'Nother Guitar

This is my work-horse - a Gibson SG. This was the first really good guitar I bought and I love it. I bought it at Guitar Center (yuck) in Berkeley around 1995. I went in there looking for a Fender Jaguar, found one (around $500), bought it, and brought it home. I love the sound of that particular model and sent it through it’s paces at home. Sounded great but I quickly grew unimpressed with it’s hardware. Seemed chintzy - the metal saddles (excuse my ignorance here - I’m a drummer!) that the strings sit in were just...weak. They would move with just a tiny bit of force, thus throwing the guitar out of tune much easier than I wanted. No problem, Guitar Center (yuck) took it back with no problem at all.

The fellow at the store suggested a Gibson Les Paul and quickly brought me one. It was a beautiful sunburst color and the hardware was certainly more substantial than the Fender’s. Oh yeah, the price tag was a bit more hardy, also. About $500 more, but I played it, liked it, wrote another check for the difference and brought it home.

As I was tuning it, I noticed that it was tuned about a whole step up from what it should be and I re-tuned. Once I did that it would not stay in tune. Tuning is very important to me and the fact that I could not get it in tune pissed me off so I brought it back to Guitar Center (yuck) and told them I would try every dang guitar in there until I found one that I liked. Maybe a new set of strings would have helped that guitar out, but for a $1000 I wanted a guitar that would tune properly! Stupid drummer!

After hours of intense tryouts, I settled on the SG ($1000). I’ve always liked SG’s ever since I saw photos of Cream’s Eric Clapton’s wonderful psychedelic one. What a great looking guitar! The internet tells me that Todd Rundgren eventually bought it, so it’s still in very cool hands! Here's Eric in his best Spinal Tap moment playing and discussing this particular guitar:


The SG has very good, solid hardware, plays great, sounds great and if I ever win the lottery, I want to get it refinished in a similar way Clapton did his. I love everything about this guitar and do not regret a bit that Guitar Center (yuck) sold it to me.


Here’s an example of it's sound. I tried the best I could (for a drummer) to channel Clapton on the lead breaks on this song (from my CD I An Atomic Man!). It’s the primary guitar I used for most of the album, but this track in particular shows this baby off best. Here ‘tis - Maryland Ave. Freakout

*Footnote: even though Scott Miller has exclusively played Fender guitars as long as I’ve know him, he did purchase a nice black SG a while back and while I’ve never seen him play it live, Mike Keneally used it for the hot lead breaks he laid down for us on Nice When I Want Something from The Loud Family’s Attractive Nuisance CD.