Kirk Douglas
HOW THE ROOTS GUITARIST AND FALLON VETERAN HELPED TURN THE “UNDERREPRESENTED” SG INTO A JACK OF ALL TRADES
“CAPTAIN” KIRK DOUGLAS’ affiliation with Gibson goes back roughly two decades, to when the brand furnished him with two Les Pauls to play — and then, apparently, set on fire — in a Heineken commercial. “But Gibson was cool with it,” Douglas recalls, adding that he subsequently refurbished one of the charred instruments and used it on tour with the Roots for several years after.
Douglas’ relationship with Gibson was, um, reignited a few years later, when the Roots became the house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Not long after, Gibson approached him about designing his own signature guitar, and, he recalls, “I thought the SG was a bit underrepresented in that world. So it was a great opportunity to create the SG I would want to buy.”
That guitar became the Kirk Douglas SG, and now Gibson and Douglas have collaborated on a new version of that signature instrument, taking Douglas’ unique tweaks to the next level. And to be sure, this is not your conventional SG. Rather, the new models boasts a trio of BurstBucker pickups, each with its own volume control equipped with a push/pull pot that switches the pickup from humbucker to single coil. There’s also a single master tone knob and, in place of the second tone control, another push/pull volume control that allows for the middle BurstBucker to be blended in with the other (one or two) pickups. Once you find your desired mix, you can leave everything as is and control the guitar’s overall output via the pickguardmounted master volume knob.
The result is a ridiculous amount of tonal options, which makes sense for a player who, whether with the Roots or with Fallon, has to be able to switch between rock, funk, pop, R&B and any number of styles at the flick of a (toggle) switch. “The idea was to make it so that you can get everything you need out of one guitar,” Douglas says. “That’s the beauty of this SG.”
That beauty extends to the rest of the guitar’s features, which include a Lyre Tail Vibrola (engraved, in a subtle touch, with the word “Captain” in place of “Gibson”), non-locking Keystone tuners, a SlimTaper mahogany neck and a rosewood fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and large block acrylic inlays. And it all comes packaged in two striking finishes — Ebony with gold appointments and a very striking Inverness Green with nickel hardware. Of the latter color option, Douglas says, “the SG shape has a lot of contours going on, a lot of bevels. And the Inverness Green really highlights and accentuates those lines.”
And while the end result is a guitar ideally suited to Douglas’ wide-ranging six-string needs, it’s also guaranteed to appeal to players of every stripe. “The story doesn’t stop when you bring it home,” Douglas says of his SG. “That’s when the story begins. The guitar is there for you to do whatever you want to do with it.”
This SG makes sense for Douglas, who — with the Roots or with Fallon — has to be able to switch between rock, funk, pop and r&b at the flick of a (toggle) switch