Gibson [Guitar of the Week #10] SG Standard w/3 Single Coil Pickups

This SG is part of Gibsons guitar of the week series. With the guitar of the week series Gibson would make a new limited run of a guitar every week. The SG was first created in the early 60s to replace the Les Paul. For a few years this was marketed as the new Les Paul. They wanted this to replace the Les Paul with this model because it was cheaper to make with its flat top. Later on they brought back the Les Paul and called this the SG. This guitar is a pretty strange SG with 3 rain single coils. You can get some twangy sounds with this guitar but the pickups are not really in the right position to perfectly emulate strat sounds. It has a master volume and a master tone with a 6 way chicken head pickup selector. It has a 50s style neck with an rosewood fretboard and 22 frets. Other than the electronics it is your basic SG

UTILIZATION

The upper fret access on this guitar is as good as any SG. The double cutaways proide good upper fret access. The thin body is light and easy to hold. One problem SG's is that the neck is mounted far out on the body and with the body being thinner than a Les Paul the guitar is slightly neck heavy. When you are standing up and playing the neck may want to drop down and you may find yourself holding the neck up. And what a big neck it is. On this model they used the 50s neck profile. The 50s neck profile is called the baseball bat neck in the industry. It provides the best tone but it can be hard to play if you have small hands. With the unlabeled chickenhead knob you can sometimes forget where you are.

SOUNDS

The switching on this guitar is pretty crazy with the 6 way chickenhead knob. Position 1 gives you just the bridge pickup. It is super twangy as you would expect but has more bass than a strat bridge pickup would have due to it being farther away from the bridge itself. Position 2 gives you the bridge and neck like what you would get with a telecaster. This sounds pretty much like a telecaster with the big low end with the crisp top on it. position 3 gives you the bridge and middle. This is one of the most used strat tones. The middle pickup is further back than it would be on a strat so it sounds slightly different. The middle pickup is less bassy being closer to the bridge. The 4th position gives you just the middle pickup by itself. Older 3 pickup SG's and this would activate all 3 pickups. The 5th position is the neck and middle pickup and the last position is just the neck pickup. The neck pickup is the major difference between this and a strat. The neck pickup is placed way farther back than it would be on a strat due to the SG neck joint. The neck pickup is almost where the middle pickup would be on a strat. This means the neck pickup has way less bass than it would have on a strat because on a strat guitar the neck pickup is right next to the fretboard this one is a good inch and a half away.

OVERALL OPINION

I dont know many people who this guitar would appeal too. If someone wants a strat they would just get a strat and if someone wanted an SG they would get one that sounds like an SG. Even if someone wanted an SG that sounds like a strat this cant really do that because the pickups are not in the right place or positioned properly. If you want to get close to a strat sound with an SG this guitar is probably one of the few out there that can do that.