80LPC

There have been a couple of threads about "The SG" / Firebrand series. They were a while back, so might have escaped the great message cull that darkened the forum recently. The finish was a cost-cutting move in the face of Japanese competition such as Ibanez and Yamaha. When it was introduced in 1979, the full retail was £360 in the UK. You could buy a very similar sounding high quality Ibanez (with great pickups) for around £130... I bought one of the early ones - my first 'real' guitar, and it sounded great through my Marshall. It was made to a high standard - beautiful ebony board, fantastic neck joint (still perfect after all these years) and attractive walnut figure. The necks are 3 piece giving a much stronger headstock. I refinished mine in gloss lacquer in the early '80s. Mine has the Schaller long travel 'harmonica' bridge. Every other "The SG" I've seen has a Tunomatic but as I said, mine is an early one.

Yes, that's the Schaller - sometimes called the 'harmonica' bridge. They are exceptionally well made with 8mm nickel plated brass studs. They were fitted routinely to most SGs from 1972 to 1978. Some LPs also had them. This one is from my '79 'The SG'.

The black minis were introduced in 1972. But...some Specials still had P90s, and the bridge could be Tunomatic or Schaller long travel. http://forums.gibson.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=17427&p=2 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310164286615

That's a beauty ! It is a Special, and it looks consistent with '74 or '75 as it has no fretboard binding.

Here's Frank testing the Lyre. [YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir5XisGtoJM&NR=1[/YOUTUBE]

It's interesting how people are noticing this on SGs with one piece necks. With one piece construction, you get the tonality of that particular wood. But with 3 piece construction, slightly different strips (with respect to grain orientation) are glued together which spreads out the tonal characteristics. It tends to smooth out the peaks and troughs, balancing out the frequency response. These ideas have been used for many years by boutique guitar / bass makers. Laminated construction also produces stronger necks, but there is a degree of customer resistance to the idea - one piece can look very attractive, but in the case of a guitar with an opaque finish, who cares ? My SG with 3 piece neck doesn't have any dead spots at all (1970s Gibsons typically had 3 piece). But there are other factors also - walnut body / neck with ebony fretboard means different resonant frequencies - but there's still plenty of warm SG character !

This is called 'character' To those perceptive enough, clear differences can exist between similar guitars. People often recommend trying as many guitars as possible - with good reason. When manufacturers build instruments from synthetic materials to give an even tonal response across the fretboard, the result can be a boring characterless instrument. So I'm happy to stick with wood, since each guitar has an identity. If I wanted the same tone at every note, I'd buy a keyboard !

This could be a true dead spot where the resonance of the neck and body suppress certain frequencies, or possibly a set-up issue. I would first measure neck relief, and action height across all strings at the 12th fret, and the last fret. Is your string height slightly lower at the last fret compared to the 12th ? If so, there is a strong possibilty that the strings will not vibrate cleanly. Despite fret leveling by Gibson (whether by hand or Plek), fretboard dimensions change with temperature, humidity and time. Naturally, this changes the alignment of the frets, and further work is often required. Frets can be checked by using a machined straight-edge placed across all the frets with the neck adjusted straight. If you use an engineer's square, you can check the frets from the 12th to the last, (there is no relief in this area, so you can check these frets without needing to adjust the truss rod). In order to do this, you must use sunlight to backlight the neck while you look carefully for uneven frets. Of course, actions that are simply too low, or pickups adjusted very close to the strings cause problems. If your guitar has a true dead spot, I would try different gauge strings and make an adjustment to the truss rod. It's possible that a slight truss rod adjustment alone might be just enought to reduce the dead spot, since you are altering the resonant frequency of the neck. Here's the recent similar post. http://forums.gibson.com/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=15669

Different people hear differently. What could be a 'dead spot' to one person could sound normal to another. It just might be that you have a hearing anomaly. Tune your G string down a whole tone, then fret F# again. Does it still sound dead ? Notes that are sharp at the first few frets are always due to nut slots being too high.

That's very strange - they were introduced in 1971 to replace the Melody Makers !

It's an SG 200.

The SG200 didn't have bevels. Maybe a Les Paul DC junior or special ?

Scrapple from the apple - Charlie Parker.

The gold plating is thin, and soft (easily marked). It is corroded by amino acids, and fatty acids found in perspiration. Conventional metal polishes are all abrasive to some degree, and will remove the plating. After playing, I use a clean, damp micro-fibre cloth to neutralise the sweat, then buff with a clean dry cotton cloth that I keep just for this purpose. With plating that is not so durable, such as nickel and gold, I occasionally buff using a small amount of WD40 on the cotton lint free cloth. Chrome is much more durable and harder wearing. Good chrome has 3 coatings. A base layer of copper, then nickel and the top coat of chrome (which also is thin but much harder than gold). If gold shows signs of corrosion, don't be too enthusiastic trying to restore it - it might end up looking worse !