THE MODERN SG: SOLID CHOICES
With nearly 30 SGs currently offered by Gibson, we pull out six top picks designed to suit your budget with plenty of features, hardware and original vintage looks on offer
This is the entry-level Gibson USA SG and it certainly gives more than a flavour of the classic design. It’s available in either Cherry or Natural Walnut satin nitro, over an all-mahogany body and neck with dot-inlaid rosewood fingerboard. The full-face ‘batwing’ pickguard emulates the larger design that appeared in 1966 from which the open-coil 490R and 490T Alnico II humbuckers are suspended. Hardware is nickelplated and includes Vintage Deluxe tuners with keystone buttons, a Nashville tune-o-matic bridge and aluminium stopbar tailpiece. If you’ve never plugged in an SG Jr, you’re missing out. Next up the ladder in terms of price and part of Gibson’s Original collection, there are no frills, but the gloss-nitro finish over the all-mahogany build (in Cherry only), with the brutally simple wrapover bridge and dog-ear P-90 single coil gets to the essence of the lightweight SG and the Junior style. Like the other Original Collection guitars, you get hand-wired CTS pots that open up the key to the Junior’s sound. It’s raw rock ’n’ roll and a vicious slide guitar. Currently the second best-selling Gibson SG behind the ‘batwing’ SG Standard, the Original Collection’s ’61 comes with either the original Sideways vibrato, the later Maestro vibrato (both £1,799), or hard-tail with stopbar tailpiece. The ’61 goes for a bound fingerboard with acrylic trapezoid inlays and covered 61R and T Burstbucker humbuckers. “People always ask me why isn’t it called a reissue,” says Gibson’s Mat Koehler, “and that’s simply because it’s been called a ’61 since, like, 1987. It’s a consistent favourite.”
GIBSON KIRK DOUGLAS SIGNATURE SG £2,199
Nestling alongside the Jimi Hendrix 1967 SG Custom and Brian Ray ’62 SG Junior signatures, the Kirk Douglas Signature, in Inverness Green with nickel hardware or Black with gold hardware, kicks off the three in terms of price. The three Burstbuckers here are wired in a very non-Gibson style – each having its own volume control with a pullswitch to engage a coil-split. The middle pickup can be blended in with either neck, bridge or both, plus there’s a master volume on the batwing pickguard.
GIBSON 1963 SG SPECIAL REISSUE £2,899
Moving into the Custom Shop, things get more detailed and historically accurate and this guitar – one of seven SGs in the current collection, including a double-neck – shouts Pete Townshend and early Carlos Santana with its pair of Custom soapbar P-90s. Its slightly weathered Cherry VOS nitro finish adds to the illusion of age and we get a long tenon neck joint, ’63 medium C-shape neck profile and lightweight aluminium ‘lightning bar’ wraparound with its raised intonation ridge. Think vintage guitar without any issues.
GIBSON 1964 SG STANDARD WITH MAESTRO VIBROLA PELHAM BLUE LIGHT AGED £6,199
The Murphy Lab’s newly developed nitrocellulose lacquer is aged to create the look of a lightly or heavily worn original. The combination of this finish and its detailed ageing means these really chase the original vintage style. That doesn’t come cheap, so do not play one unless you’re prepared to fall for its charms. Lightweight mahogany construction, the fuller ’64 medium C-shape neck profile and the more conventional Maestro Vibrola along with the unpotted Custombuckers make for a time-warp drive.