The Gibson SG: A Short History

hi this is Keith lamps welcome to five watt world burns to help you get the most music from the least gear it was probably 1975 I'd have been about fifteen years old when I saw my first really good electric guitar I'd been playing acoustic a 12-string Epiphone and the folk group at church and the leader of that group heard me yammering on about Les Paul's and she said oh I have a Les Paul I'll bring it in next week for you to see it I got there early and I waited for her to load in I waited anxiously while she laid it down and open the case what I saw was not the Goldtop I was expecting but rather a 1962 Les Paul SG standard - my youthful eyes it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen gleaming tasteful and aggressive all at once glistening nickel deep red and pearloid laid back in the deep gold plush of the case I can still remember the smell of lemon oil as the case opened and I'll never forget the sight of that 62 Les Paul Standard and the morning light coming through those stained-glass windows this is the five watt world short history of the Gibson SG if you enjoy our videos take a minute to subscribe and hit the bell icon to be notified when we put out new videos if you've already subscribed swing by the store and grab a t-shirt or mug to support what we're doing here there's a link in the description in 1960 Gibson called an emergency sales meeting at the factory in Kalamazoo the sales numbers of all the various Les Paul's guitars had fallen after peaking in 1959 and the feeling at Gibson was that there needed to be some major changes in the solid-body guitar line today we look back and think they were turning away from the best guitars they'd ever built but guitarists were 10 years away from demanding more or less Paul's and they just weren't selling enough guitars in the wake of a huge expansion of factory so Gibson put a team together under the direction of Larry Ahlers to come up with a new solid body guitar design they designed according to the prevailing winds at Gibson at the time double cutaway body new finishes and slimmer necks with greater access to the upper frets were the thing of the day at the time Gibson built new designs by having one of the top engineers build a complete prototype for the upper managers to evaluate according to Gil Henry author of Gibson guitars Ted McCarty's golden era quote it's possible that Ahlers actually did SG pattern because he would sometimes take on the most difficult assignments himself the prototype would then have been played for top management and sales staff by some of Gibsons guitar-playing employees from this team came what we now know as the SG by most accounts a radical design change from the previous shape of the Les Paul Tony Bacon's excellent book the SG guitar book describes the body as quote a modernistic amalgam of bevels and points and angles and the design invited players to reach the topmost frets with ease and speed I couldn't say that better myself despite the move away from the Les Paul name on the lesser special @tv models in 5859 the official announcement early in 1961 for the first two SG guitars still listed the guitars as Les Paul Standard and the Les Paul Custom I wonder how many newspaper classified ads led to confusion when they call the battle Les Paul only to have the seller describe the signature horns of the SG production of the guitars actually began at the end of 1960 Gibson wrote in the announcement here's an established favorite now offered with a completely new styling thinner lighter and weight and custom contoured wonderfully designed solid body perfectly balanced for playing in a standing position speaking of things that we laugh at today given the SGS notoriety for neck dive the SG styling carried through the rest of the solid body line the junior s GTV and SG special were announced in the summer of 61 coinciding with the summer NAMM show the prices in that first issue year were the junior junior 3/4 and TV at one hundred and forty two dollars and fifty cents the special at one hundred ninety five dollars the standard at two hundred and sixty five dollars and the custom at three hundred and ninety five dollars the new SG had a body and neck made from mahogany sourced from then British Honduras now Belize in Central America they worked a single slab of mahogany into a slim shape with the large cutaways and sharp points they were beveled edges on both the body and the cutaways of around 22 degrees along the edge of the front and the back the bevels make the body appear even thinner and are an essential part of the SGS design aesthetic the thinner neck also mahogany was glued into the body with a mortise and tenon joint the thinness of the body in conjunction with the the neck pickup routing meant that the tenon was short and only minimal glue held it in place this led to cracks and breaks in the neck joints and as the 60s went on Gibson struggled to address this trying multiple design tweaks that can be seen on the backs of the guitars some joints are smooth between the body and neck where others have a distinct step there was a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard glued to the neck bound in white plastic the 61 standards were finished in the cherry red color that had first made its appearance in 59 for the double cut juniors and specials the red was created by applying red dye pore filler to the mahogany body followed by one or two coats of clear lacquer resulting in the familiar wood grain being visible through the finish the black multi ply pickguard was fixed to the body with five screws and a small plastic strip between the end of the fingerboard and the neck pickup is there to cover the route that held the electrical components and wiring to PAF's with nickel-plated covers were set into the body of vibrato tailpiece which gibson named the verb rola that we now know it as the sideways vibrato there were four metal cap top hat knobs the 3-way selector was in front of the control knobs the output jack moved to the face of the guitar just behind the controls this was another problem point as there was very little wood to support the jack and cracks would often develop their crown pearloid plastic position markers were in late in the rosewood fingerboard and the nut was made of hard plastic as well clusen deluxe tuners were fitted to the headstock with clothes metal backs and plastic tulip shaped buttons with a two ring base on a thin metal shaft the serial number was stamped on the back of the headstock and inked and over sprayed with the lacquer the black plastic truss rod cover was inscribed with Les Paul and the familiar Gibson logo on the top of the headstock was above a thistle inlay in keeping with the Les Paul customs of the past the new custom came with gold hardware and a new gleaming white finish like some single cuts of the past that also came with three humbucking pickups with similar control layout to the standard the selector switch dealt with the three pickups by having the neck alone middle and bridge and bridge alone as the three choices it was possible to order custom colors direct from Gibson though it was exceedingly rare customs were made in cherry black and even sunburst juniors TV and special models came with either one or two p90 pickups they had unbound rosewood fingerboard with dots clusen plastic button tuners and at first Les Paul on the headstock all three came standard with a wraparound tail piece but an optional version was offered with either six saddle bridge or the vibrato tailpiece in 1962 Gibson offered a tree of SG double neck guitars the first Gibson double necks word offered in 1958 but these have been semi hollow body guitars the new SG bass double necks were fully solid the bodies of the double neck instruments were 16 inches wide about 3 inches wider than a single necked s G's and at about 12 pounds they weight about twice what most of the regular guitars weighed the double necks were custom order only and very few of any one type were built as Jimmy Page Alex Lifeson and Don Felder made history with theirs the new SG Les Paul's were not immediately embraced in the market by famous players except for Sister Rosetta Tharpe an incredible mix of blues gospel and pre rock guitar playing she played a new white custom to great effect when she toured the UK in 1964 many British guitarist took note she appeared in a blues review that included Muddy Waters Sonny Terry and brownie McGhee which showed on British television coinciding with an already growing interest in American blues amongst young British guitarists by the end of 1963 Gibson had dropped the Les Paul name from all the SG shaped guitars this was due both to the waning popularity of Les as an artist and the fact that his contract with Gibson had run out in addition to some personal problems that les said that he didn't care for the new design despite being pictured with the guitar and Gibson print ads the contract quietly ran out in 62 and Gibson could no longer make Les Paul guitars by 1964 Gibson showed four models in the SG line a white SG TV and a cherry SG jr. each for $165 a cherry or white special for $240 the cherry standard at $330 and the white custom for $480 the sideways liberado was replaced with the short vibe Rolla in 1965 Gibson had made a number of changes to the construction of the SG in the first five years by 66 the neck joint was by far the strongest that had been with a greater amount of overlap of the body at the back also in 66 Gipps switch to a much larger pic guard that surrounded both pickups and covered the body both above and below the pickups sometimes referred to as the batwing for its shape this new idea of a single unit for mounting pickups and pickguard seem to come right out of the fender playbook to further simplify construction the factory now generally made a larger route like it used on a custom to accommodate the three pickups and wiring on all at the SG guitars late in the 60s a few other small changes were made the nickel plating was changed to Chrome there was a small decrease in the nut width there was also a slight decrease in the angle of the headstock as it leans back from the neck face both guitarists and big brother in the holding company played us G's backing vocalist Janis Joplin Sam Andrews played a standard with a wire vibe Rolla while James girlie played a special to round things out the bassist Peter Alvin play Danny b3 which is was effectively an SG style bass George Harrison was a noted user of Gretsch guitars so folks were surprised when he was seen playing an SG standard at a concert in London in May of 66 Harrison had likely acquired the SG in the early months of that year and had used it on that revolver album Gibson records show that the standard had been shipped from the factory in October of 1964 he was pictured with the SG n film clips for rain and paperback rider in 66 and Laney Madonna in 68 around 1969 he gave the SG to Pete ham of Badfinger who were signed to the Beatles Apple Records label and played the guitar throughout the 70s until his death in 75 Ambrose sold the ex Harrison SG at auction in 2004 for 560 $7,500 Eric Clapton's second sunburst Les Paul was stolen in the early months of 1967 around this time Clapton had acquired and used SG standard the first ten of Clapton using the SG is the sound of a barato on the demo recordings that Cree made in London on March 15 1967 he was also photographed playing the guitar to gates shortly thereafter soon after that gig Clapton had his SG painted by two Dutch painters that were known collectively as the fool the artists also painted Jack Bruce's Fender six and Ginger Baker's bass drum head Bruce didn't like the feel the paint and replace the fender with wait for it an SG shaped Gibson ev3 clapton loved the paint job and wrote in his autobiography that they turned the SG quote into a psychedelic fantasy and I quote the guitar was probably built somewhere between 63 and 65 as we know that it had a deluxe Berber ola on it when he bought it Clapton had bits of the vibe Rolla removed first the arm and then the cover to let the artwork show through eventually leaving just the frame as a simple tail piece he replaced the clusen tuners with growers as he'd done on his Les Paul's Clapton managed to hold out of the SG for some time and he used the guitar extensively on the road and in the studio throughout 67 and into the summer of 68 most notably on Disraeli gears after the making the move to Stratocasters he may have given the SG to George Harrison what we do know is that it ended up with Jacky Lomax an American friend of Harrison's by the early 70s Todd Rundgren had bought the guitar from Lomax Robby Krieger from The Doors played in SG buck Dharma and boy stur cult had a custom and a Bigsby equipped standard and Jimi Hendrix played a right-handed white three pickup customer about a year starting in late 68 most notably on red house marking the start in the rise of the popularity of the model m'q Taylor in his final year with the Bluesbreakers and at the beginning of his time with the rolling stones often used an SG standard as well in August of 1969 Woodstock was a bit of an SG showcase Carlos Santana played a modified SG special he'd go on to use that guitar along with the Les Paul until 1972 Jerry Garcia also used an SG at Woodstock and he'd go on to use SG zon the deads live dead album Johnny Winter played one during his set and Steve Katz from Blood Sweat & Tears used one as well though cats primarily used a 335 he mused later quote I guess I played a red SG standard at Woodstock if I wasn't so stoned that night I probably would have remembered Pete Townsend with the who wielded his famous SG specials it would suck - he was pretty rough on his guitar so we went through a number of specials from 68 through 71 most famously playing one on live at Leeds Townsend said he loved that it was such a light and somewhat fragile guitar he liked how you could bend the neck for vibrato he said you don't need any strength to make the whole guitar Bend when Gibson stopped building his specials he said I raided every music store in the country tactically looking for all this geez he said that he only got interested in older guitars because Gibson had stopped making them the way they used to echoing Clapton's feelings about old Les Paul's they were at the forefront of the growing vintage guitar movement by the late 60s Gibson sales numbers had peaked along with the rest of a market that had been hot on the heels of a decade of guitar driven music it was in 1966 that Ted McCarty left Gibson McCarty was replaced by an accountant it was quickly replaced by another money guy by 1969 with sales down some two million dollars from the previous year Gibson became part of the newly formed Norlin industries during 69 the SG standard custom and special were all offered in a new walnut color as well as their traditional colors after a decline in sales SG sales rebounded slightly in 6970 selling six thousand six hundred and seventy-seven standards in seventy in 1971 Gibson began making some of its pickups with the Gibson logo on them they also stopped using the standard and special name though a custom remained in the line they renamed them the deluxe and the pro respectively there was a new semicircular plate that held the controls in the jack which eliminated the need to route the body from the back the big pit card was replaced by a Les Paul style guard the deluxe had small block inlays like a late 60s 335 the Bell was removed from the cutaway and the headstock was made slightly larger the pro kept the dots of the special model and the custom kept the full-size block inlays they moved to a three-piece mahogany neck and with what they call a 90 degree neck pitch this meant that the neck was parallel with the body and did not lean back from the plane of the body as a head before the neck was shifted further into the body and thus eliminated the gap between the end of the fingerboard and the neck pickup accordingly the bridge was shifted back on the body which gave it an unbalanced feel the pickup configurations remain the same the bridge on the pro model was switched to a more rectangular shape often referred to as the harmonica bridge all three models had a Gibson branded Bigsby b5 vibrato tailpiece as an option all of this change lasted just one year Gibson sold what stock of the new models they had during 72 and 73 then brought back the standard and special the bevels returned to the cutaways the metal control plate and neck changes were dropped a special move to the small block inlays along with the standard the special was given to many humbuckers and the standard had the new hot or super humbucking pickups designed by Bill Lawrence these are sometimes referred to as tar backs because the black epoxy used for potting the pickups is visible on the underside the custom followed with three of the new pickups as well if you're confused imagine the guitar players at the time that put up with this dizzying parade of yearly changes in 77 the special was dropped leaving the SG standard and custom in the line in the studio to record Black Sabbath's first record in 69 Tony Iommi had a pickup fail in his strat so he turned to his backup guitar he said I didn't SG as a backup a second guitar but I never really played it they only had two days to make the record so he had no choice but to use the SG Tony remembers and that was it really I never sort of went back I only used his SG special for a while and then briefly used a white custom around 1970 Birmingham pickup specialist john birch modified the special adding an adjustable bridge and custom pickups the guitar became known as monkey for the sticker that I only put above the controls next I a me Commission Burch and his new employee John Diggins to build him a 24 fret SG style guitar the resulting all maple guitar painted black had a stainless steel pickguard hot birch custom pickups and cross inlays on the neck I always move to the custom guitar reflected players dissatisfaction with what was coming out of Gibson at the time and 75 Dinkins made Iommi another guitar that became his favorite nicknamed old boy he played it from then until very recently this guitar also had 24 frets and the cross inlays a modified heel joint made the guitar stronger and the body was based on the contours of Toni's original 60s special Frank Zappa had played other Gibson's before switching over to the SGR on 1970 when his Goldtop Les Paul was stolen that one was probably a brand-new guitar as it had the large pick guard Zappa played a number of s G's but his pension for modern guitars makes it hard to know how many went through his hands around May of 73 Zappa replaced the pickups with two uncovered humbuckers and added switches in the pickguard four coil splitting and phasing that summer he added a long vibe Rolla and a pale colored headstock face in place of the original black one it became known as the see guitar as it's on the sleeve of the record album Roxy and elsewhere from 1974 after using a 12 string to double the acoustic intro on stairway to heaven Jimmy Page turned to a double neck ETS 1275 six and twelve string to play the tune alive the guitar became iconic of the performance of stairway of course and many seen Paige use one tried one as well John McLaughlin used a few different six twelve double neck guitars with the Mahavishnu Orchestra Alex Lifeson of Rush started with a mid seventies cherry 1275 and when it was damaged replaced it with his famous white one and of course Don Felder would play his white double neck with the Eagles on Hotel California all of this led to Gibson Rio shoeing the 1275 in 1975 now with a laminate maple necks available in sunburst walnut and white and as before as a custom order only more 70s SG players included Dickey Betts playing a standard in the Allman Brothers in 71 he moved to a gold top and sold the SG to his bandmate Duane Allman the popular image of Angus Young crashing about the stage and Iraq frenzy and his schoolboy shorts and tie would now seem out of place without that SG perhaps the most notable player of the model he got his first SG when he was still a teenager that first that she was a standard maiden 70 or 71 big pick guard long for berola and a neck headstock volute the pickup covers were removed as they often were to improve treble response he swapped out the tuners took off the vibrato and put on a wraparound bridge after six years on the road sg-1 drenched in years of acid sweat was retired and SG 2 was purchased in 78 another early seventies model with the big pick guard young would play that guitar on the 1979 album highway to hell sg3 was acquired as a backup for SG 2 during the tour to support the album SG 3 was a black custom from around 1970 which had the middle pickup removed and a new pickguard cut accordingly the ac/dc road crew probably having heard of his work with Iommi began to have John Diggins keep anguses guitars in shape was Diggins who replaced the neck on SG 1 adding the lightning bolt inlays with the repairs in place SG 1 again became anguses favourite guitar jung hasn't used the lightning bolt guitar for retour since back in black through the 80s young was seen playing many other SGS according to Angus at last count he owned over 500 guitars but it's that first battered and rebuilt SG that has had the greatest impact on his tone by 1975 Gibson was transitioning to the new factory they'd built outside of Nashville the new factory was designed to produce a large number of a small variety of models so moving the production of Les Paul's and s G's there from Kalamazoo seemed obvious by then there were just two SG models the standard at $479 and the custom at $685 in the late 70s Gibson produced a number of very short-lived SG style models one of these the SG had a walnut body and neck an ebony fingerboard and a pale headstock color and was produced through 1981 they also tried an active SG artist that had a switch for active electronics and it's separate bass and treble controls Tim Shaw joined Gibson in 78 and by 79 was working with Bruce Bowen and Rd together they led a group building guitars for artists and they were pushing for a return to the style guitars that had made the company famous in the 50s and 60s this effort would eventually lead to the heritage Les Paul reissues of the early eighties but the first SG reissue didn't come along until 1986 with a release of the SG 62 Gibson had not saved many of the original design materials for the SG so like the Les Paul's they were reversed engineered from vintage guitars they copied almost everything except for the sideways vibrato so the reissue had a two pneumatic bridge the next year saw a reissue custom based on what they learned from building the SG 62 from that point on s G's have been built in the Nashville factory line under a variety of names the custom was dropped from the price list in 2011 has only been available in custom shop runs since notably Radiohead's Thom Yorke is mostly seen with a 64 SG standard with the verb roller Armour moved through the 90s it seemed that besides Custom Shop reissues Gibson didn't quite know what to do with the SG they added a flame top calling the guitar the SG supreme in 1999 and this guitar lasted in the line until 2008 Mike Clement became Tony Iommi's a guitar tech in 1990 and this led to Clement meeting and hitting it off with Gibson's JT rebel off rebel off made a few one-off guitars for Iommi and this to a Gibson signature Tony Iommi pickups in 1997 in 99 the Custom Shop did a run of Tony Iommi signature s G's offered in left and right hand versions coming full circle these were actually copies of Iommi's custom John Diggins guitar with the crosses the run lasted until 2005 they done a factory run of guitars in 2002 as well Gibson clearly believes that the SG is a critical part of its history announcing at Winter NAMM 2020 a new exacting replica of Tony Iommi's monkey guitar Gibson launched an Angus young signature model in 2000 a large pickguard with a long four Ola and it lasted in 2009 when it was replaced by Custom Shop versions the inevitable Pete Townsend SG Custom Shop reissue came with an interesting twist a recreation of the guitar he played at the live at Leeds concert it was a large pickguard special and it was the first time the Custom Shop did a replica case with the guitar shipping it in an animal flight case a factory version was built the next year and a 50th anniversary run was done in 2011 there was a Custom Shop run of replicas of Jimmy Page's double neck in 2007 25 of these were aged replicas that listed for $33,500 the vintage old stock versions sold for $11,000 and despite these prices they sold out quickly 2011 saw dickey betts SG based on the guitar that he'd long ago sold the duane allman the Custom Shop called it the from one brother to another guitar 2013 saw the Frank Zappa Roxy SG reissued interestingly the project brought that guitar to Dweezil Zatanna's the shorter scale makes some of his father music's more accessible on a guitar he began using it on the road with zappa plays zappa there have been further Custom Shop runs for Brian ray Don Felder and LED stone and factory signature guitars for Jeff Tweedy and Derek Trucks was around 1990 the Derek Trucks parents found the money to buy their budding guitarists son a 62 reissue SG standard as a slide player the access to the upper portion of the neck is a unique SG feature that really works for trucks he played that original reissue until it had a headstock break around 2000 whereupon he bought another reissue and proceeded to play that guitar for the following 10 years around 2011 he began using a dickey betts reissue SG Dwayne's daughter offered Derrick the penumbra for artists proof of the run which he continues to play the inevitable trucks signature SG is based on that brother-to-brother guitar with the tweaks that Derrick had made over the years to include removing all the guts of the verb rola and tucking a stop tail down there by the cover and with that bit on the clear modern master of the SG I'll wrap up our story it's tempting to think of the SG as the less talented younger sibling of the Les Paul but I'd argue that that's a mistake modern masters continue to return to the SG Nashville studio cats Tom boo Kovac and Kenny Greenberg for example guitar heroes Eric Johnson and Robin Ford have both recorded and toured recently with vintage s G's as well add to that the unique contributions that artists like Clapton Iommi Young and trucks have made to the music with the guitar and you have to recognize the unique legacy of the Gibson SG I need to thank my editors Perry McManus and Davey Onorato for once again bringing their knowledge and style to improving the script I need to thank the guys at Dawson's music and wearing tenango 'ln for the use of the demo music played for them by the extraordinary mr. Tom Quayle and finally this video would not have been possible without tony Bacon's excellent the SG guitar book and Gill hem breeze Gibson guitars Ted McCarty's golden era both are linked in the description if you have your own SG story share it in the comments and let me know what I missed I know I can count on you thanks for watching remember if you want to further support the videos stop by the store and grab a t-shirt or a mug the links in the description until next time thanks for being a part of the 5 watt world [Music] [Music]

Channel: five watt world

Views: 831,747

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Id: wDwYAKtMig8

Length: 26min 27sec (1587 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020