The Gibson Guitars blog site

Welcome to my Gibson Guitars Blog! My name is Adrian and I am a musician based in the UK. You can also safely assume that I am a big fan of Gibson guitars owning quite a few over the years and wishing I owned any number of others besides! The name Gibson has been synonimous with guitars for well over a century in both the Acoustic and Electric realms and they have been responsible for producing the sounds for every musical genre that exists today where guitars are used.

On this site I will make posts about everything and anything to do with Gibson guitars,their history, the people who play or played them, the sounds they make, the different models, styles and types, the good, the bad and sometimes ugly.

As a gigging musician I do actually play Gibsons on a regular basis, so will relay anything of note that I see or hear along the way. This could be from my own gigs or from going to watch other musicians playing Gibsons.

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The reason there haven’t been many posts recently is that I have been away, France specifically, visiting friends. A mate of mine moved there a few years ago and I periodically go over to do gigs with him or just to kick back and take advantage of the country’s legendary culinary delights. And to sample its fine wines and beers, of course. Ok, that’s pretty much all we do, with a bit of music getting in the way! So last Friday we played at a 50th birthday do, mostly for ex-pat Brits connected with British Airways, and a good time was had by all. Even the band sounded passable, despite the drummer not having touched a pair of sticks for over six months

Now, for as long as I have know him, my buddy over there has been the proud owner of a cherry red Gibson SG which he was playing at the gig. It is a somewhat odd looking Gibson as it has had its neck pickup removed and a replacement bridge/tailpiece fitted (by him). The serial number is in the 1200′000s. We have discussed its age and heritage on quite a few occasions and haven’t really come to any conclusions-he says he bought it in 1980 and was told by the shop that it was a 1961 model.

I knew this couldn’t be true as it also has a black front panel that houses the volume a tone controls fitted to it, along with some other very unoriginal and unGibson-like switches that look like they were either pickup selectors or coil taps. I can possibly see why the shop could have thought the guitar was a ‘61, as the serial number literature does indicate that original SGs had this number range in that year, but Gibson also repeated this range for guitars made between 1970 and 1973. (Or maybe they were just trying to con a young lad that he was buying a vintage instrument.) It also has a neck volute (so it definately isn’t early) and a fairly shallow headstock angle and gold “Gibson ” logo. Other features include a dot inlaid neck, unbound fingeroard and perspex control knobs, but only two of them rather than the usual four.

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