page_title: Gibson Victory
hierarchical_section_title: Gibson Victory
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Gibson Victory MV-X
context_page_description: The Gibson Victory was an electric guitar produced by Gibson Guitars from 1981 until 1983. In the late 1970s, a band named Stillwater came out with a song named -Mindbender "My Daddy was a Gibson. My Mama was a Fender That's why they call me Mindbender" about a guitar that could talk. This song may have started the SuperStrat battle, but in the early 1980s, when musicians watched Eddie Van Halen play his Frankenstrat they questioned and rethought everything about their instruments and the SuperStrat war began. Guitar buyers insisted on engineering advances allowing more speed and playability of skyscraping leads, dive bombing, and rock crushing shred. The master luthiers in Kalamazoo responded to these demanding guitarists by designing the Victory. The Victory, a superstrat, was a departure from Gibson's image as an old-fashioned guitar maker. MV stood for Multi-Voice, and X stood for ten. They were created by the Gibson research and development team in Kalamazoo, MI, with the sturdy body and neck work by Chuck Burge, and the "multi-voice" pickups and electronics by Tim Shaw.
  The Victory MV's were available with an optional / special order Kahler 2200 Tremolo System.
context_section_description: The Gibson Victory was an electric guitar produced by Gibson Guitars from 1981 until 1983 (although some sources say production lasted until 1984).  In the late 1970s, a band named Stillwater came out with a song named -Mindbender "My Daddy was a Gibson. My Mama was a Fender That's why they call me Mindbender" about a guitar that could talk. This song may have started the SuperStrat battle, but in the early 1980s, when musicians watched Eddie Van Halen play his Frankenstrat they questioned and rethought everything about their instruments and the SuperStrat war began. Guitar buyers insisted on engineering advances allowing more speed and playability of skyscraping leads, dive bombing, and rock crushing shred. The master luthiers in Kalamazoo responded to these demanding guitarists by designing the Victory. The Victory, a superstrat, was a departure from Gibson's image as an old-fashioned guitar maker. MV stood for Multi-Voice, and X stood for ten. They were created by the Gibson research and development team in Kalamazoo, MI, with the sturdy body and neck work by Chuck Burge, and the "multi-voice" pickups and electronics by Tim Shaw.
  The Victory MV's were available with an optional / special order Kahler 2200 Tremolo System (required factory routing). The standard Victory MV's had the first seven-point top-adjust bridge designed by Rendal Wall and patent granted in June 1982 that worked for both right and left handed guitars. The three post holes in the underside allowed either side of the bridge unit to be moved forwards or backwards allowing intonation of ultra light or extra heavy string gauges, and twelve interchangeable individually-adjustable saddles, six standard nylon saddles and 6 optional brass saddles for fine adjustment of intonation and to affect tone. Note that the brass saddle inserts are almost impossible to find.
  String gauge affects sound and playability. If you are a professional with strong fingers, using heavier strings produces greater dynamic and timbral range, more sustain, & less buzzing using slide. The high tension also allows lower action. Using lighter strings allows easier bending, easier hammer-ons, pull-offs & very fast solos. Victories were built tough and stiff to easily handle the high tension of using much heavier string gauges (total set tensions of 140 pounds or more) without a truss rod adjustment.
  Tim Shaw engineered the Victory MV's with a series of specially designed Humbucker Pickups Kalamazoo Victory pickups were hand made one at a time on the “center focused” KZ/LP115 PAF Pickup Winder, with high sensitivity and unique tonal signature with fewer turns of wire, less scatter and a narrow magnetic aperture, Nashville Victory pickups were produced on the Meteor ME-301 PAF Pickup Winder to the same Tim Shaw specifications. Each pickup across the range is different, and specifically designed for the role it was assigned. The MVX and MV2 do not have the same pickups, each guitar has its own sound.
  The location of the Victory MV's pickups were carefully calculated to provide full frequency response and minimize dead spots by avoidance of string nodal points. The majority of harmonics coincide with where the twenty fourth fret would be located. If you want to play your Victory above the 22nd fret, use a ring slide. Humbucker pickups are inherently low noise because the interference is significantly reduced via phase cancellation, however the Victory MV's have additional shielding connected to ground with the use of special electrically conductive black paint in the routed out area under the pickguard. Truly silent when it should be. The coil tap switch in the up position is humbucker; in the down position is single coil, indistinguishable from traditional unshielded single coils minus the noise. Victory MVs are totally immune from "Strat-Itis" (simultaneous multiple discordant frequency syndrome) In some single-coil pickups, strat-Itis is an annoying out-of-tune harmonic, oscillating/warbling /shriek/dissonant sound.
  Gibson had established business agreements for over 100 years with the
caption: Gibson Victory MVX
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