Gibson SG Standard Electric Guitar

June 3, 2007 by Jo Minor 


The Gibson SG Standard is one good-looking, nice quality electric guitar. It retails for $1879 to $2199, so it is something of a major investment. Like most Gibson electric guitars, it features humbucker pickups instead of single coil pickups. Humbuckers give you a warmer sound with less feedback than the single coil pickups do. It has a rosewood fretboard that is silky smooth and plays easily.

If you’ve read much about Gibson guitars, you know all about the history - how Les Paul, a popular jazz guitarist, designed the first good selling solid body electric guitars in the fifties. In 1961, when sales on the LP (Les Paul signature) guitars started to slip, and especially since the Fender Strat was beginning to be a solid competitor, Gibson had to do something new. Their response was to take the rounded, single cutaway body of the Les Paul guitars and carve a couple of horns into it. Another modification Gibson made to the LP was to move the neck joint up three frets. The company called it the “new Les Paul.”

The earliest of these horned guitars were produced with Les Paul’s name on them, because the factory had a bunch of the plastic Les Paul nameplates laying around and didn’t want them to go to waste. Les Paul himself, though, didn’t like the new style guitar very much and wanted his name and endorsement taken off. The company decided on the name SG to designate these distinctive looking instruments. SG stands for solid guitar. Of course, SG’s are not the only solid body guitars Gibson makes, but that’s the reasoning behind the name SG, anyway.

Gibson has made a variety of SG guitars since. Styles have varied a bit down through the years, with certain style details coming and going and then returning. The current Gibson SG Standard and other SG’s are mostly in the styling of the 1967 to 1969 period. These guitars have a large pickguard that wraps around the pickups.

Advantages: Like most guitars, the Gibson SG Standard electric guitar has its devoted fans as well as its critics. For most people, this guitar is a winner, if they can afford to have one. One of the top features noted is that it has a really fast neck. It is lightweight but still solid and well-crafted. And you just can’t top the looks of this baby. It is versatile, handling rhythm or lead playing equally well. It screams and shreds like crazy.

The Gibson SG Standard consistently gets good scores for comfort since it is so lightweight. It is very thin, as well. It has lots of crunch to its tone and sounds good clean or distorted. Some players insist that among guitars in this price range, the SG Standard blows all the others away.

Guitar players are all individuals, face it. Among those who play Gibsons, there are those that prefer the Les Paul (LP) varieties, and then there are those who prefer the SG guitars. The ones who prefer the SG’s cite the fact that the sound is less thick or dense than the LP’s. This particular model, the SG Standard is reported by some to have the fastest neck in the world. The stock pickups are good ones and don’t have to be replaced unless you just want to.

Disadvantages: Do you know these things are made with green plastic tuners? The tuners are often cited as a drawback feature of the Gibson SG Standard. The volume knobs have been found to be a bit inaccurate, as well. The price is a drawback for some, too.

Specs:

  • Mahogany body and neck
  • Rounded neck
  • Neck joined at the 19th fret
  • Crest inly on the head
  • Rosewood fingerboard
  • 24.75 inch scale
  • 22 frets
  • 1.695 inches wide at the nut
  • Trapezoid shaped inlays on the fingerboard
  • Single-ply fingerboard binding
  • Chrome plated hardware
  • Stopbar tailpiece
  • Tune-o-matic bridge
  • Black top hat knobs with silver inserts
  • Green key tuners
  • 490R Alnico Magnet Humbucker pickup at the neck
  • 498T Alnico Magnet Humbucker pickup at the bridge
  • Two volume controls
  • Two tone controls
  • Three way switch
  • Brite Wire Strings, .010-.046
  • Black reptile hardshell case with dark gray plush lining and silver logo
  • Also available in a left handed version

If you’d like more information about the evolution of the Gibson SG Standard, here’s an article from Vintage Guitar dot com. This might be of particular interest to those of you who are into collecting the classic guitars of the past.

Want to see some photos of a 1961 Gibson SG Standard painted in a psychedelic design? These pics are pretty interesting. This page has a link to more photos. I must point out, though, that the headline on the page calls the axe a Les Paul and it is not a Les Paul. It is from the era that may have had the LP nameplate, however.

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