The Hummingbird was essentially Gibson's second attempt to make a non-Gibson like sounding guitar (the first was the Epi Frontier). Ted McCarty who was a big Martin fan plopped a Martin dread down on Larry Aller's desk and told him to make a copy of it with a Gibson logo.
The result was probably the first Gibson that even a bluegrass player might consider buying. The difference between an HB and a Gibson slope shouldered jumbo is like night and day.
I think the Epi versions of the square shoulder guitars are actually closer in sound to the original Gibson versions than are their versions of say a J-45.
And I would jump all over one of those little Epi Blues Masters if I could find one. These suckers were great little guitars and could actually give a LG-2 a good run for its money.
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"You start off playing guitars to get girls & end up talking with middle-aged men about your fingernails" - Ed Gerhard
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