Trigger Warning: If you’re a Gibson fanboy, you might hate this video.
Hey everybody, it’s been far too long since we’ve done an episode of the »Can you play
metal on« series. I love hearing from you guys, as this show is dependent on what you, the viewers,
want to see. And in that spirit, I have a question from Copper Dragon:
"Hi Glenn. Greetings from Oregon. Love the brutal honesty on here. Simple question:
For the next “Can you play metal on...”, will the next episode be on the Gibson SG?"
Well Copper Dragon, that’s a great idea. Let’s take a look at history of the Gibson
SG! *Intro Plays*
So far, we've looked at two other Gibson guitars and how they perform for metal:
The Les Paul and the ES335 hollow body. So to continue down the timeline of when Gibson were
actually innovating and creating unique designs, it's only fitting we take a look at another iconic
guitar in the world of rock music: The Gibson SG For starters, what the hell does SG even mean?
SG simply stands for: Solid Guitar. It started being developed around 1960. Over the previous
several years, sales of the Gibson Les Paul began to rapidly decline, and Gibson knew that the
guitar was due for a serious makeover. Working with the Les Paul as a base, the body was made
much thinner and flat. This served two very important purposes. Not only did the thinner
bodies allow Gibson to reduce the production costs, it also made the guitars much lighter,
and I'm sure many guitarists' shoulders were very grateful for that! The guitar was also given the
now famous double cutaway design. This, paired with the neck joint that was moved back 3 frets,
allowed guitarists much easier access to the higher frets, making solos easier to play.
However, due to the loss of weight in the body, the SG suffers from a very serious design
flaw – Neck dive. For those of you who don't know, “neck dive” is what happens when the center of
gravity of a guitar shifts towards the neck due to an imbalance between the weight of the body,
and the weight of the neck. So when you put a strap on your guitar and
put it around your shoulder, it's going to slide out of a comfortable playing position.
Fortunately, there are some ways to correct this, but this is a history lesson,
not a woodworking tutorial! The guitar finally made its debut in 1961 as
the »Gibson Les Paul SG«, and was advertised as having the »fastest neck in the world«
Throughout the years, the SG would also spawn a few variations of it's iconic design,
including the SG junior, which had only one P90 pickup in the bridge, the SG Custom with
3 humbuckers and even the EDS-1275 doubleneck. Hell, they even made an SG Bass for all the
stupid fucks who don’t know how to mute their strings, and are too lazy to learn the songs!
Despite all the hype surrounding the new Gibson, not all was sunshine and rainbows behind the
scenes. While the guitar was very popular, it turns out that the guitar's name sake, Les Paul,
was not made aware of the redesign. Infact, he had nothing to do with it at all,
and ended up not liking it all that much. In the early 60ies, Les Paul and his Wife Mary Ford,
who were a popular music duo with several hits under their belts,
were going through a divorce. At the time, Les was making 1$ per guitar, sold in royalties. In order
to protect some of those royalties, Les asked his friend and then president of Gibson, Ted McCarty,
to withhold his royalties, and to drop his name from the guitar. By 1963,
Les Paul's name was removed from the guitar, and Gibson shortened its name down to just »SG«
Nevertheless, The SG was very popular and sold very quickly, so much so that Gibson's parent
company, Chicago Musical Instruments, revived their own brand of guitars called Kalamazoo.
In an attempt to try and capitalize on the SG's success they released two models - the KG-1 and
KG-2, both of which featured a similar body style to the SG and were cheaper.
The SG became a staple among rock guitarists. Everyone from Frank Zappa, Alex Lifeson of Rush,
George Harrison, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and even some of the later Beatles releases
all sported the guitar. However, the SG is still most famously used by AC/DC's Angus Young,
and the iconic sound it gave their records. As with any instrument, what really counts is
how well it works in a mix. So I’ve gathered a few friends together to put the SG through it’s paces.
Al the Yeti Bones will be running his Left Handed SG into a Soldano SLO100, into a Revv 4X12 loaded
with WGS Veteran 30 speakers. Cam Fleury is on the Drums, and Erik Arko is on the bass. Hit it!
With it's awesome soaring toans and amazing playability, it's easy to see why the SG is so
popular among hard rock and metal guitarists. Tony Iommi ended up having problems with his Fender
Stratocaster's pickup dying during his recording sessions on the first Black Sabbath album.
And because they only had 2 days to record, and repairs weren't so cheap and easy back in 1970,
he opted for his backup guitar – his SG. It was then that the guitar became THE
sound of the band, and Iommi became a devout SG player. He loved the fatter sound it gave over
his strat, but it was also a lot easier to play. At 17, he was working at a sheet metal factory
and had a pretty bad accident. He ended up losing the tips of his middle and ring fingers,
so his strat would sometimes be hard to play, and the SG's easy upper frett access was the
solution he was looking for. So is the SG a heavy metal
guitar? ABSOLUTELY! Considering it was used on what could be called »the first« metal album,
and it's popularity among the New Wave of British Metal guys like Judas Priest's Glenn Tipton,
it certainly earned it's iconic status. Hell, just go on equipboard.com and you can see just
how many metal guys have used one at some point in their careers. It's practically endless,
and it shows just how big of an impact this guitar has had on the world of heavy metal. In 1963,
Gibson discontinued the Explorer. In 1959 and again in 1963, they discontinued the Flying V, and
in 1961, even the famous Les Paul was discontinued – all as a result of low sales. The SG, however,
is the only Gibson guitar that has NEVER been discontinued and is their best selling guitar
of ALL-TIME! That's right, it's sold more than the Les Paul, the ES335, and even the pinnacle
of Gibson's guitar designs, the totally gorgeous and not hideous at all, 4500$ Modern Flying V!
Even though the SG is popularly known for classic rock and stoner metal,
it definitely has its own flavor that lends itself extremely well to the metal sound. It's a damn
shame that Gibson have replaced the business model of creating awesome guitar designs with a »HEY,
LET'S JUST SUE OUR COMPETITORS« strategy, because at the rate they're going, we may never see
another Gibson guitar quite as iconic as the SG. What do I think? Well throughout my career,
I've had a few less than favorable encounters with the SG. Back in 2009, I was recording the
Betrayer self-titled album, and we had a 1966 Gibson SG on loan. We were quad tracking, and
due to a tuning stability issue, we had to throw out an entire albums' worth of rhythm guitars,
and start over with a Shecter Hellraiser. Because unlike the Gibson, Schecter is capable of building
an instrument that will stay in tune. Despite the tuning problem, the sound we got out of that
guitar was fantastic. I also got to check out a 7 string SG that Oscar Garcia brought to the
Hollywood Studio a year ago, and unfortunately, that had some major tuning issues as well,
despite him pouring hundreds of dollars into that guitar, in a desperate attempt to fix it.
But who knows? Your mileage may vary! Plenty of people have used the SG and got great results,
but then again, don’t bet the farm on it.