Very happy to share that I was finally able to get an ebony SG Custom at a reasonable price about a month ago and am having a great time playing it. I had an ebony SG Standard for a few months, essentially to be the SG counterpart to my Les Paul Custom Axcess w/Floyd. I rewired it with push-pull pots for coil split and mounted a Floyd Rose FRX on it. It quickly became my number one guitar as it was light, nimble, easy-to-play, and incredibly versatile, more so than the Les Paul Axcess. Although I ended up loving it, I got it to essentially test out the Floyd Rose FRX system on a "cheaper" guitar and was very pleased with the product, so I figured it was time to upgrade to what I originally wanted: an SG Custom with Floyd Rose.
When I received the SG Custom, I was pleased with how easy it played and how resonant it was compared to my SG Standard. I did the same mods to it as I did to the Standard but was taken aback at how much more difficult it was to install the Floyd Rose FRX. SG Customs (it seems all Custom Shop SGs as well) have a much shallower neck angle than a production SG. Also, the Custom split diamond decal faceplate on the headstock is thicker, so it made it difficult to install both the Floyd Rose and the locking nut as I wasn't able to get action as low as it needed it to be. I ended up routing a small channel on the body where the spring plunger hits the body and cutting a piece of the pickguard off. Sounds horrifying but it was a great learning experience and I'm happy to say the effort paid off. The Floyd system worked flawlessly and I was able to get a special locking nut from Floyd Rose that has a spacer to accommodate for the strings being so close the the decal plate.
Interestingly, this particular guitar came with a factory-installed nylon nut instead of corian, which is to my benefit, and the fretboard looks suspiciously like ebony. There are grain patterns on it, but I'm well aware that Gibson was use exclusively Richlite at the time. I reached out to both Gibson and Richlite and both analyses were inconclusive. Gibson couldn't verify the particular specs of each guitar and could only tell me it was a PSL sent to Japan. I've attached some close-ups of the fretboard to get your opinion on it in the photo link.
I used it for rather big gig and it was excellent. Finally got around to recording a video of it last week:
Thanks for reading and looking forward to your thoughts on the fretboard. I like both ebony and Richlite so it wasn't a dealbreaker, but I'm rather amused that it might be ebony. I'm leaning towards it being Richlite as it has no pores on it and it feels a bit denser than ebony would when I'm scratching or knocking on it, however, I haven't reached a certain conclusion yet.
When I received the SG Custom, I was pleased with how easy it played and how resonant it was compared to my SG Standard. I did the same mods to it as I did to the Standard but was taken aback at how much more difficult it was to install the Floyd Rose FRX. SG Customs (it seems all Custom Shop SGs as well) have a much shallower neck angle than a production SG. Also, the Custom split diamond decal faceplate on the headstock is thicker, so it made it difficult to install both the Floyd Rose and the locking nut as I wasn't able to get action as low as it needed it to be. I ended up routing a small channel on the body where the spring plunger hits the body and cutting a piece of the pickguard off. Sounds horrifying but it was a great learning experience and I'm happy to say the effort paid off. The Floyd system worked flawlessly and I was able to get a special locking nut from Floyd Rose that has a spacer to accommodate for the strings being so close the the decal plate.
Interestingly, this particular guitar came with a factory-installed nylon nut instead of corian, which is to my benefit, and the fretboard looks suspiciously like ebony. There are grain patterns on it, but I'm well aware that Gibson was use exclusively Richlite at the time. I reached out to both Gibson and Richlite and both analyses were inconclusive. Gibson couldn't verify the particular specs of each guitar and could only tell me it was a PSL sent to Japan. I've attached some close-ups of the fretboard to get your opinion on it in the photo link.
I used it for rather big gig and it was excellent. Finally got around to recording a video of it last week:
Thanks for reading and looking forward to your thoughts on the fretboard. I like both ebony and Richlite so it wasn't a dealbreaker, but I'm rather amused that it might be ebony. I'm leaning towards it being Richlite as it has no pores on it and it feels a bit denser than ebony would when I'm scratching or knocking on it, however, I haven't reached a certain conclusion yet.
