Spotlight Nouveau

Sometime around Norlin's 1987 sale of Gibson, the decision was made to produce the Nouveau line of guitars. The Gibson Nouveaus were going to consist of cost-effective necks and bodies made in Japan and assembled and finished in Nashville and branded as American Made. Although the original sales literature introduces these as purely Gibson guitars, somewhere between manufacturing and finishing, they became the known as the Epiphone Spotlight series, resulting in an Japanese-made, USA assembled Epiphone.

The first Nouveau guitars introduced by Gibson were a line of flat top semi-hollow guitars under the "Nouveau by Gibson" brand in 1986. In 1987 electric guitars joined the line. By September 1987 Gibson moved the flat top Nouveaus to the Epiphone line, under the brand "Nouveau by Epiphone" and the electrics were moved to Epiphone by February 1988. By early 1989 the entire Nouveau line was discontinued.