NGD: 1961 Gibson SG Special

[Pacafeliz]

Ooooh yeah! Dream guitar right there!
Congrats, enjoy!!!

[HorseyBoy]

I'm really tempted to go with the mojoaxe, with the idea of maybe finding a proper vibrola down the road.

Good idea - I did the same with my 67 SG Junior. The Mojoaxe bridge is excellent quality. I had a Badass on mine for a long time, too - it was installed by my guitar tech in the early 90s, so those things really got around!

[burpgun]

That’s a sweet SG. I have a mid 2000s Classic that follows the specs of this guitar pretty closely except for having the big pick guard and a tune-o-mastic bridge.

Thanks!

I've had an SG Classic since around 2009, and pimped it out to get it as close to a vintage one. FTR, the Classic has a much chunkier neck.


Gibson SG Body, July, 2009 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr

Lollar P-90s, Emerson wiring harness, and a Faber ABR bridge & tailpiece are all on it now. It's a keeper, or it was until now.

That's funny: The dude I bought my Classic off also had installed Lollars in there! I don' t have a huge amount of experience with P90s and have heard they are noisy even for singles, but my SG is probably the quietest guitar I have relative to a a couple of Jazzmasters and a XII re-issue. And you are very much correct about the neck, super chunky, in a way some folks may not much like.

One other thing I'll say about my SG which could probably apply to all SGs. Fenders, which remain my favorite over all, feel assembled, while the SG feels crafted. It's probably not true, but it just feels like more work went into making the SG compared to say a Jazzmaster, and it sort of changes how I relate to the SG.

[CaptainCrunch]

I have one as well, Polaris White refin after the Kahler and humbuckers were patched. It's the most resonant guitar I own, though I foolishly put 12's on it and haven't played it much since.

Enjoy it!

[MrFingers]

It indeed appears that guitar once had a Maestro Vibrola on it. Not the leaf-sprung design that is regularly found on Gibsons, but the one with a torsional spring, the Maestro Tremotone. It's the same Tremotone that was found on Epiphones.



Every once in a while one does pop up: https://reverb.com/item/14773609-origin ... on-epi-etc

[Dr Tony Balls]

WOW. I'me not really a Gibson fan, myself, but that guitar is FANTASTIC looking. Congrats!

[Maggieo]

Thanks, gang!

Man, finding a trem for this guitar is damn near impossible for some reason.

[papa_hotel_delta]

It sounds exactly like you imagine- Pete Townshend playing "A Quick One While He's Away" on the Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus.

. . .one of the greatest tones in all R&R history that.

That bridge on yours was a very popular solution that everyone thought they really needed back in the 70s for their cheap Gibson's. I think the original was called a Leo Quon "badass", that was the one I bought and put on my atrociously bad SG-200 with the cherry finish (that I failed horribly to refinish with chemical stripper).

Great SG!

[Maggieo]

It sounds exactly like you imagine- Pete Townshend playing "A Quick One While He's Away" on the Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus.

. . .one of the greatest tones in all R&R history that.

That bridge on yours was a very popular solution that everyone thought they really needed back in the 70s for their cheap Gibson's. I think the original was called a Leo Quon "badass", that was the one I bought and put on my atrociously bad SG-200 with the cherry finish (that I failed horribly to refinish with chemical stripper).

Great SG!

Thanks!

I'm replacing the Badass bridge with a Mojoaxe tailppiece/bridge. It looks vintage, but it machined for unwound G strings.

If I ever find that trem, it's going on, too. They're like mini-Bigsbys!!!

[BoringPostcards]

Ooooh yeah! Dream guitar right there!
Congrats, enjoy!!!

+10000000

[MrFingers]

The 1962 Catalog states that that Vibrola was available as an option on the Special, TV, Jr & Melody Maker for a 27.5$ upcharge.

[crianlarich]

So, they did exist in the Gibson world! Good news.
But to me it remains a mystery how they work. In that "clean and complete" example on Reverb I can't see any spring.
I have one of these sitting on my SG 250 (which is so good I wouldn't trade it for any humbuckered SG!) as a tailpiece. Well, the anchor is installed backwards. The axle doesn't move, it is jammed in the frame. Broken beyond repair?
It would be fun to reverse engineer the unit, as you could make a bar from a spoon .

[MrFingers]

It's an interntal torsion spring. The bar the strings wrap around is a hollow tube, and in the cavity sits a coil spring that connects the string-bar to the horseshoe that mounts to the body, and that spring is pre-torqued so it offsets string tension.

[burpgun]

The 1962 Catalog states that that Vibrola was available as an option on the Special, TV, Jr & Melody Maker for a 27.5$ upcharge.

Not sure if catalog prices were street prices back then, but $210 in 1962 is own $1,800 inflation adjusted. I just point that out because in real terms it looks like you can get a similar spec SG now for less than back in the day.

[MrFingers]

And that was excluding the case. For all models you had to buy a separate case at 50$.