My not-so-straightforward love affair with SGs

When I started getting interested in electric guitars I first gravitated towards Jazz boxes, for some strange reason. I was ten years old, and a Beatles and Stevie Wonder fan, but the most beautiful guitar guitar to me was the Ibanez George Benson model.

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In the mid-Seventies I got into Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles band Wings. Their fabulous lead guitarist Jimmy McCulloch was my first Gibson SG ”hero”. Great bluesy playing style coupled with a fat tone.

But along came Punk (not my cup of tea), as well as New Wave and Synthpop, which were all genres that veered more towards the wiry tones of Teles and Strats.

I got into a band, but as singer and bassist, so my first ”proper” instrument was a Squier Jazz Bass. My first electric guitar was an inexpensive Aria, a black Strat-style instrument with a then-fashionable spiky ”hockey stick” headstock.

Over the years I found out that I’m more of a two-pickup or single-pickup guitarist. I got into Telecasters, Les Pauls Standards and Juniors. The few times SGs crossed my path, I found them a little uncomfortable to wear and cumbersome to use.

About fifteen years ago two players made me reconsider my attitude towards SG-style guitars.

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A friend of mine invited me to watch the full DVD-version of the Woodstock Festival (1969), as well as The Who documentary ”The Kids Are Alright”. I was mesmerized by the energy and fat tones that Carlos Santana and Pete Townshend got from their 1960s Gibson SG Specials. I was already a P-90s fan, but the combination of this big-sounding single coil pickup and an SG somehow seemed to make a lot of sense.

Since then I have been fascinated by SG-style guitars. Yes, they can be a little more temperamental than, say, a Les Paul, and sometimes the long neck causes issues with dead notes – especially around the 12th fret on the D- and g-strings – but I still love their look, feel and sound. For me it was an acquired taste at first, but now my go-to guitars, especially for live work, are Teles and SGs.

Here are some SG-related videos from the Kitarablogi channel: