the push/pull tone knob. While the tone knob is pushed down, humbuckers work as usual humbuckers, but if it's pulled up, they divide into single coil

Single coil

A single coil pickup is a type of magnetic transducer, or pickup, for the electric guitar and the electric bass. It electromagnetically converts the vibration of the strings to an electric signal...

 variations to sound more like Fender guitars.

Similarities to Fender guitars

With its set neck and maple-on-mahogany body, the Gibson Nighthawk was still very much structurally and aesthetically a Gibson. But certain key aspects of the Nighthawk design took it into Fender territory. The slanted bridge humbucker had less gain than the regular Gibson humbucker and had a bright, sharp tone, closer to that associated with Telecasters and Stratocasters. The mini-humbucker neck pickup had a mellower and warmer tone than the bright bridge pickup, closer to the sound of the neck pickup in a Stratocaster than the regular Gibson humbucker. The middle pickup, which was only on available on some Nighthawk models, is a single-coil design almost identical to the middle pickup of the Stratocaster and so sounds quite similar. The scale length of the guitar (the length of the string between the nut and the bridge) was the standard length used by Fender, 25½", rather than the normal Gibson length of 24¾". This important difference, increasing the tension for a given gauge of strings, made the guitar feel more like a Fender from a playing perspective and added to the tonal similarities. The smaller-than-normal Gibson body was closer in mass to a Fender guitar than a typical Gibson Les Paul and the string-through-body bridge is similar to the system used on Telecasters.

Some models of the Custom used a Floyd Rose

Floyd Rose

The Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo, or simply Floyd Rose, is a type of locking vibrato arm for a guitar. The first of its kind, Floyd D. Rose invented the locking vibrato in 1977, and it is now manufactured by a company of the same name...

 locking vibrato unit instead of a traditional Gibson Vibrola or Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. The Floyd Rose has some similarity to the tremolo system

Tremolo arm

A whammy bar, tremolo arm/bar, or vibrato arm/bar is a component of a guitar, used to add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the strings, typically at the bridge or tailpiece...

used by Fender Stratocasters, although Stratocasters do not normally use locking vibrato systems.

External links

• Gibson Nighthawk Landmark Series