The Most "Non-Gibson" Gibson Guitar No One Talks About | 1987 Gibson US-1 Super Strat Natural

welcome back troglodytes to your daily dose of guitar information the trogley's guitar show we're going back to my roots visiting well not really the new orlean era but i kind of lump it in there anyways because it's just as crazy as anything that came out in the northern era despite being part of the henry j era so today we are going to look at what i view as the king of the super strats as far as what gibson made anyways but this guitar is visiting us all the way from poland don't ask me why these weird crazy guitars always end up overseas probably due to not so much demand in the states and then they just exported them new but who knows how it got over there but real quick before we get to the history of this model the fun story behind this one is i was on reverb late one night i just happened to see this thing get listed it was more than i wanted to pay but it just happened to be the configuration i've been waiting years for so i decided to bite the bullet import it back from poland pay the piper because i've been wanting to review and document one of these properly for a long time so what is this elusive model we will be talking about today well it is known as the gibson us1 oh man that looks fantastic so as i was saying i owned one of these before i think i bought it for my 18th or 19th birthday and it was the worst guitar i've ever played but that particular one just was not kept well like the condition was not good it had been stored where there was like high humidity so you had like the finish flaking off the sides this one definitely looking a lot better it's got more movement too man oh that action is so low my other one was so ridiculously high so this is a model that i view as like a sleeper's collector model because it's so cool it's so strange it's not gibson but it is gibson so to fully understand this thing first we need to do a little bit of history so the super strat era it's the 80s gibson's not really known for these types of things they were trying to create their own version of a super strat to be you know popular and get in with the times so this started all the way back in the norlin era you could potentially count things like the s1 and the marauder as like the telecaster and stratocaster rip-offs but i view the first attempt at really getting into this market to be with the gibson victory series they looked like this i have reviews and demos of pretty much every single different iteration so you can check them out there but they didn't necessarily have trem systems i mean some of them could have a factory killer but not most of them they were more so kind of a gibson's take on a regular strat but when gibson started to get really heavy into the super strat style that's when we're talking like models like the wrc the wayne charvelle designed and named after guitar you can check one of those out in this video right here it's kind of an interesting guitar definitely not very gibson very stripped down straight to the point exactly kind of like what the other brands were doing but then one of the next series is what we're going to talk about today you've got the u2 and the us1 we'll talk a little bit more about those in a second though around the exact same time you have the q series which is basically just using up old gibson victory style bodies and there were so many different pickup combinations you've got triple p 90s you've got just humbuckers you've got some with the kalers they just just never really caught on they're not the best guitars in the world but i have not done a full review and demo yet but i'll let you guys in on a secret just purchased one of those so we'll be seeing that very shortly too but then gibson finally finally got their super strat right with the gibson m3 you can check out this review and demo to learn more about those that is one of the most comfortable playing gibson guitars ever if you like those super slim necks and there's a bunch of different model variations you can learn about as well and i'm being serious here if the m3 would have came out 10 years prior to when it did gibson's history would have been completely changed so today we need to talk about the u2 and the us1 the u2 is basically a stripped down version of the us1 so naturally i would gravitate to this one because it's definitely a lot more fancy so they were cheaper they didn't have neck binding sometimes they would have body binding but not always they came in more colors than the us1 you could find them in blue red there was a showcase edition done up in silver there's ebony finishes and i'm sure there's a few that i haven't even seen before most of those had the explorer style headstock with a gibson silkscreen logo some of them had the meat cleaver like the us1 so people get confused all the time when they're listing a u2 they'll list it as a us-1 when it really isn't one so now let's talk us-1 this is not a basic model by any means and that's why i think collectors should really dig these things and they have been starting to go up considerably in value and the first thing that i love about these things is a you get a bound meat cleaver headstock sometimes called a hockey stick but it gets the same type of logo as one of like the gibson karina vs there are very few gibsons that actually ended up getting that so that's what made me first fall in love with this model when i first saw it but then to make things even better take a look at this we've got the trini lopez style split triangle inlays they're split parallelograms whatever you want to call them they're very cool you gotta remember these guitars were made in about 86 to 1987. i mean you might be able to find one in 88 i'm not sure so this is before any of that dave grohl reissue hype and like the sg supremes these were inlays you had not seen on a guitar in such a long time and it's bound it's got an ebony fretboard and take a look at these tops beautiful quilts you can also find flames most of the naturals are quilts sometimes you can find a flame though you can also find ebony versions of these but the other finish you can find is a cherry sunburst now the one thing i've never really loved about the natural ones is the backs are black which it's kind of boring in my opinion the cherry sunburst ones their backs are cherry so you can actually see some of the maple wood grain and in case you're a super collector there was also a limited edition of 20 of these done up by jim o'connor which you can learn about in this episode right here essentially it was just like this except for it had warplanes painted on it a bunch of different scenes each of the 20 were different so that's one of those ones most people don't know about but they're kind of cool when you do and then very few select models of the us1 also came with a quilted back or a flamed back so it's just like the top these are just maple veneers they would also do it on the back kind of like a the les paul unfortunately this is not one of those i tried long and hard to find another photo of one i know i've seen it before it's just very hard to even find photos of these things in general besides the few that have shown up in the past couple of years so now we need to get onto the body here you could find them in abr one stop bar tailpiece variety which is the one i've been looking for for such a long time they're hard to find because people hold on to those but most of them had kalers i mean if we're being realistic here when you think super strat you kind of think of kaler right so it makes sense but i just don't like kalers and i'm very happy that i found a stop bar variety but you had new pickups in here so these are just gibson single coils they usually have a very like light gray bobbin to them it's hard to find these things in stock original condition a lot of people will swap the pickups out on them and you get a humbucker in the bridge now if i remember correctly yes it is a push push pot hopefully that still works very common for those to break in the late 80s era but that should split your humbucker into a single coil but instead of any type of like a toggle switch you have on and off switches so you can get any combination of pickups you want just your neck just your middle adjust your bridge combination of each or you can just have all three on and once again don't forget your coil splitters personally i hate that setup i wish it was just something a little bit more similar but you know it was an experimental period in time and speaking of an experimental period of time the body i mean it looks beautiful right quilt maple veneer two pieces but these are supposed to be the lightest guitars ever made if you agree with their marketing materials originally produced they call it a chromite body so essentially what they do is this has a balsa wood core to it so that's a very cheap lightweight wood and then they sandwich it with maple so even though you can't see the maple here it's still there the core of this guitar is balsa wood though so i'm hoping we can see that on the workbench there's not too much paint in our way and if i'm understanding correctly the neck was done the exact same way i'm not sure how they did that that might just be some false information but hopefully if we take a look under our trust rod cover we can get some answers on that as well but one more topic to talk about before we move on to the workbench segment is the prototype us1 i guess i don't know if it's a prototype but it's the one that they use for their marketing pamphlet page you can see that right here so that one actually had completely different pickups than what was in the production ones they look very similar to the slim buckers that you find in the junior pro in the studio pro that came out slightly after this guitar you can see that bridge one's just a little bit thicker whereas the other ones actually seem like a slim coil so that's a pickup as far as i understand never actually made it to production and you'll notice it had black hardware instead of gold but those ones the headstock had a mother of pearl logo instead of the raised gibson one i think they did the production ones a solid by doing that that's what makes this thing so cool so that is a rundown on everything i know about the gibson us1 let's go ahead throw it on the workbench and take an individual look at its parts and specs and tell you a little bit more about these as well as get to hear how it sounds inside the gibson us-1 let's see if we can make some visual sense out of this guitar that i've been talking about for so many years so starting with the pickups unfortunately there's not any fancy names for these things in the original advertisements of these guitars they just say they have fierce attack and screaming dynamics on it so as far as like calling it something yeah unfortunately no i don't have anything of that nature to show you but you can't see the bottom side just like a regular stratocaster style pickup really and remember as i was telling you earlier these original ones have like a yellow brownish color to the outside of them that's how you can easily tell if it's one of the original ones or if it's been replaced you might think that's just dirt and grime built up over the years but it's not it could just be how the material has aged though that's just what they look like though here's your middle pickup here nothing special no markings no patent numbers or anything so as far as iding one of these outside of this guitar really just comes down to that color then our bridge pickup is kind of cool because once again it does have the coil splitting so it's a double lead wire coming out there because that's how they did them back then instead of just doing a single four conductor lead but this one does have the patent number on the bottom it looks very similar to a tim shaw but i doubt it's anything like one of those so let's go ahead and grab our pickup readings all of these in the up position means they're all off so just our neck pickup on got about 5.7 just our middle position we get a questionable reading that means either something's wrong on this guitar or we have to do something else and our bridge pickup reads 8.63 yep that's not looking so good here doesn't change anything i don't know if it's the pickup or if it's the switch man that really stinks so this was advertised as absolute excellent condition they didn't say any damage was on it at all but you know when i get it it's got these big dings in the top now granted they're not too bad but i was planning on keeping this one for my personal collection because it was supposed to be so clean but it came with undisclosed dings the worst one is down here where the bindings all chewed up but the neck and bridge pickup together reads about 3.45 so on a fully functioning example i would imagine the middle would be about the same as this and then the in between there would be around three ish and then don't forget you can also do the coil split on the bridge pickup which does seem to be functioning 4.33 but anyways moving on to our bridge and tailpiece here it is indeed a true gibson abr one has the patent number and everything i mean this bridge right here is probably worth about 250 bucks that's way more than the whole kaler system and then you don't have a giant route in here and that's what's freaky about these things is they are mounted traditionally as well and you got to remember in 8687 at this point in time it was still only the prehistoric reissues for the most part that got abr ones that's why it always boggled me that this super strat would get it if you don't get one that has the killer anyways it's just one of those kind of cool quirky specs as far as the tail piece it's just your regular one from the era full weight and these knobs this is your master volume for everything and this is a master tone you can see there's some internal cracking and you have to remember after about 1985 or so the knobs stop aging so as long as you have the bold print they most likely are the original knobs and of course our weird pickup selecting system and the output jack is kind of like a barrel style jack on the side but you're probably more so interested in the body construction here so let's see if we can see the chromite so what it looks like to me is they have this really beautiful quilt maple veneer like it's not a paper thin veneer it's very similar to what they used on like the e2 cmts or really any of the cmt series so it's about an eighth of an inch thick and then it looks like they might have another layer of maple or something before they switch to the balsa wood right here you can kind of see that on this side too so the whole core of this guitar is a light balsa wood but they just capped the top back and sides off with maple very similar to the les paul as i was telling you so gibson took this idea and later reused it on the studio light series and i'm sure one day i'll get a review and demo of those out but this is like the first model that i'm aware of that used the chromite branding let's just take a quick second here to appreciate the beautiful wood grain on this thing though it's so 3d like so ridiculously 3d that even when you kind of look at it in the light you can actually see the lacquers kind of like sinks in at those areas it makes it even look even more 3d it's kind of crazy but as i was telling you earlier there are a few nicks and dings on this one especially in the horn areas it's kind of a shame but i mean at the end of the day i would call this one very good condition this chewed up binding area truly is the worst of it all and you might be able to clean that up with a razor blade a bit if that bugs you but that is a great two-piece maple top but moving on from our chrome body we have a maple neck all my other videos i was wrong i'm sorry you can't really see it unless you look at a cherry one and even then it's kind of hard to tell but looking in here you can very clearly see that is a maple neck but it still does have the ebony fretboard and you do have the binding on it as you can see right here they've got the real mother of pearl inlays they're the split parallelograms triangles trini lopez whatever you want to call these things you don't find them on too many models especially in the 80s so i don't know what made them decide to bring it back for this but i think they look pretty darn cool but here's where things get fun the neck specs so this is a super ultra thin neck but it's got a wide neck profile so 1.71 inches at the nut and then by our 12th fret 2.08 okay but check out this first fret neck depth here .84 that is ridiculous for a gibson style guitar and then up here it's only a .89 i mean most things are like 0.99 1.01 for a really big 50s neck this is a ultra thin skinny thing here's what that neck profile looks like at the first fret and the 12th fret it's just a very slim c shape neck profile and if you're curious what this line is i don't think it's actually a crack i think it's just a really deep wood grain even if it is a crack it doesn't really matter because it's pretty light just in the surface anyways but thankfully our frets are actually in phenomenal condition on this one but the fun does not end here what kind of scale length do you think this thing's got there's a gibson style or fender style it's 25 and a half inches so normally gibsons are 24 and three quarters so they were really changing things up for this model i don't think anybody's ever tried to measure the radius on these guys so it's not the normal 12 inches but you also have to remember that this is a vintage guitar it might have had fret work somebody might have messed with the radius i would say the closest on my gauges is 10 inches which is actually a little bit flatter than normal but ultimately somewhere between 10 and 12 inches so at the end of the day i don't think they did anything fancy with that but speaking of fancy let's take a look at our headstock emblem so it's very common for these to break and it's such a very sad day when you find one that does have a broken headstock logo because this attaches i believe it's on the eye and then somewhere on the o or something there's just two studs that it sinks into the top so it's possible you could replace it but what i can't tell you guys i mean what is this you can see like a hidden dowel underneath the finish it would not surprise me if it left the gibson factory that way like they accidentally had the machine like start to put the logo in right there because that's exactly what the rat would look like they just like capped it off i don't know we'll take a look at that under blacklight in a minute but our truss rod is looking good on this one and it just has the regular blank truss rod cover that is the cool thing about the o'connor versions of the us1 it actually had one that said us1 other than that if it wasn't for original advertisements the name of this guitar probably would have been lost to time and i wish they would have went with really cool klusen style tuners on these kind of like a vintage explorer that we just reviewed a couple of days ago but no we get the grover style buttons here and hey the gold hardware doesn't look half bad okay moving on to the back side i did go ahead and plug this thing in yeah something's wrong with the middle pickup it sounds like it's dying it does not have its full output so i'm guessing that's what's going on here i was hoping it was just a wire or something but you know maybe that's why these things get replaced all the time because they die but that middle pickup i don't think we'll be able to demo it today i mean i'll show you what it sounds like now but i'm pretty darn sure it's not supposed to sound like that but here we can see our push push pot now this is a very early push push pot they are absolute trash they break quite often and there's no way to tell if it's on or off i mean there's just a very slight difference and you can't tell that the modern day push push and push-pull pots are way better in fact i believe they also use this in the wrc model and i had issues with that one too but here you can see our pickup selector switch very similar to what they use on like the mini toggles of like the 2550s different color switch but they're very basic you could actually wire them to do more stuff if you wanted to but there you can see the output jack and the tone pot and unfortunately we can't read the pot code because it's covered over in solder right there but 1986 87 would be your best guess here but back in the control cavity you can also see the chromite balsa wood body you can see it's chipping a little bit right there that's probably supposed to be completely removed at the factory that's just a little channel route to get stuff through into here and from the factory they didn't actually screw this into a location that has wood so that screw doesn't do anything but at least the other four do but there's no other back cavity routes or anything on here but it does have binding on the top and back that's simply because they're trying to hide the seam lines because there is a little piece of maple back here i was curious if they would do it for the black ones but you can kind of see the wood grain through this if you're looking just in the right angle but our strap buttons on this one have been replaced with shawlers they are not the originals unfortunately but you can see this thing was used it's got some buckle scratches nothing that goes directly through the finish but definitely some impressions there's also a few areas along the binding where you can see where the binding truly ends and the body begins you'll see like a little line right there now thankfully this one isn't chipping like my last one but it does have that mildewy smell like not as bad nowhere near as bad it's like a mothball smell and i think that's because of the non-original case the guy sent this one in the guitar itself doesn't necessarily smell and i planned on hunting down an original case if i was going to keep this one anyways but this is a set neck guitar and moving up the back of the neck you can see some light impressions it was played but not overly abused but our serial number dates it to the 180th day of 1987. so the henry j era begins in 1985. so this is still in that time period where they had no idea what they were doing until they struck gold in the 90s with like the studios and reissuing the les paul with the les paul classic retiring the prehistorics and just actually doing like a custom shop thing that started in 1994. you know this is just that strange period of gibson that's not necessarily traditional they were just trying to find themselves again under new ownership and it took them a good you know five years to do that and we're kind of in that period right now in current day times except for they skip that five years of what are we doing and just went straight to all the good stuff looks like 561 is its production number which would mean it's the 62nd guitar next stamp that particular day and there's a couple of scuffs at the top and we've got our mini grover tuners that one looks like it was installed a little bit crooked but you know that's just how it is oh dang it looks like at one point in time somebody replaced that top tuner you gotta look really closely on some of these things it looks like all the other ones are correct there might be a very small fracture right there stemming from that screw the nut on this example has also been replaced you can see there's no lacquer over top of it now that's not a crack but that definitely happened during the process of them swapping it out and that line along the fretboard you just see that on pretty much every gibson once they get some age to them i mean it doesn't happen to every single one but you see it often enough it's just like the binding i was just showing you on the body all that is is it shows where the binding truly ends and the neck begins but how light is the lightest guitar about seven and a half pounds seven pounds six point seven ounces it's really just the body that feels light the neck still feels regular to me but let's go ahead plug this thing in and hear how it sounds [Music] [Music] okay let's go ahead and run through our tones here we'll start with our neck pickup [Music] [Applause] so [Music] now let's try that bridge position [Music] of course you can also coil split that [Music] it just sounds like most coil splits so the humbucker's nice and full but then you can kind of brighten it up a bit [Music] and as i was saying earlier i really think this middle pickup is on the fritz it sounds so thin and anemic i know middle positions are generally kind of quacky sounding but this one it just doesn't sound right to me [Music] the volume is a lot less on that and i rose the pickup up by putting some paper towels underneath it just to get higher up and that was the only way i could even get it semi-what usable [Music] so unfortunately i'm sorry i can't demo all the possibilities out of this guitar because even when you kind of do the combination between these it just kind of brightens it up a tad [Music] [Applause] [Music] and that's just because these pickups way overpower that middle one so unfortunately something's not right there but here's these two anyways [Music] also coil split that bridge [Music] [Applause] [Music] so it might not normally be the guitar that you think about clean tones on but so far i didn't think it sounded too half bad like put a texas special in the middle and this thing will be all back up and running [Music] now let's go ahead and try some distorted tones on this beast [Music] [Music] [Applause] now we'll try the coil split version [Music] [Music] now the neck to go [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] i'll just kind of compare them together so this is just your bridge pickup [Music] [Music] bridge split [Music] ah [Music] now just our neck pickup [Music] neck and bridge [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] not just for fun the bridge in the middle [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now that we know all about the gibson us1 what are my final thoughts on this guitar man it was fantastic to have one of these in a stop bar variety the tuning was a lot easier to mess with i don't ever use a tremolo system for my kind of playing so it was just like going back to an old guitar that i used to except for this one is actually good so is it for everybody no now that i've actually had a lot of strata casters it really just does feel like a gibson's take on a stratocaster like a really high-end fancy one i mean fender has flame maple tops and quilt maple tops on certain varieties heck we just did the michi haruhata stratocasters that you can check out here now those ones still have the body contouring and that's kind of an interesting thing to talk about the us-1 is kind of a blocky guitar it's because they have binding on the top and the bottom so if you love everything about this guitar you can pick up a u2 and those actually have a back body carve right here it's a little comfort cut so if you feel like this guitar is missing that you could go for that but there is nothing more beautiful than this guitar when you're thinking 80s in my opinion it's just such a weird guitar from gibson and it's fantastic so i think it's kind of a sleeper collector's model but i really don't want the prices to go up that high because i would still like to get one that has like the the quilty flamey back to it so unfortunately you know when i bought this from the seller there were some things that were not disclosed but let's go ahead and do a black light test on this one to see if there's you know anything else i should know about this guitar well from the front here everything is looking good blacklight tests just look for touch-ups finish areas of wear can also show you some replaced parts like sometimes the nut will glow differently but this one you can tell it's changed because there's just no lacquer on the side so our headstock is looking good i really wanted to take a look at that kind of circle area and that is glowing properly so something happened at the factory for that but here's a really good example when a black light comes in handy in case you would have missed that other tuner that had been on here the filled and screw you can see that clear as day right there and sometimes you can find like stand rash like right there this was definitely hung up by somebody but not for too long and there's not a lot of players wear on the neck that's just sweat absorption so whoever had this was mainly a cowboy chord player guy not so much the soloing type back here you just see your regular stuff maybe a strap a mess with the finish a little bit remember this is a black finished guitar so black finishes can hide a lot of sins the area where the bindings all chewed up you can see that clear as day i'm only telling you guys all this stuff because it's been a while since i've done a talking blacklight test but yeah i would say this thing's looking good thank you troglodytes for tuning into today's review and demo i'm sorry that middle pickup wasn't behaving for us so we couldn't get all the different tonal opportunities but i had a great time with this thing i hope you enjoyed watching it don't forget to like comment and subscribe and we will catch you tomorrow on the next episode take care [Music] as always if you're interested in being the next owner of one of these demo guitars you can check them out on my website trogleysguitarshow.com there's some links in the description [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] do [Music] [Music] right [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Trogly's Guitar Show

Views: 179,317

Keywords: the trogly's guitar show, trogly, trogley, gibson, gibson les paul, fender, gibson US-1, Gibson super strat, Gibson U2, Gibson 80s history, Obscure gibson guitars, US-1 Gibson, Gibson US-1, Gibson USA-1, USA 1 gibson, Natural US-1 Gibson, troglys guitars, the troglys guitar show, Gibson stratocaster, gibson strat, vintage gibson strat

Id: sGsKtgyVXTw

Length: 39min 31sec (2371 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021