Description
– Late 70’s USA made Gibson Marauder
– Original hardshell case included!
– Some playwear/dings, as well as light some buckle rash on the back
– Solid alder body
– Bolt-on neck
– Laminated Canadian Maple neck
– Rosewood fingerboard
– 22 frets
– 24 3/4 scale length
– Gibson “Super Humbucking” pickup in neck (original)
– Gibson single coil rail-style bridge pickup (original)
– Gibson/Schaller “harmonica” bridge
– 3- way pickup switch
– White single-ply pickguard
– ~7 lbs.
“The Marauder is a Les Paul shaped guitar, narrower in width than Bill Lawrence’s earlier L6-S (another rare and fabulous instrument despite Norlin). It has a bolt on neck and two humbuckers. The neck humbucker looks like one, except the coils are enclosed in a transparent plastic cover. The bridge noiseless single coil is angled like a Stratocaster bridge pickup but is actually a humbucker comprising two narrower than standard bobbins side by side. It definitely sounds more Strat like than Gibson like. There is a three way switch on the lower front bout and a single shared volume and shared tone control. Unlike most other Gibsons of the day and still, rolling off the tone, did not result in a volume drop and an sudden bullet to the head of the treble.”
“The neck is moderate C carve with a visible scarf joint to mount the headstock. The guitar has a Flying V like headstock with Kluson closed back tuners. The instrument I have for the article has the original Gibson Kluson-like tuners which is rare as most tuners of the day got swapped for the finer control and smoother action of Grovers. The stop tail is the generic string through Gibson stop tail and the bridge is called the Harmonica and was built by Schaller. It’s kind of wide but does provide for individually intonatable strings, but only two string height bolts at either end of the bridge. The body is a three piece unit, and the one I have in hand appears to be Alder, but Norlin was not exactly particular so you could find Marauders with Alder, Mahogany or even Maple bodies. For Norlin it was all about the cheapest construction to sell at the highest price. The necks were maple, and the fretboards were either maple or rosewood and were not bound. You could special order a bound rosewood finger board at extra cost. A few Marauders had ebony fingerboards. Marauders were advertised shown in the hands of both Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley of KISS, but neither is known to have played them live to a great extent. In !976 a third knob was introduced to allow blending between the two pickups, a function not available in the 1974 introduction or the 1975 models.”
