Gibson Dickey Betts SG

This guitar is a replica of the 61 SG that Dickey Betts gave to Duane Allman back when they played together. It is a great tribute to early 60s road warrior SG's. The guitar features a light relicing job to emulate the dings and scratches that the real guitar has. This is basically a road worn early 60s SG. The body is made from 1 piece of mahogany with a mahogany set neck. The neck has a broken in feel to it which is very nice. The guitar has vintage appointments all over. Up top you get the simple headstock with the old style inlays. The tuners are vintage style with holes next to them to simulate where the original had a different set of tuners in it. The bridge is a tune-o-matic with plastic saddles that kind of mellow out the tone and let your strings last longer. The neck has a 22 fret rosewood fretboard with what Gibson calls Banjo fretwire. It feels pretty normal to me. The pickups are a set of custom wound Gibson pickups that have a very PAF type of sound. THe controls are typical SG with a volume and tone for each pickup with a 3 way toggle.

UTILIZATION

This guitar has a lovely broken in feel to it. It has a very realistic relicing job to it unlike some guitars that look like they have been run over at the factory. THe only usual part of the relicing is the screw holes behind the bridge. This looks like they were trying to replicate the original guitar having a Maestro or Vibrola at some time that was removed. This is pretty cool I guess. The neck profile is a custom Dicky Betts profile which is not very different from a normal one. Its not like his guitar he got in the 60s would have a custom neck profile for him. Overall it has the thin early 60s profile which most people like. It feels like a real SG. The fretwork is perfect like on all high end Gibsons. This is because they use the Plek machine to level the frets. This machine levels the frets better than any human can do.

SOUNDS

This guitar has a very old school tone. The catalog says the pickups are custom for this model but if you said they were aged 57 Classics I would have believed you. They have a very paf tone to them. The neck position is like butter. You can get a super smooth lead tone or Slide tone if you really wanna be like Betts. The bridge has that loose crunchy classic rock tone that you associate with PAF's. The plastic saddles on the bridge mellow out the tone very well. This was a common mod back then. This guitar was built for southern rock tones.

OVERALL OPINION

This guitar is really cool and is very close to what a 50 year old SG would be like now. I wish Gibson would put out an affordable line of reliced guitars like Fender does. A light relic on a guitar can really help playability. A broken in neck is usually a lot faster than a brand new glossy neck. Things like these really help playability and some people believe the wear in the finish helps the tone. This guitar is really for collectors and hardcore Dicky Betts fans but this guitar shows what Gibson can do when they want to do something.