Gibson #3 - SG Raw Power

The polar opposite of my Gothic SG, light vs dark.

Maple body, neck and fretboard, classic '57 pickups, Klusons etc. etc. vs Mahogany body and neck with ebony fretboard, EMGs, Grovers and so on.

Unusually for a Gibson it's a three piece neck and being maple this should really be tough as old boots. So less worry about the classic SG headstock disaster.

The only thing I don't like about it is the weird dark smoke scratchplate which you can just about see through in the light. I'd have preferred a bog standard 3-ply black one.

Plays very nicely, does the usual twin humbucker Gibson thing, but with a much brighter more airy tone.

What I don't quite understand is how Gibson can get away with the gig bag it came in. The flimsiest piece of tat I've seen for ages. You wouldn't expect to get this with anything but a real cheapie.

Epiphone #1 - '58 reissue Korina flying V'

Not a new purchase, I bought this before I even started the blog but it's been on loan to a friend for about 18 months.

I've always liked flying Vs and when I was a student in the late 80s I had one of those enamel guitar pin badges which I eventually lost at some gig or other. I'm pretty sure that was of a '58 Korina V because I remember the colour and V tailpiece.

There have been a few different generations of these with minor differences, this is one of the old Korean made models with Grover machine heads instead of Kluson copies. Nowadays they're made in China.

I did a bit of reading round the subject before buying and it seemed these ones had a really good reputation but were know for slightly iffy electrics.

When I collected it I could tell immediately the electrics were dodgy. It suffered from bad microphonics and the pots were nasty. Nevertheless it's a very pretty lump of wood. I've seen some that are made of three pieces and joined untidily but this is nicely done down the centre line. The grain runs roughly parallel to the sides of the V so meets attractively in the middle instead of being horizontal like some I've seen.

Due to the crummy electrics I rewired this with some Kent Armstrong alnico Rockers and decent pots. It now does the twin humbucker classic rock guitar thing very nicely. The pickups are lively without being out and out ceramic metal monsters.

Columbus #2 - 'Les Paul Custom' black

A while back I expressed a nostalgic urge to own a 70s Columbus Les Paul Custom like my first guitar. They're not hard to come by so here I am with one. It's spent a while being fettled into a state where it's nice to play as opposed to the filthy mess it was in when I got it.

With the nut replaced so it's closer to how it would have originally been, it's surprisingly playable. I don't really like the small 70s frets, I'm definitely a fan of modern jumbo ones but still if I were a skint teenager there's essentially nothing wrong with this. Its modern Korean equivalent (you could get a Washburn WI64 Idol secondhand for £100 if you're lucky) would be much better, but this is hardly unplayable junk.

I remembered the plastic parts on mine seeming nasty but actually this is pretty solid, although the scratchplate is somewhat brittle. The switch toggle for example is really quite nice and the witch hat knobs are better than the ones I bought to stuff on the BFG.

It's very obviously a cheap plywood bodied guitar, the binding is uneven and finish is bad with numerous little crusty bits and imperfections that look like they've always been there rather than it having gained them over its 30+ year life.

The ABR-1 style bridge and tailpiece however are nicely made and have survived very well, with little in the way of corrosion. The diamond back machine heads are perhaps a weak point, while they're intact and work OK they're really kind of wobbly/loose. They don't seem to hold tune that well, they're not terrible but even cheap modern guitars seem to come with very decent Schaller style sealed tuners that are rock solid.

All the controls still work with a crackle at the bottom end of the neck volume, but that's it. Pretty good for 30+ years, I imagine I won't be able to say that about many of my other guitars if they ever reach that age.

The pickups are weird things, being like one coil of a humbucker under a full humbucker cover. They were terribly microphonic when I got it but I've wax potted them and they're much much better now. Oddly they don't really sound like single coils. They sound like somewhat bright Alnico magnet humbuckers with a side order of electrical noise. You'd kind of expect them to be like P90s but they're not. They seem to have more in common with the EMG Selects in my RS8V. The output doesn't really suffer, I could manage my usual assortment of 80s/90s thrash on it without resorting to extra gain.

The only real damage to this are cracks in the neck pocket that almost look like the ply has separated after an impact as they run along one of the layers, which you can see in the finish. Having said that the neck is stable and the guitar plays fine so I'm not worried about it. If you heave on the neck when playing it does move more than most other things I've got but it's a fairly lightly constructed guitar so that's not unreasonable.

There's some wear to the skinny 70s frets but it's not terrible and the neck is straight enough. There was a tiny bit more relief than I like which I tried to take out with the truss rod but it got very tight very soon so I stopped fiddling with it.

This is obviously not quite the sublime toy that things like my EC29s are but it really does play perfectly well, I could hammer out all the same old stuff easily even if I did find the small frets vaguely irritating. The combination of pickups, bolt-on construction, thinner neck, light weight and so on contribute to it really 'ringing' in the way a more accurate Les Paul copy doesn't, at the cost of some sustain. It has a character of its own that doesn't disappoint, despite it being in the end just a piece of nasty 70s tat.

However if I were to ever utter the phrase 'vintage mojo' about one of these feel free to slap me.

Nostalgia is just what it used to be

So a while back I was thinking about picking up a 70s Columbus Les Paul copy like my first guitar and it was only a matter of time before I did.

This one was more in the price range I expected for such a piece of old tat than what they normally seemed to go for, thanks to a slightly rubbish eBay listing and a neck pocket crack.

Having arrived I've given it my usual clean and check over. It was absolutely minging with the sort of pitch black corroded strings I associate with teenage ownership. I did play it briefly and it seemed to all be working apart from crackly pots and a loose jack but frankly it was too vile to handle for very long.

Looking it over carefully, taking a pickup out and having the covers off I've discovered it appears to be 100% original right down to all the electrics with solder unbroken.

At some point the neck volume pot has come loose and spun, yanking the wire off the tone pot. So I quickly resoldered that. I removed all the pots (which had all spun round and been retightened), unwound the cabling so it wasn't taut then put it back as it should be.

The pickups are odd. I'd seen comment online that they were actually single coils under a humbucker cover and that would seem to be correct. It's not clear from the photo but where the 'slug' bobbin should be there's just a space. What I don't quite get is that when I played it with the gain right up on my HT-1R there really wasn't very much unwanted electrical noise.

The body is ply of some kind but it looks like instead of taking a big lump then drilling/routing cavities they actually made a sandwich of three bits of ply with bits already routed out. So the channel from the toggle switch back to the main control cavity is a big square one, not a drilled hole. Very odd.

It's obviously had 'one careful owner, ten not so careful' and is covered in small scratches/dings but none of these are terrible, the neck is seemingly straight-ish and none of the hardware is butchered. Which is good going for a 30+ year old cheap guitar.

The only obvious bad thing so far is the nut. Somebody has cut this, probably using the same not so small needle file for all the strings. So apart from bottom E they lurk in huge ugly slots. It played OK but I can't leave it like this.

So I'm going to fit and slot a new nut. Once this is done I'll post my usual five pictures of the guitar in ready to play state.

BC Rich #4 - 'NJ Speedloader Virgin'

This is the guitar with about the naffest 'stop sniggering at the back' name you could imagine. It even came with a terrible tacky 'have you plucked a Virgin?' ad campaign when launched.

Oh well this one was pretty cheap.

This is very very similar to my Warlock, the upper bout is similarly shaped and the neck is probably identical apart from the truss rod cover.

I have no intention of keeping this. It has been bought to steal the Speedloader tremolo from so I can fit it to my RS10V project.

The seller shipped it with the neck unbolted and when I put it back together it was pretty clear they didn't know how to set the Speedloader up as it was all over the place with some of the fine tuners wound right down. Now set up, I've played it for about half an hour and it's nice enough. These Korean NJs weren't cheap originally despite being bolt-on models and they're much nicer than the modern cheapo models. The body shape actually works well, it's light and pretty compact. Still a stupid name though.

The main feature is the Speedloader which is a piece of nicely finished US engineering. It's the sort of quality that you'd expect from Schaller or Gotoh and a massive step up in sophistication and precision from an original Floyd Rose.

Whether or not it's actually a good idea is debatable though.

Setting them up is super fiddly. Alternative tunings are nigh impossible (you might manage half a step either way, but I'm not going to try) unless somebody makes special string sets. Which they won't. Standard tuning strings are uncommon enough.

Once set up though, string changes are amazingly simple and can be done in seconds. The string starts at tension and you just need to fine tune it.

Tuning stability is great, but you'd kind of expect that.

If I manage to swap the Speedloader onto the RS10V, I think I'll just sell the carcass on. It'd make an ideal project for somebody to drill the headstock for machine heads and fit a standard tremolo.

Gibson #2 - 'SG Gothic II'

"So black your eyes kind of slide off it."

Proof that marketing works. I was reading a recent copy of Guitarist where they reviewed the new Gibson Anniversary 24 and I think the previous month I saw a review of the SG Gothic Morte. This had served to remind me that I have fancied an SG for a while. eBay is awash with cheap SG Specials so it wasn't likely to be long before I had another guitar related walletbusting accident.

Thing is having looked a fair bit I'm not keen on the finish options you get. The overwhelming majority for sale are the 'worn' and 'faded' ones which are generally insipid colours and the 'worn' ones have a nasty faux relic thing going on. Who wants a guitar where the best description the manufacture can come up with for it is 'worn brown'. I had an Austin Maestro the same colour and that was most definitely not rock and roll.

This isn't just internet speculation from peering at a screen, I've been looking at SGs in the flesh and while I normally like satin finish guitars I really don't like the 'worn' and 'faded' ones.

You do get SG specials with a gloss finish in strong colours but they're less common and quite a bit more pricey. You'd have to get it in cherry red and then you'd always be disappointed it wasn't an SG standard. Even if there isn't perhaps as much difference between the two as with other models.

Which is all a bit of an 'arms race' that leads to me wanting a pretty expensive guitar instead of one of the cheap Specials kicking around.

Oh and then there are lots of fakes around.

So with a bit of a rethink I started looking for one of these. Not made for very long, the 'Gothic' models were a satin black take on the Special. Gibson did a Les Paul, Flying V and Explorer in addition to the SG and there are also equivalent Epiphones.

It's a Special in a decent solid colour and as a plus point they upgraded to an ebony fretboard, i.e. pretty much what I'm looking for. I'm pretty sure the fretboard radius was increased to a widdle friendly 14"+ too.

They did two generations of the Gothic SG, the first had a single 'moon and star' inlay at the 12th fret which is pretty nice but this second generation one has no fret markers at all. I love this. It's also missing the bizarre 'Gothic photo' of a bearded guy on the back of the headstock the first ones came with.

Then there are the EMGs.

The 1st gen. 'Gothic' came with uncovered versions of Gibson's workhorse 490R/T pickups. This came with the thrashmetaltastic EMG 81/85 combo. The 490s would have been fine, I have no idea why Gibson did this, maybe they should have named it the 'Metal SG' not the 'Gothic SG II'.

Regardless, it ticks a lot of my boxes. EMGs aren't for everybody and certainly have a reputation for making everything sound the same but I quite like them. Do you take cash?

Washburn #13 - 'RS10V' blue quilt

The RS10V is a Washburn cut from the same cloth as my RS8V but is the fancier model with a quilted top and there are abalone inlays in the composite fretboard.

Electrics and so on are identical but this has a different tremolo. Instead of the double locking 600T setup, this has one that doesn't lock at the bridge. It looks like a standard Floyd Rose style bridge but the strings pass though the saddles from the back with the ball ends intact.

I've watched a few of these come and go on eBay and this is the first cheap one. I really like the RS8V which is why I've been keeping an eye on these.

There is a reason for it being dirt cheap, which should be pretty obvious.

I have a cunning plan.

Indie #34 - 'IPR1 Anniversary'

Kerbling Fatman!

Yet again I have bought a duplicate, but this came up at a 'rude not to' price on eBay.

It's #120 and other than the fact it came with amber control knobs it's pretty much identical to my other one.

I'm still not a fan of fixed wraparound bridges so as soon as I got it I swapped the bridge for a Gotoh adjustable one.

When it arrived it had rather heavy strings on, maybe 12s, and there was more relief in the neck than I'd like. After leaving the guitar a few days to settle with no strings on I've given the truss rod a tweak and it's now pretty much how I want it.

Incidentally when I got my notched straight edge out to set the neck relief I found the scale length was 24.75", not the 25" you'd expect for a PRS copy or the 25.5" that was on the Indie website ages ago.

Indie #31 - 'S type' mahogany

A mahogany bodied strat, with a 50s style one piece maple neck. This was bought expressly to make a 'Dave Murray' inspired strat. Which is essentially a black 50s strat retrofitted with cream Duncan Distortions at neck and bridge. There are also chrome pickup surrounds, which I assume on the original guitar hid a scruffy job of fitting the pickups.

So modding a standard strat into an 'inspired by' guitar of my own was not much of a reach really, although the official Fender item apparently has a special neck profile. I won't bother with that.

After a couple of evenings throwing parts together I've got it to the state you see on the left, which is pretty much where I want it, apart from the natural finish body. This is quite a nice large lump of mahogany and I'm now thinking I'll actually keep that on display.

The beauty of working with strats is that I can just lift the whole scratchplate assembly out and install it in another guitar. The cheap strat I've just found is likely to be the home for it once I've refinished the body.

Which means this is still very much a work in progress.

Indie #33 - 'S type' butterscotch

Yes, I've already got one of these in exactly the same finish but this was bought as a 'parts donor' for projects and is the cheapest guitar I've bought, at the grand total of £31.99.

It's even a guitar with a fairly minor but genuine indie rock star heritage. Bought randomly off eBay, the seller was actually Mike Baker of 'The Holloways'. The band received several guitars from Indie some years back. This one kicked around on their tour bus for ages (it shows) and was played by all manner of people they toured with, including Kasabian.

It's not going to stop me gutting it and turning the remains into a partscaster. The plan is to strip the body and use it for the 'Dave Murray' project instead of the last S-type I bought. I like the mahogany body of the other one too much to cover in paint.

It's missing the bridge and is covered in scuffs, scrapes and filth. The photos don't really show how nasty it is, it looks like people have been walking on it. However the neck looks straight and the body dings are all minor. Some of the neck dings are actually through the finish so I may end up refinishing it or swapping necks if they interchange nicely.

I may also take this neck and play with fitting a locking nut to it if some measuring shows there to be enough clearance over the truss rod. It's the next logical step after I built myself a jig and recut the nut shelf on the Mockingbird.

If I do that then I'll route one of my strat bodies for a Floyd Rose and make something reminiscent of a Charvel So Cal, i.e. a first generation superstrat.