everythingSG.com

If you are a player of a certain age then the chances that an SG was the first “real” guitar you got your hands on - and if you're 17 and in a punk band you might well be playing one, too. This sculptured, high-power classic has been driving rock, pop and blues for 40 years and more. Tony bacon has the Inside story of Gibson's slimmed-down rocker...

Gibson's SG solid bodies have attracted lots of interesting players over the years from John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service to Robbie Krieger in The Doors, Brian James of The Damned to Micky Jones in Man, and of course Clapton, Harrison, Townshend, Angus Young and the rest. The other day The Osmonds even turned up with an SG Junior on a vintage TOTP clip, playing Crazy Horses. Despite all this notable action, however, the SG divides players, with some considering it little more than a Gibson also-ran. Which is odd.

For a moment, imagine yourself at the Gibson guitar company in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1960 (but control yourself: you really can't leave the building with that many instruments up your jumper. You're one of the Management team, so try to act appropriately). Look at that balance sheet. Yes, it's baffling, isn't it? But your assistant kindly points out that what it means, sir, is that sales of Les Paul models went down this year after a peak in 1959. What you need is a new look to shake up the market. You're going to have to dump that old-style Les Paul,  which is simply not exciting enough at the dawn of the 1960s, and adopt the new look of the stylish SG.

Now, from today's vantage point we might say this is crazy talk. Dump the Les Paul? How could they have even considered such a thing?  We of course, have the benefit of hindsight. Gibson was a large company that, like any guitar manufacturer at any time, had to make sure that large amounts of product were leaving the factory in a steady, unrelenting flow. There were many Michigan mouths to feed, and investments to justify.

Gibson started a $400,000 expansion of the Kalamazoo factory during 1960 that more than doubled the size of the plant by the time it was completed that August. It was the third addition to the company's original 1917 factory; other buildings had been added in 1945 and 1950. The new single-story building meant that Gibson's entire plant now took up more than 120,000 square feet over two city blocks at Parsons Street. Clearly they would need instruments that sold in big numbers to keep the new, expanded factory running at peak performance.

Gibson had first used “SG” as a model name late in 1959, the letters standing for Solid Guitar, when the double-cutaway Les Paul TV started to appear without the usual “Les Paul TV” logo on the headstock; instead it became the SG TV model. At the same time the Les Paul Special and the Les Paul Special 3/4 became the SG Special and the short-lived SG Special 3/4. Gibson's catalogues, as usual a little behind such changes, used the new SG TV name by 1960 and the new SG Special and SG Special 3/4 names by 1961. The Les Paul Junior 3/4 was dropped in 1961.

The really big change came in 1961: the Les Paul Junior, Les Paul Standard and Les Paul Custom ware completely re-designed. The classic 1950s-style single-cutaway body was dropped and in its place came what Gibson described as an 'ultra thin, hand contoured, double cutaway body.

The new SG-style guitar certainly must have seemed a radical departure at the time. Those body edges looked almost as if a sculptor had been at work rather than a traditional guitar-maker, what with its modernistic amalgam of bevels and points and angles. Gibson could hardly have failed to notice Fender’s growing success with the sleek, stylish Strat, after all, the earliest Fender solidbody guitar had prompted the launch of the Les Paul Model in the first place, back at the start of the 1950s.

During 1961, Juniors and Customs at first continued in the old-style Les Paul shape and then changed to the new-style SG body. Sunburst Standards of the old style had stopped in 1960. At first, and rather confusingly on the face of it, Gibson kept the 'Les Paul' name on the re-designed new-body versions: on the head stock of the Junior, on the truss-rod cover of the Standard, and on a plate on the body of the Custom. Today we usually call these SG/Les Pauls – 'SG' for the official name of the body shape; 'Les Paul' for the surviving logo. During 1963 Gibson dropped the Les Paul name completely from the new-look Junior, Standard and Custom, and in their catalogues and price lists gradually re-named these instruments as the SG Junior, the SG Standard and the SG Custom. The SG Special had moved to the new shape during 1961.

Ted McCarty, who had joined Gibson in 1948 and became company president two years later, said that Gibson had started removing Les Paul's name from guitars in 1959 because the association was less of a commercial bonus than it once had been. Les Paul had shot to fame in the early 1950s with his vocal (and domestic) partner Mary Ford. He made remarkable homespun recordings using an early form of sound-on-sound to create magical orchestras of massed guitars and vocals. Big hits followed for Les & Mary, including a number one single with How High The Moon in 1951, so for Gibson, Les was the perfect choice as they looked around for a suitable endorser to promote their Fender-rivaling solidbody guitar, launched as the Les Paul Model in 1952. But things changed.

The main reason that Les Paul's name was dropped completely from Gibson guitars related to his divorce from Mary Ford. Their separation was noted in Billboard in May 1963.  “Miss Ford is now living in California, while Paul is living in New Jersey”, said a small news item under the headline 'Les and Mary Say Bye-Bye'. The couple were officially divorced by the end of 1964, and Les retired from most playing and recording for about 10 years from 1965. The contract [with Gibson] came due I think in1962, Les told me, “right at the time that Mary and I decided to split.” He agreed with Gibson to wait until the divorce was over before starting further discussions. He didn't want to sign any fresh contract bringing in new money while the divorce proceedings were underway 'because [Ford's] lawyers would ask for part of it in the divorce settlement. So my contract ended in '62 and Gibson could not make any more Les Paul guitars.

Les said that he didn't like the design of the new SG/Les Paul models and that this was another reason for the removal of his name from them. For a while, this was the explanation given prominence. In1982, for example, Les told Tom Wheeler: “The first [SG/Les Paul] I saw was in a music store... and I didn't like the shape –a guy could kill himself on those sharp horns. It was too thin, and they had moved the front pickup away from the fingerboard so they could fit my name in there. The neck was too skinny and I didn't like the way it joined the body; there wasn't enough wood, at least in my opinion. So I called Gibson and asked them to take my name off the thing. It wasn't my design.”

Despite this, he was pictured in various official Gibson promotional photographs of the 1960s with the SG/Les Paul models, and clutched one on the jacket of his 1967 Les Paul Now album. The Music Trades magazine carried a report in summer 1961 of the gala banquet closing the July NAMM convention, the top trade fair run by America's National Association of Music Merchants. Les Paul & Mary Ford were the star turn, and while the photo in the mag clearly showed both Les and Mary playing old-style single-cutaway Gibson Les Pauls, elsewhere in the same issue a Gibson ad headed 'Solid Hit' had the duo promoting the new 'hand contoured' SG/Les Paul models. So here was Les, still under his Gibson contract, continuing to play original-design Gibson Les Pauls on stage– but at the same time helping Gibson to promote the new SG-style guitars.

Back in the boardroom, there must have been some satisfaction as production of Les Paul models did increase slightly when the new SG/Les Paul designs were introduced during 1961. Output of all Gibson Les Paul models from the Kalamazoo factory settled at just under 6,000 units every year for 1961, 1962 and 1963. The company's price list of September 1963 is among the last from the early 1960s to feature Les Pauls, and itemizes three models, all with that new double‑cut slab body with its sculpted edges.

At the bottom of the range was the cherry-finish SG/Les Paul Junior. It cost $155, and had one 'dog-ear' P90 single‑coil pickup, simple volume and tone controls and a front-mounted jack socket, an unbound rosewood fingerboard with dot markers, plastic tuner buttons, and a wrapover bridge/tailpiece.

The cherry-finish SG/Les Paul Standard was next at $310. This model had two humbuckers, volume and tone per pickup plus a three-way selector and front‑mounted jack socket, bound rosewood board with crown markers, plastic tuner buttons, and a six-saddle bridge plus separate side-action vibrato tailpiece.

Top of the line was the white-finish SG/Les Paul Custom. This $450 luxury model came with three humbuckers, a volume and a tone for each pickup plus a three‑way selector switch and front-mounted jack socket, a bound ebony finger board with block markers, metal tuner buttons, a six-saddle bridge plus separate side‑action vibrato tailpiece, and gold-plated hardware throughout.

The white or cherry-finish SG Special never appeared in transitional Les Paul mode: it appears on that same '63 pricelist at $225, with two P90s, a volume and tone per pickup plus three-way selector and front-mounted jack socket, a bound rosewood board with dot markers, plastic tuner buttons, and a wrapover bridge/tailpiece.

Debuting around 1962, the EDS-1275 was effectively a double-neck SG. Gibson's first twin-necks of 1958 had been hollow-bodies, but these were based on the SG body style. They remained as custom-order only guitars, and their most famous user would be Jimmy Page who regularly used a six-and‑12-string EDS double-neck on stage with Led Zeppelin in the 1970s.

Over here in Britain one of the first glimpses of the new SG name in the early 1960s came in Selmer's August '63 catalogue, trailing 'an established favourite with completely new modern styling'. The SG/Les Paul Standard was priced at 125 guineas (luxury goods were often priced in guineas back then: this meant 125 pounds and 125 shillings, a total of £131.25), the SG Special at 105 guineas(£110.25) and the SG/Les Paul Junior at 75 guineas (£78.75).

Late in 1963 all the SG models dropped the Les Paul names and became exclusively SGs. More Fender influence on the Gibson lines came with the Firebird models of 1963, but despite their striking appearance the ploy didn't work at the time, even after a design revision when Fender complained. Gibson's sales of electric guitars during the 1960s had to rely on classic '50s designs such as the great semi-solid ES-335. Guitar sales in the US in general climbed throughout the early 1960s and hit a peak of about a million and a half units in 1965, after which the figures declined, falling to just over a million during 1967.

Gibson also applied the new SG shape to its Melody Maker model, which on its launch in 1959 had been the company's first budget solidbody (apart from the earlier Les Paul Juniors). At first it had a simple 'slab' single-cutaway body, modified to a double-cutaway design two years later, but in 1965 adopted the SG style, which it kept until dropped from the Gibson line during the early 1970s.

With the Gibson/Les Paul contract expired, from 1964 until 1967 there were no guitars in the Gibson line bearing the Les Paul name, either on the guitars themselves or in the company's literature. But the new-style SG models continued, and our story moves on. The first obvious change to the SGs came in 1966 with a larger pickguard surrounding the pickups, along with some woodworking mods that included a stronger neck/body joint repositioned at the 19th rather than the 22nd fret. Now the line consisted of the $175 SG Junior or SG TV, the $235 SG Special, the $317 SG Standard, and the $470 SG Custom.

By the late 1960s the company's solidbody electric lines were in a mess. Guitarist Bruce Bolen joined the company in 1967, and he remembered a company in poor condition. “One of the reasons I was hired was because Gibson's electric sales were floundering,” he said. “All we had in solidbody electrics were SGs, plus the arch top and thin line instruments, and they weren't selling all that well. The mainstay at the time was the flat-top acoustics. I was hired basically to go out and sell electric guitars.”

The event that ensured the eclipse of the SGs in some players' imaginations was the reissue in 1968 of the original old-style Les Pauls. Eric Clapton and the blues boom had highlighted their true worth, and it seemed as if everyone wanted one of those lovely single-cut Pauls. SGs were attracting key musicians too — George Harrison, for instance, had played a Standard to great effect over most of Revolver – but that fine work hidden behind studio walls didn't much boost their popularity. In March 1967 Clapton too succumbed to the charms of the SG when he bought a Standard and had it painted with a psychedelic scene by Dutch artists The Fool (the same chaps who had daubed the front of The Beatles Apple boutique). It's the guitar you can hear on most of Disraeli Gears.

Demand for electric guitars began to pick up again during the early 1970s, and the SG was more or less back to its original look by about 1972. Gibson reacted to the new demand by adding a couple of budget SG lines. The SG-100, SG-200 and SG-300 appeared in 1971 and lasted for a couple of years until the short-lived SG-1, SG-2 and SG-3. All were basic SG-styled solid bodies that offered the general look if not the sophistication of the up market models. Gibson also started work on a second factory at Nashville, Tennessee, some 500 miles south of Kalamazoo. Recent strikes had cost them dear, and the new plant of 100,000 square feet was seen as a way of getting cheaper labour away from the unions in industrial Michigan.

Work began on the new facility, five miles to the east of Nashville, in 1974, and the factory eventually opened in June 1975. Gibson's original intention was to keep both Kalamazoo and Nashville running, with Nashville producing very large quantities of a handful of models and Kalamazoo staying more flexible with the potential to specialize in small runs. So Nashville was the obvious choice to produce the Les Paul models which they needed in the greatest volume at the time – alongside just a couple of SGs, the Standard ($465) and Custom ($685).

Another budget SG appeared at the end of the 1970s, a spartan instrument known as “The SG”. It lasted until 1983 and was a bit like a pared-down Special. An optional version, The SG Firebrand, came with a 'branded' Gibson logo, presumably intended to make us gullible guitarists think that here was a hot item.

In the early 1980s, parent company Norlin decided to sell Gibson. Sales fell by 30 percent in 1982 alone, to a total of $19.5 million against a high in 1979 of $35.5 million. Of course, Gibson was not alone in this sales decline: the guitar market in general had virtually imploded and most other American makers were suffering in broadly similar ways. Their costs were high, economic circumstances and currency fluctuations were against them, and Japanese competitors increasingly had the edge.

By now all the main Gibson production was handled at the Nashville plant, with Kalamazoo acting as a specialist factory making custom orders, banjos and mandolins. As far as Norlin was concerned, its closure was inevitable. The last production at Kalamazoo was in June 1984, and the plant closed three months later, after more than 65 years' worthy service. It was of course an emotional period for all the staff, many of whom had worked in the plant for a long time.

Norlin had put Gibson up for sale around 1980, and by summer 1985 they finally found a buyer. In January 1986 three businessmen – Henry Juskiewicz, David Berryman and Gary Zebrowski, who had met while classmates at Harvard business school – completed their purchase of the Gibson operation for $5 million. Juskiewicz still heads the company today. As well as tailoring a reissue program to sensible and defined areas, the new owners continued to attempt innovations and to introduce new models, but still apparently with little effect on us players who still think that Gibson mostly means classics: Les Pauls, SGs, 335s, flat-tops. And why not?

The SG lines continued to bob in and out of the Gibson catalogue in the 1980s and '90s. The TV had stopped in 1968, while the Junior had fallen away in 1971, only to be brought back in the early 1990s - but there's no sign of it in the current line, apart from one model with Gibson's budget Epiphone brand. The Special was dropped in 1978, reintroduced in various guises during the 1980s, and today is once more in the line as the SG Special (plus an aged 'Faded' version) and the Custom Shop 'Limited Historic' SG Special. There's an Epiphone SG Special and G-310, too.

The Standard is the most consistent survivor, appearing today as the SG Standard, the Custom Shop 'Historic' SG Standard and the SG '61 Reissue. There's also an Epiphone Elitist '61 SG Standard, and the Standard-like Epiphone G-400. The Custom was dropped in 1980 but came back as the '62 Custom in 1986 and then as the SG Les Paul Custom in '87. Today there's a deluxe version called the SG Supreme as well as a Custom Shop 'Historic' SG Custom. There's also an Epiphone G-400 Custom. The double‑neck SG, the EDS-1275, is currently available in Gibson's Custom/Designer line, or whatever they call it this month.

Gibson put out a 30th Anniversary SG Custom in 1991, but signature SG models have been something of a rarity in the company's catalogue. So where's the Eric Clapton SG? Or the George Harrison SG? What we do have is the Angus Young Signature SG. According to Gibson, the faithful repro of the AC/DC guitarist's SG Standard has exactly what it takes to rock "all night long"'. It comes complete with personal details such as the Angus Signature bridge pickup (plus a '57 Classic neck humbucker), a 'devil' headstock logo, an 'Angus' engraved Lyre vibrola, and a special Angus Young Signature SG hardshell case.

One of the few other star-related SGs was the Tony Iommi Signature SG, which Gibson offered from 1998 to 2003. The Black Sabbath guitarist has used a number of Gibson and non-Gibson SGs over the years, but the signature model had a pair of special Iommi humbuckers, a cross-inlay 24-fret ebony fingerboard, and (naturally) was finished in black. It was superseded in 2003 by an Epiphone version, the Tony Iommi G-400. There have also been signature SGs for The Who's Pete Townshend (an entirely intact Special with the post-'65 style wraparound pickguard) and Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington (a Standard).

The SG models seem always to reside in the shadow of the Les Pauls, but the instruments have a character all their own, and a feel and playability that ensure their survival as distinctly separate guitars. Pick one up after putting down a Les Paul and the easier availability of the higher frets will not escape your attention. Those sculpted edges we've talked about are hard to ignore too – but, in fact, the body is really something of a slab without them. You could almost consider the SG as Gibson's Telecaster if you were in the right mood, especially if you're a Junior or Special fancier.

Of course, it's impossible to think about the SG as just one guitar, as there are a whole range of feature combinations and a variety of periods to choose from. The current line reflects that history, and Gibson has chosen reasonably sensibly from its own heritage. Real vintage oldies offer a mixed blessing, but in general prices for SG models are cheaper than equivalent Les Pauls. At any given period, you'll begetting the same pickups and the same build quality (good or bad), just set in a different package. That alone makes it well worth a look at secondhand SGs.

What's more, playing an SG really will put you in the very best of company... so maybe it's time you reconsidered the SG for yourself.

Tony Bacon is the author of 50 Years Of The Les Paul, Electric Guitars The Illustrated Encyclopedia and more. His latest work is Six Decades Of The Fender Telecaster (Balafon)

Reprinted with permission/copyright of Guitar & Bass Magazine . IPC
Country & Leisure Media Ltd.
This article originally appeared in Guitar & Bass Magazine , February 2006.
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