bigtim

Hey I am going to stir the pot a bit here myself. I just bought this 2008 custom today and mine also has the exact same vintage style bridge set up that the original poster has described and shown with his. So I am curious a bit but I am not clipping new strings to pull the pick ups just yet. Here is my post in the gibson Custom thread. http://forum.gibson.com/index.php?/topic/145740-my-first-custom-shop-les-paul/page__pid__1974283#entry1974283

What he said!! LOL!!

You could also try to search ebay for old guitar magazines that may have a review of some of the guitars you have from years gone by. Even old ads in them help. Also alot of times there are brochures to be found on there too. I do that sometimes too. I wish I had kept all of those musician friend magazines from the past too because it would say enough in them sometimes on certain models.

Also I did not mean to sound like an a$$ either. I love an SG and have had a couple and have recorded a few country tracks for people with one. But it is just not something you see in that field of playing. Most of those guys like the fat hollow bodies.

So far it looks like your the only guy playing an SG with a clean tone setting.

Man if I were you and before I purchased it, I would call Carters Vintage Guitars in Nashville or a similar place like Gruhns before I made the purchase. It sure looks great and legit BUT you need to make sure. Man 1992 was 27 years ago. The people who were at the Gibson factory during that time are retired by now for sure.

If your talking about the forum, they kind of threw all of us kids into one room now. I guess some of the fellow students felt left out because no one was posting in certain areas. So like a bunch of misguided fellow kids, it was easier to keep track of "US" and calm those who needed it down in one big room instead of 6 different rooms.

Thank you. I really enjoyed doing it too and it really was not all that hard to achieve. Now that purple one up top was very well done and looks so nice and shiny too. I am very impressed with the Gibson silver logo. It looks awesome!

No way man.........Ebony would have looked great with the natural finish. Even more so with a lighter wood stain with all of that natural wood grain popping out it would have been sexy man! But you did a great job on that purple beast you created. It looks very good!

You got that right!!!

I remember a band I was in one night and we were at a gig. The other guitar players amp just was not putting out enough to be heard in the place. I told him to mic the amp through the PA system. He looked at me funny and said, you cannot do that can you? I said sure. He thought I was crazy but he tried it and everything worked out ok. I guess he thought PA systems were just for vocals too. It makes a big difference when you do that. Although nothing beats those old amps cranking up so out and the tubes are being driven like crazy to get that tone too you know.

Hey what about un-modding one? Does that count? Here is a 1991 explorer I "UN-MODDED". I got it in Houston Texas back in 2011 off of craigslist for 400.00 and it came with the case too. Someone took a can of black spray paint and painted it. You can see how nasty it looked by the picture of the rear of the neck. It was originally a heritage cherry finish. Anyways, I stripped it down to bare wood. I had one of my dad's buddies who was a woodworker do it for me. It was perfect under all of that ugly paint. It also had a butt ugly broken pick guard on it that was not original. I made a plexiglass one and spray painted it antique white from the inside. I stained the guitar a gunstock color and I hand rubbed about 4 coats of tung oil into it. It had EMG pick ups in it that sounded good so I kept them. It looked like a factory job when I was done. I traded it for my first gibson SG.

That puppy looks sweet!!!!

Lol!!! Awesome!!

Must not bee too bad. I do not remember ever seeing any footage of Hendrix burning up or smashing any of his prized Hello Kitty strats.

I think the color is sharp as all get out. It reminds me of the late 80's gibson les paul custom lites and also there was an sg custom lite in a similar color. Gorgeous!!

Hey WildBill212 that is some cool info I never thought about looking at the old footage and checking out the gear. Along those lines 30 years ago when cds came out I got one called the Cream of Clapton. Of course that was way before the internet and all. It had that hot version of Crossroads on it that was always played on the radio. Anyways I thought he was playing a strat on that version. When YouTube hit the scene I looked the live performance up and was shocked he was using a 335. I guess he did not fiddle with strats until after Cream.

Well it is definitely a cool looking SG and I like the yellow. Thanks for sharing.

I really liked how the Beatles guitars sounded on their albums. I always wondered what they used on the songs "Get Back" and "Revolution." That tone was downright awesome IMO. I am digging the heck out of the little BluesHawk. I cannot seem to put it down. It plays so good and is very light. I am getting used to the body smaller body size too. I like it so much I have not bothered much of the others since I have brought it home. I am going to have to just put the others away in the closet I guess. I really do not want to sell them and if I did it would be another one of those stupid decisions like I have made in the past. It is really nothing like any of the other guitars I have had in the past. I really do not fiddle with the vari tone switch much as I like the sound with that switch disabled. I have put a set of strap locks on it tonight and also the other day when I adjusted the truss rod I noticed the truss rod cover was cracked. I super glued it where it was broken but went ahead and ordered the new truss rod cover last week. It got here yesterday and I have installed it too. It almost feels like a les paul while playing it with a strap standing up but it is way lighter. By the way, is that an SG X you are playing in the picture of your avatar? If so, mind sharing your thoughts on it? I always kind of wondered about those guitars but they are kind of hard to come by.

No I did not sell it specifically for the strat. I just happened upon the strat after I sold it. And yes, I still have nightmares of selling it man.......it has been one of the biggest mistakes I had ever made on guitars from the past. Yes my blueshawk has the hard tail type bridge. I have never had a problem keeping up with the allen wrench to adjust those type of bridges. I bought an Ibanez prestige RG652 and it came with a multi tool. It is better than the one gibson throws in. Anyways, if you can find one of those, they are good to keep around for setting up your guitars. I also find those bridges fairly easy to adjust to playing preferences since each individual string can be adjusted. Here is a link to the Ibanez tool I have here on ebay. https://www.ebay.com...QYAAOSwVEFb2k2m I find the 25.5" scale a little easier to work with sometimes. I have always liked a 12" radius. There are a lot of want to be gear heads out there who do not know what they are talking about. You know The Eric Johnson Fender strat has a 12" radius fretboard too. I bet the same guys would argue that Fender would never make a strat with a 12" radius fretboard!!! I do not know if it is me or what but I have played some specials and faded SG guitars and they all had the fat baseball neck on them. I think the pick ups sound pretty good though in them. I got a decent beater already actually but thanks for the advice. The guy I purchased this blues hawk from had an SG faded. Someone had put a full sized bigsby on it. They did not use that bigsby mount that is popular now either and where the stop tail piece was, they put a cabinet handle there and the strings from the bigsby ran under the cabinet handle and over the bridge. It actually looked like a factory job. I am the type that if I see a good deal I try to snag it up and sometimes I will resell them or trade them off or whatever but I do believe I am going to keep the blueshawk for sure and my firebird.

I know how it is when you let one go and start kind of missing it. I sold my 1981 les paul custom several years ago and I have been on a quest ever since to get a guitar I loved as much as that custom I had. I paid $475.00 for it back in 1991 and played it with all of my heart for over 22 years. When I had it I never ever looked or even shopped around for another guitar. Then it happened and I let it go and purchased a 1979 stratocaster. As much as I ever wanted a strat because all of my guitar hero players growing up played a strat, I found that the one I had sucked to be honest. But it was the guitar a honed my skills on with fret leveling and all. I sold it actually for a pretty good profit a few years later. I do not know how many I went through to get where I am now but it has been a bunch and so far I think the firebird I have is actually starting to get real soft on me and I am starting to actually fall in love with it. I have never taken the firebird out of the house and since I made the purchase new, I am the only one who has ever played it. I baby it but I do not play it as much as I should because I want it to stay as pristine as possible. I have a few other guitars I take to a studio sometimes too but I have been having the itch to go out and play gigs again. I know this blueshawk would be real light on the shoulders and back standing on stage with it. That is really I think why I purchased it. There was a guy here locally who had some very nice guitars for sale. I called him up and went over to his house. He had like 25 guitars lined up on one wall and he had about 6 others off to the side that he wanted to sell. Out of the 6 was this blueshawk. It was the first one I had ever saw in person. It struck me as a neat little guitar and was light weight and I been wanting a P90 style guitar too. So I could not resist and picked it up. It played good at his house but the action was a bit high for me. Once I took it home and lowered the strings and put on a new set then adjusted the truss rod, this little blueshawk really came alive. It has a good bite when cranked. I am digging it. If it works out I may gig with it too. I like how the finish has that checking look going on. It seems as though alot of the night hawk and blues hawks do. I guess they kind of skimped on the finish process or maybe it was intentionally done by gibson to have a thin skin so the wood could breath a little.

Thanks for the info. That is the pic I saw of it. I appreciate you posting that.

I would like to know what else you got buried in that closet you forgot about!

Thanks for the input. I saw somewhere a pic and description of the controls for the epi version. I will go back and snapshot the image so I will have it for a reference. I really am digging this one. So much that I may go and sell one of my others off. I wish they came with a little more bling like inlays and bound neck. A year or so ago I almost pulled the trigger on an epi nighthawk. I like the cloud inlays on the fret board. I have only played one nighthawk. It had been around the block one too many times for the price. Too many dings and rash. Anyways I am glad I held out because I found this one.

I really like how the bound neck looks on the epi version. It is a nice touch. You know I have never paid attention to these before really and like you have said all of them seem to come with a padded case or another case that does not fit correctly. I guess finding this one with the factory case is a pretty cool thing. The previous owner of this one changed out the gibson tuners to grover tuners. The original tuners are in the case pocket. The grovers are nice looking and do not look bad on this one either. They are tight too. I did notice that this one of mine really stays in tune well. I like it. So I have not found much info on the control switch operation. Mine has a push pull tone pot. Does yours? I saw somewhere that with the push pull pot and the varitone switch along with the 3 position switch it gives you like 18 different sounds or something. Is that correct? Also are the controls on the epi version the same as the gibson version?