Articles Guitar & Parts Reviews Mahogany Rush
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Imagine the scenario. Seven boxes arrive and excited fingers pull out a large representative chunk of the Gibson/Epiphone SG range. There they are lying on your carpet, your amp's warmed up and ready to go – so which one are you going to pick up...the Korean one or the '61 Standard? It's obvious, really, so let's start with 'the best' and work out what we lose as we slide down the wonga scale. The early 1960s-style '61 SG Standard (£1730) is a real beauty, right down to the superfluous piece of plastic between the neck pickup surround and the end of the finger board. It has the small pickguard with covered 57 Classic humbuckers and a wide headstock. This is top-of‑the-line stuff with a one-piece mahogany neck and a sumptuous nitro-cellulose cherry lacquer finish. Other period-correct features include the Kluson-style plastic tuners and the black speed knobs. SGs have a reputation for being neck-heavy but, thanks to the lightweight tuners, this one is perfectly balanced. Its very light too with a slim line neck that retains an even depth all the way up to that worryingly flimsy-looking body joint. The action isn't 'fusion' flat but its fast enough, and you can get your fingers under the strings for controlled vibrato when bending.
Since we're off to a good start, let's see .how the similarly spec'd SG Standard (£1280) compares. I always liked the look of these wide-guard SGs – and Angus Young obviously agrees. This is a heavier guitar with a more hand-filling neck and a narrower headstock. The curiously‑colored orangey-cream neck binding is done in exactly the same way as the '61's with little binding bumps at the edge of each fret. The finish is the same, too – but the real difference lurks under the hood. The Standard's pickups (a 490R combined with a 498T Hot Alnico at the bridge) are designed to produce a little more output and upper midrange than traditional PAF-style humbuckers like the '57 Classics... so they are actually correct to late '60s specs. This Standard has less natural resonance than the '61, and the acoustic tone is darker. The electric tone is full of clarity with a fairly transparent midrange but, contrary to its billing, the '61 Standard's 57 Classics are more complex, clear and exciting. On the positive side the '61 is a little woodier and the lower output has a more 'vintage' tone. It's hard to decide which of these top-end SGs I like best. Your entry point for an American‑made Gibson SG is currently the SG Special Faded (£850), and aside from the mahogany set neck and the mahogany body it's a fairly Spartan affair. Isn't it odd that 'Special' Gibsons are always a little less special than the Standards? There's no neck binding, the trapezoid markers have been replaced by pearl dots, and a gold transfer has ousted the pearly Gibson logo on the narrow headstock. The labour-intensive gloss nitro-cellulose lacquer is ditched for a modern polymer finish that has been left matte all over the body and neck. Even elderly SGs never felt like this, and the slightly abrasive finish feels odd at first. It's ironic that the Koreans do this sort of thing much better than the Americans these days. On the positive side the lightweight Kluson-style tuners are retained along with the Standard's 490T/490R pickup combination, and all the hardware is identical. Both Standards have one-piece bodies; the Special has a three-piece, although it weighs exactly the same as the Standard at 3kg. The unbound neck feels less luxurious and the set-up isn't quite as surgically precise as the Standard's, but the chunky neck profile is pretty much the same. Lots of vintage Gibsons have lost their original pickup covers, because back in the days when amp distortion was harder to achieve it was commonly believed that removing the covers increased output. In fact removing the covers decreases capacitance, so it's more likely to create the 'illusion' of loudness by lifting the high frequencies. Pickup covers aside the Standard and the Special are essentially the same, so this was a great chance to test the theory – and by and large it seems to be correct. The Special feels and sounds rawer than the Standard with a lot more aggression and cut; the Standard sounds smooth and refined, with a sweeter top end and warmer mids. All the Gibson-branded SGs, then, are fine instruments with identical levels of hardware and pickups. You really pay your money for one-piece bodies, pearl inlay and nitro finishes. So what happens when you go down the Epiphone route?
The Iommi is no traditional SG, so it's no surprise that it sounds quite different. These pickups are voiced to sound dark and moody, so you'll need a lot of crunch on your amp. To be honest it's not particularly inspiring plugged straight into an old-school valve amp, but it comes to life if you add a distortion pedal to the equation — especially if you start messing around with dropped tunings. If you like the man and you like the look, the Iommi is a fine if specialized rock guitar – but it's not the obvious choice if you want that classic SG tone without paying Gibson-type money. No, for that you should check out the regular Epiphone G-400 (£389). Besides the Epiphone-shaped scarf-jointed headstock and the unbound fingerboard, this is 'a dead ringer for the '61 Standard. Of course the finish is plastic and the fingerboard is unbound, but the color is fairly close. There's a proper set-neck joint and all the wood is mahogany, but you'll have to make do with generic Alnico V Far Eastern humbuckers and chrome-plated hardware, not nickel. The neck has that fat, vintage feel and the setup and intonation can't be faulted, though the frets have been left a little rough on top. Acoustically this guitar shows a lot of promise but the pickups aren't quite up to American-made Gibson quality. Against the Gibson Standard, playing the G-400 sounds as if a blanket has been thrown over the amp: detuned riffs sound a little mushy and a lack of bite and attack stops this guitar coming to life. It's more than acceptable for the money, especially when you're playing with overdrive, but the G-400 can't match the range of tones, the precision or the dynamics of its American cousins. As you move further down the Epiphone line some of the features we associate with SGs start to disappear and production shifts from Korea to China. The G-310 (£275), for instance, only costs around £100 less than the G-400 but the trademark set neck is changed to a bolt‑on with a Fender-style chrome plate. The neck is still mahogany but the body is a very un-Gibson-like alder, and it's far less contoured than the real thing. Fortunately some decent cast tuners and hardware save the G-310 from too closely resembling the 1970s Gibson copies that some of us traded our first decent guitars for. No info is available on the pickups: the fact that they are open-coil humbuckers is all that we know. So does this guitar really qualify as an SG? We'll leave that one to the purists because the G-310 turns out to be a bit of a surprise package. The bolt-on neck and the reduced-mass headstock make this a very resonant and lively guitar; the tonal vagueness of the G-400 is gone and we're back to that gnarly, belligerent rock attitude with lots of pinched harmonics and grit. Okay, it's not exactly pretty, but the G-310 even handles clean stuff extremely well, despite the power of its steaming hot humbuckers. True to form, lurking at the bottom of the line is Epiphone's entry-level SG – the Special (£189) with a maple neck and laminated alder/maple body. This really is on the basic side, with an unforgivably cheap set of tuners. There's no scratch plate and, despite the twin humbuckers, there are only two controls, master volume and tone, both with a nice silver-topped vintage look. However, it sounds very different. Where the G-310 sounds much like a bona-fide SG, with that characteristic tonal thickness, the Special is a far more ragged performer that doesn't really sound anything like an SG. The good news, though, is that it's exciting and fun in a garage-y sort of way, and it's actually a very playable guitar. The Verdict Inevitably I'd choose one of the Gibson models, and for me the '61 Standard is the best of the bunch. In fact, all three of the Gibsons are high-quality, great‑sounding instruments with no issues whatsoever, and I prefer them to any of the 1970s SGs we included in our secondhand SG roundup back in 2004 ...but of course, this quality comes at a premium. The set-neck Epiphones are also very well made, but the wood is of slightly lesser quality and the pickups on the G-400 don't quite do it justice. If you were a purist you'd probably say that the G-310 and the Special aren't really true SGs at all, but the G-310 at least manages an eerily accurate impersonation of the true SG sound. Reprinted with permission/copyright of Guitar & Bass Magazine . IPC |
This guitar roars, it bites, it sings...basically, it rocks. The sound is as brown as the wood it's made from, and this guitar does everything you could ask of an SG, plus a little bit more. There's a delicate sparkle to the high notes, even when the amp is completely overdriven, and sustain is superb. Fender players might find the fret spacing a little cramped at the top, but you can get used to anything eventually. The '61 even does the clean stuff very well without any overtly nasal qualities, and it produces a fabulous range of tones through out the range of the volume controls. Flick over to the neck pickup, roll off the tone and prepare to be sued by Eric Clapton.
Top of the Epiphone range is the Korean-made Tony Iommi G-400 model(£640). Of course it's black all over and unsurprisingly it's a tad neck-heavy, because this critter has 24, frets clear of the body for a two-octave range on each string. The unbound rosewood fingerboard is inlaid with pearl crosses and the Gibson USA Tony Iommi humbuckers are completely covered, with no visible pole pieces. Beneath the glossy finish we are assured everything is solid mahogany, and all the hardware is black chrome including the kidney Grover tuners. This guitar is also available in a left-handed version for a mere £10 extra.
