Original subtitles

Hi, this is Keith Williams. Welcome to

Five Watt World, where instrument help

you get the most music from the least

gear. It was probably 1975. I'd have

been about 15 years old when I saw my

first really good electric guitar. I'd

been playing acoustic, a 12string

epohone in 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 opened the case. What I saw was

not the gold top I was expecting, but

rather a 1962 Les Paul SG standard. To

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

perlloid 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 LP standard in the morning

light coming through those stained glass

windows. This is the five watt world

short history of the Gibson SG. If you

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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 less Pauls, and they just

weren't selling enough guitars in the

wake of a huge expansion of the factory.

So Gibson put a team together under the

direction of Larry Allers 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

Hery, author of Gibson guitars Ted

McCarti's Golden Era. quote, "It's

possible that Allers actually did the 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 Gibson's 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 in TV models in 58 and 59, 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. Wonder how many

newspaper classified ads led to

confusion when they called the battle

less 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 in weight,

and custom contoured. Wonderfully

designed solid body perfectly balanced

for playing in a standing position.

Speaking of things that we'd laugh at

today, given the SG's notoriety for neck

dive, the SG's styling carried through

the rest of the solid body line. The

Junior, SGTV, and SG special were

announced in the summer of 61,

coinciding with the summer NM show. The

prices in that first issue year were the

junior, junior 3/4er, and TV at $142.50,

50, the special at $195, the standard at

$265, and the custom at $395.

The new SG had a body and neck made from

mahogany sourced from then British

Honduras, now Bise 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° along the edge of

the front and the back. The bevels make

the body appear even thinner and are an

essential part of the SG's 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

position of 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 multiply

picku guard 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. Two PAFs with

nickelplated covers were set into the

body. A VAR tailpiece which Gibson named

the Vibbra we now know it as the

sideways VBR. There were four metal cap

top hat knobs. The three-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 there. Crown

perloid plastic position markers were

inlaid in the rosewood fingerboard and

the nut was made of hard plastic as

well. Clusen deluxe tuners were fitted

to the headstock with closed 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 in ink and oversprayed

with the lacquer. The black plastic

truss rod cover was inscribed with

LesPaul 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, it 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

fingerboards with dots, Clusen plastic

button tuners, and at first less Paul on

the headstock. All three came standard

with a wraparound tailpiece, but an

optional version was offered with either

six saddle bridge or the VBR tailpiece.

In 1962, Gibson offered a tree of SG

double neck guitars. The first Gibson

double necks were offered in 1958, but

these have been semihollow body guitars.

The new SGbase double necks were fully

solid. The bodies of the double neck

instruments were 16 in wide, about 3 in

wider than the single necked SGs. And at

about 12 lbs, they weighed about twice

what most of the regular guitars

weighed. The double necks were custom

order only, and very few of anyone type

were built as Jimmy Paige, Alex Lysson,

and Don Felder made history with theirs.

The new SGS Pauls were not immediately

embraced in the market by famous players

except for Sister Rosetta Tharp. 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

guitarists took note. She appeared in a

blues review that included Muddy Waters,

Sunny Terry, and Brownie McGee, 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 Less as an

artist and the fact that his contract

with Gibson had run out. In addition to

some personal problems, 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 less Paul guitars. By 1964,

Gibson showed four models in the SG

line. A white SGTV 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 VAR was

replaced with the short Vibrola in 1965.

Gibson had made a number of changes to

the construction of the SG in the first

5 years. By 66, the neck joint was by

far the strongest it had been with a

greater amount of overlap of the body at

the back. Also in ' 66, Gibson switched

to a much larger pick 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 pick guard

seemed to come right out of the Fender

playbook. To further simplify

construction, the factory now generally

made a larger route like it used on the

custom to accommodate the three pickups

and wiring on all of the SG guitars.

Late in the 60s, a few other small

changes were made. The nickel planing

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 in Big

Brother and the Holding Company played

SGS backing vocalist Janice Joplain. Sam

Andrews played a standard with a liar

vibbrola, while James Gurley played a

special. To round things out, the

basist, Peter Alban, played an EB3,

which was effectively an SG style bass.

George Harrison was a noted user of

Gretch 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 the Revolver album. Gibson

Records showed that the standard had

been shipped from the factory in October

of 1964. He was pictured with the SGN

film clips for Rain and Paperback Rider

in ' 66 and Lady Madonna in ' 68. Around

1969, he gave the SG to Pete Ham of

Badfinger, who were signed to the

Beatles Apple Records label. Ham played

the guitar throughout the 70s until his

death in 75. Ham's brothers sold the X

Harrison SG at auction in 2004 for

$567,500.

Eric Clapton's second sunburst, Les

Paul, was stolen in the early months of

1967.

Around this time, Clapton had acquired a

used SG standard. The first hint of

Clapton using the SG is the sound of a

bar on the demo recordings that Cream

made in London on March 15th, 1967.

He was also photographed playing the

guitar at a gig shortly thereafter. Soon

after that gig, Clapton had his SG

painted by two Dutch painters that were

known collectively as the Fool. The

artist also painted Jack Bruce's Fender

6 and Ginger Baker's bass drum head.

Bruce didn't like the feel of the paint

and replaced the Fender with, wait for

it, an SG-shaped Gibson EV3. Clapton

loved the paint job and wrote in his

autobiography that they'd turned the SG

quote into a psychedelic fantasy end

quote. The guitar was probably built

somewhere between 63 and 65. As we know

that it had a deluxe Vbrola on it when

he bought it. Clapton had bits of the

Vbrilla removed. first the arm and then

the cover to let the artwork show

through, eventually leaving just the

frame as a simple tailpiece. He replaced

the clusen tuners with grovers as he'd

done on his less Pauls. Clapton managed

to hold on to 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 Israeli gears. After the

making the move to Stratacasters, he may

have given the SG to George Harrison.

What we do know is that it ended up with

Jackie Lomax, an American friend of

Harrison's. By the early 70s, Todd

Runren had bought the guitar from Lomax.

Robbie Kger from The Doors played an SG.

Buck Dharma and Blue Oyster Cult had a

custom and a Bsby equipped standard. And

Jimmyi Hendrickx played a right-handed

white three pickup custom for about a

year starting in late ' 68, most notably

on Red House, marking the start in the

rise of the popularity of the model.

McTaylor in his final year with the

Blues Breakers 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 SGs

on the Dead's Live Dead album. Johnny

Winter played one during his set and

Steve Catz from Blood, Sweat, and 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 stone that

night, I probably would have

remembered." Pete Townsen with The Who

wielded his famous SG specials at

Woodstock, too. Pete was pretty rough on

his guitar, so he went through a number

of specials from 68 through 71, most

famously playing one on Live at Leads.

Townsen said he loved that it was such a

light and somewhat fragile guitar. He

liked how you could bend the neck for

VBR. 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 practically looking for old

SGS." 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 SP Pauls, they were at the

forefront of the growing vintage guitar

movement. By the late60s, 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 McCarti

left Gibson. McCarti was replaced by an

accountant who was quickly replaced by

another money guy. By 1969, with sales

down some $2 million from the previous

year, Gibson became part of the newly

formed Norland 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

6,677

standards in 70. 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

semic-ircular plate that held the

controls in the jack, which eliminated

the need to route the body from the

back. The big pick guard was replaced by

a less Paul style guard. The deluxe had

small block inlays like a late60s 335.

The bevels were 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 called a 90° neck pitch. This meant

that the neck was parallel with the body

and did not lean back from the plane of

the body as it had before. The neck was

shifted further into the body and this

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 remained

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 Bixsby B5 VR 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. The special

moved to the small block inlays along

with the standard. The special was given

too many humbuckers and the standard had

the new hotter super humbucking pickups

designed by Bill Lawrence. These are

sometimes referred to as tarbacks

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 Iomi had a pickup fail in his

Strat, so he turned to his backup

guitar. He said, "I had an 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." Iomi used his

SG special for a while and then briefly

used a white custom. Around 1970,

Birmingham pickup specialist John Burch

modified the special, adding an

adjustable bridge and custom pickups.

The guitar became known as Monkey for

the sticker that III put above the

controls. Next, commissioned Birch 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 pick guard,

hot birch custom pickups, and cross

inlays on the neck. Imomiy's move to the

custom guitar reflected players

dissatisfaction with what was coming out

of Gibson at the time. In 75, Ding made

Iomi 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 Tony's original 60s

special. Frank Zappa had played other

Gibsons before switching over to the SG

around 1970 when his gold top Les Paul

was stolen. That one was probably a

brand new guitar as it had the large

pick guard. Zappa played a number of

SGs, but his pension for modding guitars

makes it hard to know how many went

through his hands. Around May of 73,

Zappa replaced the pickups with two

uncovered humuckers and added switches

in the pick guard for coil splitting and

phasing. That summer, he added a long

vibbra and a pale colored headstock face

in place of the original black one. It

became known as the Roxy 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 Paige

turned to a double neck EDS 1275 6 and

12 string to play the tune live. The

guitar became iconic of the performance

of Stairway of course and many seeing

Paige used one tried one as well. John

Mclofflin used a few different 612

doublen guitars with the Mahavishnu

Orchestra. Alex Lifson of Rush started

with a mid70s 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 reissuing the 1275 in

1975, now with the laminate maple necks,

available in Sunburst, Walnut, and

White, and as before, as a custom order

only. More 70s SG players included Dicky

Betts, playing as standard in the Almond

Brothers. In 71, he moved to a gold top

and sold the SG to his bandmate Dwayne

Almond. The popular image of Angus Young

crashing about the stage in a rock

frenzy and his school boy 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 SG was

a standard made in 70 or 71. Big

pickuard, long vibr, and a neck

headstock velute. The pickup covers were

removed as they often were to improve

trouble response. He swapped out the

tuners, took off the VBR, and put on a

wraparound bridge. After six years on

the road, SG1, drenched in years of acid

sweat, was retired and SG2 was purchased

in 78. Another early '7s 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

SG2 during the tour to support the

album. SG3 was a black custom from

around 1970, which had the middle pickup

removed and a new pick guard cut

accordingly. The AC/DC road crew,

probably having heard of his work with

Iomi, began to have John Diggins keep

Angus' guitars in shape. It was Diggins

who replaced the neck on SG1, adding the

Lightning Bolt inlays. With the repairs

in place, SG1 again became Angus'

favorite guitar. Young has used the

Lightning Bolt guitar for every tour

since, back and 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 less Pauls and SGs there

from Calamazoo seemed obvious. By then,

there were just two SG models. The

standard at $479 and the custom at $685.

In the late '7s, Gibson produced a

number of very short-lived SG style

models. One of these, the SG, had a

walnut body and neck, an ebony figure,

and a pale headstock color. It was

produced through 1981. They also tried

an active SG artist that had a switch

for active electronics and separate bass

and treble controls. Tim Shaw joined

Gibson in 78 and by 79 was working with

Bruce Bolan in R&D. 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 80s. But

the first SG reissue didn't come along

until 1986 with a release of the SG62.

Gibson had not saved many of the

original design materials for the SG.

So, like the Les Paul's, they were

reverse engineered from vintage guitars.

They copied almost everything except for

the sideways verd. So, the reissue had a

tunamatic bridge. The next year saw a

reissue custom based on what they'd

learned from building the SG62.

From that point on, SGS 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, Radio Head's Tom York is

mostly seen with a 64SG standard with

the Verbola arm removed. 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

Iomi's guitar tech in 1990 and this led

to Clement meeting and hitting it off

with Gibson's JT Ribbleoff. Ribbleoff

made a few one-off guitars for Iomi and

this led to a Gibson's signature Tony

Iomi pickups in 1997. In 99, the custom

shop did a run of Tony Iomi signature

SGS offered in left and right-hand

versions. Coming full circle, these were

actually copies of Iomi'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 Nam 2020 a new exacting

replica of Tony Iomi's monkey guitar.

Gibson launched an Angus Young signature

model in 2000, a large pick guard with a

long vibr and it lasted in 2009 when it

was replaced by custom shop versions.

The inevitable Pete Townsen SG custom

shop reissue came with an interesting

twist. A recreation of the guitar he

played at the Live at Leads concert. It

was a large pickgard 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 Pa'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 Dicky Betts SGbased on

the guitar that he'd long ago sold to

Dwayne Alman. 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 Diesel's

attention as the shorter scale makes

some of his father musics more

accessible on that guitar. He began

using it on the road with Zappa Play

Zappa. There have been further custom

shop runs for Brian Ray, Don Felder, and

Elliot Eastston and factory signature

guitars for Jeff Tweety and Derek

Trucks. It was around 1990 that Derek

Truck's parents found the money to buy

their budding guitarist 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 Dicky

Betts reissue SG. Dwayne's daughter

offered Derek the number four artist

proof of the run, which he continues to

play. The inevitable truck's signature

SG is based on that brotherto brother

guitar with the tweaks that Derek had

made over the years to include removing

all the guts of the Vbrola 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 less

Paul, but I'd argue that that's a

mistake. Modern masters continue to

return to the SG. Nashville studio cats

Tom Buavac and Kenny Greenberg, for

example. Guitar Heroes Eric Johnson and

Robin Ford have both recorded and toured

recently with vintage SGs as well. Add

to that the unique contributions that

artists like Clapton, Iomi, 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

David Honorado for once again bringing

their knowledge and style to improving

the script. I need to thank the guys at

Dawson's Music in Wrington, England for

the use of the demo music played for

them by the extraordinary Mr. Tom Quail.

And finally, this video would not have

been possible without Tony Bacon's

excellent The SG guitar book and Gil

Hebrew's Gibson Guitars, Ted Mccard'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 link's in the

description. Until next time, thanks for

being a part of the fivew world.

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