New Year Eve

Good Sunday morning, guitar-verse! It's the holiday eve but the weather turned rather early in the morning. After an emphatic clap of thunder in the wee hours of the morning, I couldn't sleep.

Spent time with this Gibson & let me share some stuff: 1) This is the first guitar I ever bought online. I am totally against buying instruments I cannot handle in person before trying but I decided to jump into unknown territory. If I received a lemon, it'd be a very costly affair but I could say I tried & it turned out foul. One of the reasons I was enticed to buy this piece of very not-my-type instrument was because of a very deep price slash; it's a mere USD300+ but the shipping cost really killed it. Fortunately, it was shared between myself & a friend (who managed to secure his first ever lefty Gibson SG at a bargain price, of course) so the rot was kept in check. Why is it not my type?

• it's a Les Paul
• it has limited upper access
• no belly cut, no elbow slope
• Gibson pickups are not my thing
• that's not a rosewood fretboard in there (it's my first encounter with baked maple)

2) It's my only Gibson with DiMarzios. Not everybody's discourse, I know. Between the default Gibson humbuckers & DiMarzio, I'd rather settle with the latter. Don't get me wrong, I do not harbour discontent with all things DiMarzio but, save for some models, they don't give me what I want to hear. Both DiMarzios you see here were purchased from the annual Swee Lee sale which is now defunct. They were no more than SGD80 each after the price cuts. Bridge: Tone Zone, Neck: Humbucker from Hell. I had my beef with the Tone Zone because it sounded rather bad in my Ibanez RG but that was history. I gave it a chance here & it fared better, not that it really appealed to me but after dialing in gobs of distortion, it's a pretty decent pickup for what it's for.

Was this a totally deadened affair with nothing to like? Not at all. Firstly, the slim taper neck profile was a joy to play. This is the other shred neck for me, this side of an Ibanez RG Super Wizard profile. It's not even trying to rival an Ibanez, just another manifestation that clicked (with my playing). Secondly, the Tone Zone turned out more appealing than expected for distortion applications & I don't see it departing any time soon. The main take away with this Gibson is that, we should not totally dismiss something that's not tailored for our inclinations. It's an opportunity to adapt, that's how I see it. I have a limited liking for Les Pauls but that does not mean I won't play them at all.

PS: The guitar you see in this entry is a Gibson Les Paul Special, humbucker edition. It was purchased online from Musiciansfriend. Waiting for people to ask me, "Hey, I thought they don't ship stuff to SG?"