Epiphone has unveiled its all-new Futura series, which gives classic Gibson silhouettes dramatic makeovers and pro-level features, all while keeping prices down.

Teased during NAMM 2026 and arriving as part of Epiphone’s Inspired by Gibson series, the range is being described as “bold by design” and “built for modern guitarists,” with a keen eye on performance and “forward‑thinking features.”

One of the biggest pluses here, before we get into the details of each model, is the Epiphone-first rollout of stainless steel frets – a feature fans have been clamoring for.

Color-shifting finishes, meanwhile, cast traditionalism aside in a bid to visually underscore how future-minded these designs are. Much of the hardware specs are the same across the lot, as are its new ProBucker Ignite humbuckers, which promise high‑output clarity with bonus push/pull coil‑split and phase-switching controls.

“Every detail is engineered to elevate your sound and your style,” Epiphone says. So, what has it cooked up?

Well, it’s launching with seven models – the ES-335, RD Custom, Firebird Custom, Les Paul Custom, SG Custom, Explorer Custom, and a Flying V Custom – as it marries the usual suspects with some rarer picks.

First up, the Futura ES‑355 is a contemporary take on the classic semi‑hollow design, featuring a solid maple center block with a weight‑relief window to enhance sustain, reduce feedback, and lighten the load.

It also sports a fast, modern C-profile mahogany neck and bound ebony, a 22-fret, 10”–14” compound radius fingerboard with medium jumbo frets, and Super 400–style pearloid split-block inlays.

Hardware specs, which appear across the series, take in a LockTone Tune‑O‑Matic bridge with matching tailpiece, Grover Rotomatic tuners, a Graph Tech nut, and Posi‑Lok strap buttons. The ES-335 has a choice of Firestorm Shift, Dragonfly Shift, and Midnight Ember Shift colorways.

The Les Paul Custom’s mahogany body has undergone an “ultra-modern” weight relief, and gets a maple cap for added “brightness to the classic Les Paul midrange punch.” Its mahogany neck is glued in with a long tenon and sculpted in another speedy C-profile with a 10”-14” compound radius and 22 frets.

Seven‑ply top binding and a modern contoured heel also tweak the OG recipe, while the same hardware specs are in place for reliability for the studio and stage.

It’s available in Firestorm Shift, Twilight Shift, and Midnight Ember Shift Chromashift finishes.

The SG Custom continues the theme. A double‑cutaway mahogany body follows the LP with a glued-in mahogany neck and another bound ebony board, and the same baseline specs when it comes to hardware and playability, right down to its bound Kalamazoo headstock. Choose from Dragonfly Shift, Nitro Shift, and Midnight Ember Shift finishes here.

The Flying V Custom also copies the rest's homework – a Flying V Chevron string-through-body tailpiece as it guns for “exceptional sustain,” with the Explorer Custom veering slightly out of step with Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners. They offer Quicksilver Shift and Solaris Shift, and Firestorm Shift and Dragonfly Shift paint jobs, respectively.

But for lovers of oddball offsets, a welcome addition is the Dave Grohl and Ghost-approved RD Custom. Said to “distill the spirit of the original Gibson RD into a sleek, modern instrument,” the 25.5” scale build has a sculpted mahogany body with seven-ply binding, a matching fast C mahogany neck, and the same hardware specs for a beast that is meant to be drop-tuned.

Likewise, the Firebird delivers something a little more uncommon, rocking another sculpted mahogany with seven-ply binding, effortlessly fast playing, and LockTone, Graph Tech, and Posi-Lock hardware. These two offsets both serve up Midnight Ember Shift and Firestorm Shift finishes.

The RD also gets a Twilight Shift version, while the Firebird gets Quicksilver Shift and the Guitar Center‑exclusive Glacier Shift finish options.

All guitars ship with a gig bag, and are priced at $899 each, which is plenty of bang for yer buck.

See Gibson for more.

Phil Manzanera's red Gibson Firebird VII is one of the most unique instruments in rock music, given that it looks unlike any other electric guitar – and recording with it, the Roxy Music legend says, is like “going onto analog tape.” It’s got a life of its own.

Yet, there's more to the guitar's unlikely origin story than meets the eye. After 50 years of owning the guitar, the full picture of where the guitar came from – and why it ended up in his hands – has finally been revealed.

The Gibson, made in the firm's original factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has featured on practically every record the Roxy Music man has played on, including all 14 of his solo albums.

At the time, he'd been on the hunt for a “flash” red guitar for Roxy Music, and after finding it advertised as a private listing in the back of music magazine Melody Maker in 1973, he stumped up £120 for it. Taking inflation into mind, that equates to approximately £1,900, or $2,500, in today's moolah.

“We’d buy it religiously every week and scan its columns for the latest gossip, news of who was playing where, reviews, the charts, and items for sale,” Manzanera told Guitarist of his Melody Maker obsession.

“It was sometime in 1973 that I spotted an ad which simply read: ‘Red Gibson for sale.’ There was no further description or indication of the model, but I made a call and was invited to a very posh house in Regent’s Park.

“I knocked on the door, which was eventually answered by an American kid aged about 16,” he develops. “He told me his parents had bought him the guitar, but he hadn’t played it and wasn’t likely to. I waited while he went back into the house, and a few minutes later he reappeared – this time holding a 1964 Gibson Firebird VII in that classic cardinal red they used for 1950s American cars.”

“It’s a bit like the Hofner Galaxy, but with bolder and more pronounced contours and curves,” Manzanera adds. “I’d never seen one in red before, and I’ve never seen another one since.”

So taken aback by this seemingly one-of-one electric guitar, he didn’t even play it before parting with the cash.

“It has ended up being part of my musical trademark from that day to this; a reliable and constant friend which sits happily within a few feet of me even as I write,” he says.

But what of that American kid? Well, he’s recently come out of the woodwork to reveal his version of events. It illuminates the story more than ever before – but also throws up some more burning questions.

Commenting on a Guitarist YouTube video discussing Manzanera’s go-to guitars, Joe Kolinger writes: “Hi Phil. That was my guitar. I was away at college in Switzerland, and getting ready to move to San Francisco.

“We lived at 33 Chester Terrace in Regents Park,” he explains. “Posh house indeed. You met my mom and little sister. We were from Chicago, not Kalamazoo. I bought the Firebird used in the Old Town section of Chicago for $350 in the summer of 1972.

“In ‘73, it was listed in Melody Maker for £400. I already had a Les Paul Custom and a Strat. The Firebird was a nice instrument, but I felt it was too large and heavy. Glad you enjoyed it.”

It’s been widely believed that the guitar was a Custom Shop build, which explains its unique colorway. But if Kolinger, the guitar’s previous owner, wasn’t its original adoptee, who was?

As stated above, the guitar was made in 1964, meaning nearly a decade passed before Kolinger bought it second-hand. What happened to it during that time remains a mystery.

Manzanera, however, is left to hope that other characters from his past will follow in Kolinger’s wake – and provide new information regarding some of his other guitars.

“Perhaps the person who stole my Gibson 335 out of the back of a Ford Transit van outside the Van Dyke Club in Plymouth on the 16th June 197, after a Roxy Music gig, might one day do the same: get in touch and return it,” he laughs.

The guitarist, who rubbed shoulders with David Gilmour in his youth, also recently revealed the bold move that got him the gig as guitarist and producer for the prog icon.

Rockabilly electric guitar great Brian Setzer is selling off a raft of pre-loved vintage guitars on his official Reverb store, alongside other gear picks and memorabilia.

The Stray Cats guitarist turned the rockabilly game on its head with his Gretsch-toting playing style, which gleefully threw jazz, swing, and rock 'n' roll into the mix with unique results.

A few years back, Setzer sold a selection of his guitars, amps and cabs through Reverb, and now his digital store is back in business with an updated crop of vintage gems.

He’s holding on to his main hollow-body Gretsch guitars, but there are some rare vintage gems to be found. The store is headlined by a 1959 D'Angelico New Yorker, although he jokes that “you’ve got to be from New York to play this guitar.”

While its hard case has taken an understandable beating, the guitar is in impressively pristine shape, save for some scratches on its back and what appears to be a small scratch or crack on its headstock. It features split block inlays and a sunburst finish. Another ’59 New Yorker is currently for sale on Reverb for $75,000, so don’t expect this to come any cheaper.

Elsewhere, there’s a 1964 Gibson Firebird in its original Cardinal Red finish, as well as an ES-175 from 1961.

Moving on, a Hot Rod Flag Black brandished with Power Tron pickups and custom pinstriping painted by Tommy Otis, as played on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, is sure to draw attention. There are also three Gretsch acoustic guitars up for grabs: a G Brand Gretsch Rancher used on a variety of tours, and two Black Rancher builds. One was played on his Rockabilly Riot Summer Tour in 2019, the other features a falcon headstock.

A Hiwatt Custom Tape Echo, used when he played on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, rounds out the gear.

“And I’m selling this, why?” Setzer questions himself in the promotional video. For those who aren't interested in a guitar, a collection of stage-worn clothing will also be listed when the store launches on September 24.

Head to Reverb for more.

Back in March, Setzer said he is “getting better day by day” as he issued an update on his “excellent progress” towards full health. His struggles with autoimmune disease, which started with hand cramps while on tour last year, have been well-documented.

Gibson is continuing its recent trend of dipping into its vast archive of more left-field builds as it announces the return of the Firebird Platypus – a transitional design from the mid-’60s.

Ostensibly, it is very similar to the Firebirds of today that we all know and love, save for the platypus-bill-like headstock from which this forgotten design gets its name.

This particular model, launched in 1965, introduced some important changes to the guitar’s lineage: the headstock was flipped and flattened compared to previous versions. While its predecessors’ headstocks were given a two-layer holly veneer and banjo-style tuners, the Platypus has a flat headstock and six-in-line tuners.

Throughout the ’60s, Gibson’s designers were constantly tweaking the Firebird recipe. The company knew it was onto a winner with its distinctive body shape, with several iterations falling under ‘reverse’ and ‘non-reverse’ categories.

Yet the Platypus is an interesting proposition as it takes aspects of both for a hybrid design, and it's underscored with a mahogany body, a glued-in set neck, and the appearance of a traditional neck-through reverse Firebird body.

The party-trick headstock has been modified a little, providing a straight string pull for reduced friction and better tuning stability. Elsewhere, speedy playing is ensured via a SlimTaper neck profile, and its rosewood fingerboard is crafted with a 12” radius, 22 medium jumbo frets, and acrylic trapezoid inlays.

Jutting out from that fast-playing neck is its defining platypus headstock, which is adorned with Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners and a Graph Tech nut.

While Gibson has brought its headstock up to speed, it's gone full nostalgia with two historically accurate Firebird humbuckers. They feature Alnico 5 magnets and are said to offer the “bell-like chime” and “articulate” sounds that ’60s Firebirds are known for.

Master Luthier Jim DeCola comments on how the pickups “utilize black mounting rings topped off with the traditional chrome trim rings for classic sound, looks, and improved performance”. By placing the mounting rings as such, the pickups are parallel to the strings, improving output and tonal balance.

Its three-way pickup switch is situated beside the classic Firebird stamp on the pickguard, and there are dedicated Volume and Tone knobs for each ’bucker.

“We feel the new Firebird Platypus has the ‘best of’ Firebird features, aesthetics, sound, and playability,” says Jim DeCola.

“The Reverse-style body features the raised center section on top; however, it is constructed with classic Gibson set-neck construction like the non-reverse Firebird.

“We had discontinued the Firebird at Gibson USA for a few years, and when we brought it back, we wanted to do it in a way that we’ve never done before – at least not since 1965,” continues Mat Koehler, Vice President of Product.

“That’s the year you would see the Reverse body with the Non-Reverse neck. To me, that’s my favorite incarnation of the Firebird because you’ve got the tuners on the top side.”

The Gibson Firebird Platypus is available now for $2,499, with three colorways – Tobacco Sunburst, Ebony, and Vintage Cherry – on offer.

Head to Gibson for more.

It follows a special Gibson Certified Vintage drop that pays homage to its long-forgotten Superstrat era and the return of the Gibson Victory from that same period, as the firm looked to appeal to the shred hype of the time.

Other archive-inspired designs have come via the Theodore, originally designed in 1957 but only recently brought to life, while CEO Cesar Gueikian has teased the return of its offset RD, a model loved by Dave Grohl and Ghost.

Over the years, Gibson has been responsible for masterminding some of the most enduring and popular guitars of all time, from the solid body Les Paul, SG, Explorer and Firebird all the way to the ES-335 and beyond.

One of its most unsung innovations, though, is the Victory – a distinct double-cutaway creation from the 1980s that, after a short time in the limelight in the era of hair and heavy metal music, was quietly discontinued.

The Victory slipped into obscurity thereafter, but its firm popularity among certain circles never wavered, with the guitar developing something of a cult status over the past few decades.

Now, in response to intense fan demand for the guitars’ revival, Gibson has reissued the Victory in not one, but two, distinct formats that elevate the template to greater heights.

As per the original Victory, both models offer that unique double-cut body, which promotes excellent upper-fret access. This time, the basic template has been further refined with additional contours and improved weight balance to ensure a more comfortable playing experience.

Elsewhere, a compound radius ebony fretboard for speedy shredding, comfortable chording, and seamless transitions between the two, while a pair of 80s Tribute humbuckers are wired to push/pull master volume, to coil split, and tone pots, inner/outer coil select switching, for a wide range of tones from minimal controls.

Other core components include a SlimTaper mahogany neck, 25.5” scale length, and a Tune-O-Matic and Stop Bar tailpiece combo, with an Explorer-style headstock also making the cut.

As mentioned, two variants are available: the Victory Figured, which flaunts an AA figured maple cap and a gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish, and the regular Victory, which instead sticks to the natural grain of its mahogany body and a satin nitro lacquer treatment. Each comes with a Gibson hardshell case.

“The Victory, originally released in the 1980s, has long been a cult favorite among guitarists who appreciate its distinctive double cutaway design which delivers excellent upper-fret access,” explains Gibson. “Now it’s back and better than ever, with refined body contours, improved weight and balance, and an updated headstock shape based on the popular Gibson Explorer.”

The Victory and Victory Figured are both available now for $1,999 and $2,499, respectively.

Learn more over at Gibson.com.

NAMM 2025: Last November, Warren Haynes – he of Gov't Mule and formerly the Allman Brothers Band – revealed that he had two new Gibson signature models in the works.

The most notable aspect of said models, Haynes said, were their P-90 pickups.

“I have always played humbuckers for the most part, but whenever I pick up a guitar with P-90s in it I get some inspiration from it,” he explained in an interview with American Musical Supply. “[Haynes and Gibson] have been talking about it for a long time.”

Now, the first of the two models, a Cherry-finished Les Paul, has arrived.

Now, details of the guitar are quite scarce, but what we do know is that the guitar boasts a mahogany body with a plain maple cap and that aforementioned 60s Cherry finish, which is modeled after that found on his beloved 1961 ES-335.

The mahogany neck with a chunkier 50s vintage profile, in turn, takes after Haynes' favorite Les Pauls.

Aside from the P-90s, the Haynes Les Paul is also notably fitted with a toggleable on-board clean boost.

In addition to the Les Paul, Haynes said last year that a rare triple P-90 Firebird was also in the works. (“I am about to delve into P-90 world pretty hard,” he said, to be exact).

“They had made me a Custom Shop Firebird one time with three P-90s in it, and I had never played a three-pickup Firebird before,” Haynes explained last year.

“It took some getting used to with the middle pickup, but once I got used to that, the tonal options were great. You could get so many different sounds, and so I loved experimenting with all the different possibilities.

“I am looking for new inspiration, something to change the way that I play at any given moment,” he continued. “I love the fact that I have settled into a great sound with my Les Pauls through the years, but it is nice to challenge yourself sometimes – it creates a new spark that takes you into some new direction.”

We'll keep our eyes out for more info on the guitar as it becomes available, but for now visit Gibson to see the company's other new-for-2025 offerings.

Phil Manzanera’s musical life has been closely tied to a very specific vintage electric guitar, which has been by the Roxy Music hero’s side for the majority of his career. It’s seen countless stages and can be heard on every single album Manzanera has ever recorded.

We’re talking, of course, about his red Gibson Firebird – and in a new interview with Guitarist, Manzanera takes a trip down memory lane and tells the story of how he got it in the first place.

“This is a guitar that I found in the back of the Melody Maker,” Manzanera tells Guitarist. “They used to have ads for guitars for sale in 1973 and I rang up, and it wasn’t in a shop or anything, it was a private individual.

“So I went to this very posh house in Regent’s Park in London, knocked on the door and this 16-year-old American kid held it up, and I said, ‘It’s a red guitar – I’ll have it!’ I didn’t even plug it in. I think it was about 120 quid, but I needed something flash for my Roxy stint.”

Manzanera knew right there and then that he’d be buying the guitar, owing to the fact it was unlike anything he had ever seen before. As he was to find out, the guitar had originally been purchased as a birthday present for the aforementioned kid.

Not only that, it had been ordered in a custom red color direct from Kalamazoo – which is why Manzanera had “never seen anything like it before”.

“It turned out that the boy’s parents had come over from Kalamazoo and they’d bought it for him – in a custom colour red for his birthday,” Manzanera goes on. “For some extraordinary reason, he didn’t want it or maybe it was too unwieldy or he had given up guitar and taken up cricket or something.

“I don’t know, but I said, ‘Thank you very much – I’ll have that!’ It’s become my signature guitar, and I first used it on the third Roxy Music album, Stranded, in particular on the track called Amazona.

“What’s particularly good about this guitar is it’s always been great for recording. The tuning aspect is not brilliant, but for recording purposes... it just likes going onto analogue tape. And so this was used in quite a lot of the Roxy songs – I’d use this for something on every album.

“I’d also use a ’51 Telecaster and a Gibson Les Paul. But this one has appeared on every album I’ve done, including all my solo albums.”

Warren Haynes has revealed he’s got two Gibson signature guitars in the works – both of which will see the Allman Brothers Band legend lean into his new-found affinity for P-90s.

Haynes is no stranger to Gibsons and humbuckers, having almost exclusively played Les Pauls, Firebirds, and other Gibson guitars throughout his career. He’s also had a few signatures already in the past, including a Les Paul Standard in 2007 and an ES-335 in 2014.

P-90 electric guitars, though, are another story altogether, and as the Southern rock heavyweight explains in a new American Musical Supply interview, he’s planning to make the switch for his next run of signatures.

“I am working on some prototypes with Gibson, an upcoming Les Paul with P-90s and an upcoming Firebird with three P-90s,” he said. “I am about to delve into P-90 world pretty hard.”

As for why he’s decided to defect pickup ranks after all this time, Haynes explains that, although he’s familiar with humbuckers, he finds P-90s to be especially inspiring. It’s a feeling that can be traced back to a Custom Shop Firebird that Gibson once gifted him, which unusually came loaded with three P-90s.

“I have always played humbuckers for the most part but whenever I pick up a guitar with P-90s in it I get some inspiration from it,” he continues. “We’ve been talking about it for a long time.

“When I first brought up that I wanted to do another signature model Les Paul, P-90s became the obvious choice, and they had made me a Custom Shop Firebird one time with three P-90s in it, and I had never played a three-pickup Firebird before.

“It took some getting used to with the middle pickup, but once I got used to that, the tonal options were great. You could get so many different sounds, and so I loved experimenting with all the different possibilities.”

Haynes enjoyed his quirky Firebird so much that he’s used it as inspiration for his forthcoming signature drop.

“I am looking for new inspiration, something to change the way that I play at any given moment,” he reflects. “I love the fact that I have settled into a great sound with my Les Pauls through the years, but it is nice to challenge yourself sometimes – it creates a new spark that takes you into some new direction.”

It's worth noting that triple P-90 Firebirds aren't entirely unheard of, though they are rather rare. In the mid-1960s, a run of Firebird II Non-Reverse models – which have been reissued a number of times – were introduced.

These, naturally, aren't the same as regular Firebirds, and you'd be hard pressed to find examples of those out there that come stocked with a trio of P-90s.

Depending on what form it takes, Haynes' upcoming signature could plug that gap. Either way, it will make for one very cool signature guitar.

Haynes’ guitars have yet to be officially announced, and since it seems they’re both still in the development stages, we imagine we won’t hear anything more concrete until next year.

Head over to Gibson in the meantime.

A guitar design that was championed by a mere handful of players – Johnny Winter and Mike Campbell to name but two – the Gibson Firebird is a bona fide classic that far fewer of us own compared with the good ol’ Les Paul. Why?

Because it’s huge! Great for big stages, but for most of today’s musicians, well, good luck. It’s exactly the experience of Darren Horton, the solo Brit-builder behind Daniels Guitars: “I made a Firebird I[-inspired model] for someone last year. I loved the sound of it: it blew me away. But then it’s about 10ft long and I just thought, no.”

Darren dropped off his latest guitar with us in a rather old-looking tweed case, and you can’t help but do a double take when you open it. Is this an old Gibson that we’ve never seen before?

Of course not, but while the offset shape – which loosely emulates a downsized Jazzmaster but with a more defined upper horn – is very different from either the original ‘reverse’ or the later mid-’60s ‘non-reverse’ Firebird outlines. And along with its Daniels logo’d back-angled and three-a-side headstock, the actual construction, pickups and controls are an obvious homage to that first-series Firebird of old.

“It’s a slightly bigger offset than my Pugilist as I wanted to be able to load it with different vibratos and bigger pickups. I approached the design as purely a bit of fun.”

Construction mirrors the Firebird’s nine-piece mahogany/walnut neck-through laminate, introduced by Gibson in 1963.

It forms the centre of the body, around 105mm wide, to which the pickups bridge and tailpiece are mounted and is a couple of millimetres thicker than the 36mm body ‘wings’, plus there’s a subtle ribcage contour on the back of the bass side and equally subtle forearm chamfer on the front. The ‘old Gibson’ illusion is certainly enhanced by the nitrocellulose darkburst finish that somehow manages to look a little used and older than it actually is.

The neck, of course, is made from that same laminate, and the heel area is beautifully sculptured, while the cocobolo fingerboard – peppered with old-looking mother-of-pearl dots – is a vivid deep, dark red/brown that ties in perfectly with the finish itself.

As ever, the Faber hardware is superb. The tune-o-matic is very low to the body, while the tuners are Hipshot’s Grip-Lock style; once we’d tuned to pitch we barely touched them. It’s a very stable guitar.

Feel & Sounds

While Darren is becoming known for his lightweight builds, typically using obeche and Spanish cedar, the mahogany here – probably 100 years old, reckons Darren, from a reclaimed Liverpool bar-top – contributes to a weight of 3.58kg (7.88lb) that’s far from heavy.

The guitar sits perfectly on your lap and feels exceptional on a strap: a Firebird this isn’t! The neck shape is equally good, boasting Darren’s preferred ‘soft V’ with nicely relaxed shoulders and a depth of just over 22mm at the 1st fret that fills out to a shade under 25mm by the 12th, which sounds bigger than it feels.

There’s some light edge rolling to the fingerboard, the fretwire has plenty of height but is relatively narrow, and there’s a good airiness to the setup and string height – you encounter a bit of fight when you want to dig in.

Mojo’s Firebird pickups are an obvious choice here and maker Marc Ransley states that “the Firebirds have vertical bar magnets within the coil that act as the polepieces. In a sense, this is more like a Fender pickup and it adds brightness and clarity.”

That’s pretty much what we hear – a rather evocative hybrid that seems to sit between our reference Telecaster and Les Paul Classic with its Burstbucker 1 and 2 combo.

There’s a little more fullness compared with the former, and a little more ‘single coil’ compared with the latter. A humbucker pickup that sounds like a good single coil? Well, that’s what we hear. There’s definitely single-coil-like clarity and bite at the bridge, with a neck pickup that cleans up the mud of a humbucker but retains some Fender-y edge.

You have to hear these sounds, not least the mix that has a very musical depth to the bouncy, wider Tele-like voicing.

Then, of course, you have the classic individual pickup volume and tone controls – wired vintage style – that allow plenty of shading, not least in that middle position.

Through any decent amp, you can move from almost acoustic-like clarity with the volume and tone pulled back to Townshend-like ’60s punch at the bridge and that clear but full Fender-y neck voice with simple control adjustment.

We’re generalising because the guitar is so full of subtlety when you start using those controls, especially at the bridge. It’s quite brightly voiced with less of that Gibson-like mahogany/P-90 grind, but the chime, jangle and depth are truly wonderful.

Verdict

Not for the first time we got completely lost in a guitar we’re supposed to be writing about. Somehow this sensible, compact take on the ol’ ’Bird not only removes the physical bulk but seems to enhance the voice, too, and while strapped on or seated nothing gets in the way. It doesn’t feel new, although there’s no relicing here; it just feels like a vintage classic that never was.

It’s true that plenty of makers large and small have used the Firebird style, but this one is totally a one-off and you can choose exactly the specification you want, including a more regular glued-in neck. Just like every other Daniels guitar we’ve played, whatever you go for, it’ll be a world-class, vintage-informed instrument like this Gravitas. When you’re ready, give Darren a call.

Specs

• PRICE: £3,999 (inc case)
• ORIGIN: UK
• TYPE: Offset-shaped solidbody electric
• BODY: Mahogany wings
• NECK: 9-ply mahogany/walnut through-neck
• SCALE LENGTH: 629mm (24.75”) (rule of 18)
• NUT/WIDTH: Unbleached bone/43.23mm
• FINGERBOARD: Cocobolo, m-o-p dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo (Jescar 47095)
• HARDWARE: Faber ABR-’59 tune-o-matic-style bridge with TP-’59 lightweight stud tailpiece, Hipshot Grip-Lock rear-lock tuners – nickel‑plated
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Mojo Firebird humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual volume and tone controls
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.58/7.88
• OPTIONS: Just ask!
• RANGE OPTIONS: Daniels offers 2 other styles: offset Pugilist (from £2,999) and more classic single-cut Royale (from £4,999). Like the Gravitas, these styles can be used as the basis for your custom dream
• LEFT-HANDERS: Yes
• FINISHES: Vintage Tobacco Burst (as reviewed) – gloss nitro
• CONTACT: Daniels Guitars

Back in 2021, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitar-slinger Mike Campbell thinned his formidable collection of electric guitars and amps with a huge Reverb.com sale. Notice that we say ‘thinned.’

Campbell's post-sale collection remained significant enough that it featured on Gibson TV's The Collection YouTube series the following year.

Displayed as a literal “carousel,” Campbell's stable of guitars includes an '80s-'90s-era white Firebird V signed by Johnny Winter, and a '62 Les Paul SG Junior (acquired, at a video store, of all places, for just $120) that he used on one of his greatest solos, for Petty's Runnin' Down a Dream. The cherry on top of Campbell's collection, meanwhile, is that vintage guitar holy grail, a 1959 'Burst Les Paul Standard.

Guitar-wise, what else do you need? Well, as Campbell tells Guitar World, the answer is 'nothing.'

“I have a guitar obsession,” he admitted to GW in a recent interview. “I sold about 120 of them a couple of years ago because I don’t have room for them anymore. I’ve quit buying them because I kind of have one of every guitar that I ever dreamed of. At this point, buying them is kind of pathetic.”

Asked by GW whether the smaller scale of his live shows with his solo band, the Dirty Knobs – as opposed to his arena-sized engagements with the late Tom Petty – motivated him to travel with a smaller selection of those prized vintage guitars, Campbell replied in the affirmative.

“I play them all in the studio, but I just take a few essentials on the road because you’re right – it is a smaller production.”

Though the 'Burst remains undoubtedly the most valuable piece in Campbell's gear stable, it's not the one with which he has the deepest personal relationship, a distinction that goes to his vintage Fender Broadcaster.

“Lately, I’ve brought out my original Fender Broadcaster from the first Heartbreakers album, which I used on American Girl and Breakdown,” he told Total Guitar last month. “It’s been exciting to hear that again because it sounds great.”

There are certain guitars we tell ourselves we definitely must get one day, but somehow it never quite happens. At the top of that list for many sits the electric 12-string. When would we use it? Wouldn’t the money be better spent on an amp upgrade, a top-line acoustic, or perhaps the latest modelling system?

While obvious 12-string contenders would be one of Rickenbacker’s Beatles, Byrds or Petty-inspired models, and Fender’s hockey stick headstock Electric XII, we reckon if anything could coax the moths from your wallet it’s this magnificent beast from Gibson. 

Based on Kalamazoo’s unbelievably cool non-reverse Firebird from 1965 it comes in glorious Aqua Mist, one of the Oldsmobile motor company’s flagship colours. 

A simpler build than the complex construction of its reverse forbear, the guitar features a mahogany body and glued-in SlimTaper neck, also in mahogany. The rosewood ’board is dotted and unbound, while the body boasts a forearm chamfer and belly cut. 

Another sensible thing from the player’s perspective is that Gibson has widened the nut from its mid-’60s norm of a little over 39.5mm (1.6 inches) to just under 43mm (1.7 inches). Given that most 12-string action happens around the first few frets, it’s a welcome improvement.

Twin strips of Kluson tuners sit either side of the Firebird’s massive headstock, while a white/black/white pickguard with red emblem houses two mini-humbuckers. These occupy a broadly similar sonic ballpark to Rickenbacker’s ‘toaster top’ pickups, and the split single coils of Fender’s Electric XII.

They’re controlled by twin volume and tone, and we found the best mix for all those classic 12-string licks to be both pickups on, bridge full up, and neck rolled back to about 7.

It’s inherently bright but also provides the chime that delicate Johnny Marr-type riffs and triads or slamming Jam-meets-Who-style chords demand.

An old adage states that if you play 12-string you spend half your time tuning, the other half playing out of tune. With our Firebird, that’s mostly not the case as the strings anchor firmly at the specially designed tailpiece and the Kluson tuners are tight and smooth. However, since each pair of strings shares a single tune-o-matic saddle, you could encounter issues when venturing up the dusty end.

By their very nature, electric 12-strings are quirky. They all face compromises and as players we simply have to work around them. But surely there’s no cooler instrument on which to progress your jangly journey.  

Specs

• PRICE: $5,999/£5,299
• TYPE: 12-string electric guitar
• NECK: Mahogany, Traditional 1960s Slim Taper, glued in
• BODY: Mahogany
• FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, dot inlays
• SCALE LENGTH: 24.75"
• RADIUS: 12"
• PICKUPS: 2x Firebird Alnico 5 Humbuckers
• CONTROLS: 2x volume, 2x tone, 3-way slide switch
• HARDWARE: ABR-1 bridge with 12-string claw tailpiece, Kluson tuners
• FINISH: Aqua Mist, VOS
• CONTACT: Gibson

Page, Green, Gibbons, Marsden: the names tied to the coveted ’59 Les Paul are nothing short of legendary. Thought of by many as Gibson’s greatest achievement, an original ’Burst will set you back at least six figures – and that’s if you can even find one in the wild.

It is highly likely that most of us will go our entire playing careers without ever getting our hands on an original example, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get close to this sought-after tone.

That’s where the Epiphone Inspired By Gibson Custom series comes in. After successfully recreating the ’58 Korina Explorer, ’59 ES-355, and ’63 Firebird, Epiphone is now turning its attention to the most fabled electric model to leave its stable – but can Epi do it justice?

Taking a look at the body, and as you’d expect, Epiphone sticks to the original recipe of rich mahogany and a maple top. However, this replica’s flames come courtesy of a AAA-flamed veneer that crowns a thicker maple cap.

Not that you’d be able to tell – this guitar looks fantastic. Our review model doesn’t have the most pronounced figuring, but we actually quite like that – in some ways, it makes it look more authentic.

The finishing is on point, too. The dark perimeter of the Tobacco Burst perfectly complements this guitar’s iconic outline, while the subtle VOS treatment feels incredibly smooth under our fingers.

Making our way to the neck, and we’re instantly reminded why we love ’59 reissues. Not too big, not too small, you’ll understand immediately why this is considered by many to be the ultimate neck profile.

Whether it’s 1st-position chords or more demanding lead work, the guitar never feels like it gets in our way. Combine this stellar neck with perfect fretwork, a well-cut nut, and a nice setup out of the box and you get one of the most playable Epiphone guitars we’ve tried.

Okay, it has the look and feel, but it needs to have the sound to match. Thankfully, the tonal heart of this Les Paul is a duo of Gibson Custombucker pickups, which most definitely don’t let the side down. A creamy neck pickup paired with a fierce bridge position and days of sustain locked away inside make this guitar genuinely inspiring to play – and it seals the deal for us.

Is this the most authentic R9 out there? No, of course not. It may not be an exact replica of a golden-age Gibson guitar, but we didn’t expect it to be. This is a fabulous guitar that more than evokes the spirit of the original while delivering a tone and feel that is sure to get the best out of your playing, and we can’t ask for more than that.

Specs

• PRICE: $1,299 / £1,199
• BODY: Mahogany with maple top and AAA flame maple veneer
• NECK: Mahogany
• FINGERBOARD: Laurel
• FRETS: 22 Medium Jumbo
• PICKUPS: Gibson Custombuckers
• CONTROLS: 2 volume, 2 tone; CTS potentiometers, mallory capacitors, ’50s wiring
• HARDWARE: ABR-1 bridge, Gibson historic reissue stop bar, Epiphone Deluxe tuners
• FINISH: Tobacco Burst (as reviewed), Factory Burst, Iced Tea Burst, Washed Cherry Sunburst
• CASE: Hardshell with brown exterior, pink interior, and Inspired by Gibson custom graphics
• CONTACT: Epiphone

Epiphone has always stood as the accessible route into enjoying Gibson-style instruments, with its various electric guitars and acoustic guitars providing the look and feel of Gibsons at a far more palatable price point.

The luthier believes its 'Inspired by Gibson Custom' range takes its builds to the next level, but such progress comes at a premium.

The series offers everything from Hummingbirds to Firebirds but at prices much higher than traditional Epiphone creations. So, how do they compare to other, more affordable Epi models?

To find out, Dinesh Lekhraj – host of the Gibson Gear Guide YouTube channel – pitted an 'Inspired by Gibson Custom' Les Paul Custom ($1,299) against an Epiphone Custom Les Paul ($799) in a brand new showdown.

Both guitars are united by their mahogany bodies, ebony fretboards, Grover tuners, and CTS pots as they look to give an authentic, Gibson-esque essence. There are, however, some price-widening differences.

The cheaper option offers a ‘60s-style slim tapered neck and ProBucker humbuckers, “closely engineered” to replicate the BurstBuckers of Gibson builds.

The Inspired By Gibson Custom model differs with a one-piece, rounded '50s neck and Gibson open book headstock. Its pickups are also Gibson 490R and 498T humbuckers – the same pairing you’d get from a Gibson Custom Shop guitar, which helps explain the inflated price.

For many, the fact that Epiphone price points are creeping towards Gibson territory goes against the grain of what the brand is all about, and it’s worth noting that – in terms of the shootout – the difference isn’t exactly night and day.

Sure, there is more bite to the Gibson bridge pickup and perhaps a little more rounded warmth to its neck humbucker, too, but is it enough to justify spending $500 extra on the pricer model? It will certainly come down to player preference.

It’s also worth pointing out the shootout isn’t exhaustive. The video only offers some rhythm playing from both guitars, which are plugged into a Gibson Falcon 20 2x10 combo amp.

Thankfully, YouTuber Sunny Haair has taken the two instruments for a far more detailed test drive.

Of the Inspired By Custom guitar, he says, “My opinion is that the gap between Gibson and Epiphone has been filled as much as it ever could be,” which is both high praise, and also justification for that rising cost.

“People will always split hairs over these things and that's totally okay,” he adds. “But this is the evolution for Epiphone that I wished we had when I was growing up.”

Of course, while the official shootout focuses on sonic hair-splitting, through a YouTube video – hardly the best platform for it – it does little to dive into the other details.

For some players, the ‘60s-style slim tapered neck of the $799 guitar may feel better. Again it’s all a matter of preference.

What is important, truthfully, is that while Epiphone continues to explore ways of closing the gap on Gibson builds, it doesn’t leave budget-minded players alienated. In other words, both models have a key role to play in the market.

Head over to Epiphone to find out more about the $799 Epiphone Les Paul Custom and the Inspired By Gibson model.

Epiphone has launched an extensive Bluegrass collection of instruments, including banjos and mandolins, with a brand-new Mandobird the pick of the bunch. 

The brand has described the series as “high quality and accessible” with instruments inspired by Gibson and Gibson Custom models representing some of its most historically popular bluegrass builds. 

The Mandobird is the undoubted eye-catcher, though. A four-string mandolin designed for players “looking to stretch out and go electric,” as well as rock guitarists craving a little experimentation, it’s a hybrid wildcard. 

It features a reverse Firebird-inspired body made from solid nato wood, a bolt-on mahogany neck, and a laurel fretboard with trapezoid inlays. 

The reverse trend carries through to its headstock, which is adorned with Grove Mini Rotomatic tuners. There's also a top-mounted, string-through-body bridge and a single Epiphone Firebird pickup, plus tone and volume pots.

The Mandobird costs $364 and comes with a gig bag, as Epiphone dubs it as “the perfect electric mandolin, now built for the stage.”  

The series also includes an Earl Scruggs Golden Deluxe Banjo, Mastertone Bowtie Open Back Banjo, Mastertone Classic Banjo, F5G Mandolin, and the F-5 Studio Mandolin. 

“Banjos and mandolins are a huge part of the Gibson story,” says Mat Koehler, Vice President of Product at Gibson. "We are proud that the legacy is alive and well in this collection.”

It's been a busy first half of the year for Gibson's affordable sister brand. In January it dropped one of the most requested models in its history in the form of a Dave Grohl signature and recently released an updated made-in-USA Coronet.

And if miniature Firebirds aren't your jam, Epiphone’s $1,799 Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird V might just be.

Head to Epiphone to learn more about the Bluegrass Collection.

It’s ‘purple gain’ over at Gibson, with the firm rolling out exclusive gorgeous Dark Purple Burst finishes for its ES-335, SG Modern, and Les Paul Modern Studio electric guitars. 

The trio of classic designs have been given an elegant new colorway with a gloss finish for the ES-335 and SG Modern, and satin for the Les Paul. Together, they look to deliver “timeless models with a stunning new look” – a very fair observation. 

The drop follows the release of the Dark Purple Burst Les Paul Standards, which arrived in September last year.

The ES-335's specs nod to its heritage via an acrylic dot inlay rosewood fingerboard, which sits on a rounded C-profile mahogany neck.

It offers T-type humbucking pickups with a hand-wired control assembly, while vintage deluxe tuners and keystone buttons continue the vintage veneer. There’s also a classic ABR-1 bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece combo. 

As you’d have guessed from its name, the SG Modern aims to take the classic and sprinkle in some contemporary updates. As such, it brings together an AA figured maple top with mahogany for its body – a combination Gibson says is “renowned for its resonance and sustain”.

There’s a 24-fret, compound radius ebony fretboard with mother-of-pearl inlays, and an asymmetrical Slim Taper profile for “fast and silky access to the highest frets”. 

Burstbucker Pro Alnico 5 humbuckers have been chosen, which offer added versatility through a push/pull Top Hat control pot.

The trio is rounded out by the Les Paul Modern Studio that, like the SG Modern, melds classic touches with modern refinements. 

A weight-relieved mahogany body and maple cap steps away from the Les Paul’s weighty heritage. The bound neck has a compound radius ebony 'board, and a modern contoured heel for improved playability and upper fret access. 

Further modern appointments include coil-tapping, phase control, and pure bypass switching capabilities for its 490R and 498T pickups. It also comes with a soft shell case. 

Gibson, which re-entered the amp-making game at the start of the year, has also recently released an affordable Epiphone Vintage Firebird, a non-reverse Firebird V 12-string, and treated some of its revered acoustic guitars to tuxedo treatment and rosewood reinvention. The ever-busy luthier shows no signs of slowing down. 

The ES-335 ($3,499), SG Modern ($2,499), and Les Paul Modern Studio ($1,999) are available to order exclusively via Gibson.com and the Gibson Garage.  

Head to Gibson to find out more. 

Not many musicians can claim to have transitioned from creating genre-defining drum fills behind the kit of grunge’s most famous band to commanding the center stage as a world-class frontman, guitar player, and songwriter. Yet, this is precisely the path that Dave Grohl has traversed, all the while maintaining a reputation for being the nicest man in rock. 

Over the past three decades, Grohl has been at the helm of the Foo Fighters, transforming them from an underground solo project to a seven-piece mega-band that sells out stadiums worldwide. Together, they have solidified their status as one of the most beloved and enduring bands of all time. Their music, a reflection of Grohl's enduring talent as a songwriter and the band's timeless appeal, has resonated with fans across generations, earning them a place in the annals of rock history. 

Accompanying Grohl along his musical journey has been a slew of – mainly – Gibson guitars, although there are a few notable exceptions. From signature semi-hollows to radical Explorers and a few off-kilter models, Dave’s road-ready axes must be able to withstand the harsh conditions of a relentless touring schedule and deliver a stadium-filling sound night after night – there’s no room for pretenders here. 

Today, we’re going to break down some of Dave Grohl’s most iconic guitars and even give you some affordable models to check out if you fancy recreating the Foo Fighters frontman’s signature sound on a budget. 

Of course, Grohl has used various models over his insanely long career, and there’s a lot to cover, so run and tell all of the angels, this could take all night… 

1. 1967 Gibson Trini Lopez / Gibson DG-335

The 1967 Gibson Trini Lopez holds a special place in Dave Grohl's heart, so much so that he has often referred to it as “the sound of the Foo Fighters.” This guitar, which has been a constant companion on every album, has been used to pen the majority of the band's biggest hits. 

Purchased in Bethesda, Maryland around ‘92, in his previous life as the drummer of Nirvana, this guitar has gone on to define the sound of the Foo Fighters and is arguably more associated with Grohl than with its namesake, Trini Lopez. 

Originally designed as one of two models he crafted with Gibson in the sixties, Lopez merged the body of an ES-335 with the headstock of a Non-Reverse Firebird to create his new signature guitar. He also added distinctive visual elements such as diamond sound holes, split diamond inlays, and a Lopez-branded wooden tailpiece, resulting in a guitar so visually striking that it has gone on to develop a life outside of the sixties singer/ guitarist.  

When it came time for Grohl to retire his beloved Trini from live use, he turned to the Gibson Custom Shop to produce a model spec’d to his exact needs. This guitar would become the basis of his signature model, the Gibson DG-335. 

Over the years, various iterations of this signature Pelham Blue guitar have been released, ranging from a $5,000 model in 2007 to a highly limited edition version in 2014. However, if you're not ready to splurge, don't fret. This year, Grohl has finally collaborated with Epiphone to bring you the highly anticipated Epiphone DG-335, which launched at a more affordable price point. 

2. Gibson Explorer

If you’ve been a fan of Foo Fighters since the early days, you'll likely feel a surge of nostalgia when you recall a young Dave Grohl and Co. tearing up the stage with a dangerously slow-slung ebony Gibson Explorer hanging from his shoulder, a sight that has become synonymous with the band's formative years. 

Likely a late ‘90s model, this beaten-up black Explorer was a staple of Dave’s live rig from around 1995 to the early 2000s and quickly became his calling card axe before he moved on to a Firebird and eventually his signature semi-hollow. 

Famed for its ostentatious design and larger-than-life sound, the Explorer is the ideal guitar for a stadium rock setting. Utilizing its mid-range bark and top-end snarl, Grohl used this guitar to its full potential to deliver his gut-punching riffs live.

3. Gibson Les Paul Standard / Gibson Les Paul Custom

Back in the band's early days, while Dave was still finding his feet as a frontman and guitarist, he would often be seen with a Gibson Les Paul around his neck. Again, he has used many models, but the most notable ones are his beloved Tobacco Burst Les Paul Standard and Alpine White Les Paul Custom. These guitars are known for their rich, warm tones and comfortable playability, making them ideal for both studio recordings and live performances.

Grohl used his sunburst Les Paul from the very beginning of the band from 1994 to 1997 and has said that it was used throughout the recording of the first record.  Around the same time, he would also rely on a yellowed-out Alpine White Les Paul Custom, which was a mainstay at early live shows. 

4. Gibson Elvis Presley Dove

When it comes to acoustic guitars, Dave has been known to use many models from the Taylor 814-CE and 410, to the favorite flat-top of his former band leader, Cobain, the Martin D-18. That said, there is one model that he is most associated with live and that’s the Gibson Elvis Presley Dove – I guess Dave loves playing other people’s signature models as much as his own. 

Fashioned after a customized 1969 Gibson Dove that was gifted to Elvis by his father, this unique blacked-out square-shouldered dreadnought is a sight to behold. It features a spruce top with maple back and sides, a mahogany neck, and a rosewood fingerboard, all contributing to its distinctive sound and aesthetic. 

Honorable mentions

So that's just a snippet of the guitars Dave Grohl has used both on stage and in the studio. That said, we can't finish up without mentioning a few of the other six-strings that have made an appearance at one time or another. 

It's no secret that Dave has a penchant for the unconventional side of electric guitars. In the late '90s and early 2000s, he often wielded a '70s RD Standard, as well as the head-turning Ampeg Dan Armstrong Plexiglass, a guitar that played a pivotal role in the video for All My Life. 

Another prominent axe is the Gibson Firebird Studio, which made an appearance around 2005 during the In Your Honor tour. This model is notable as it doesn't fit the standard configuration of a Firebird. It forgoes the neck-through construction and ditches the mini-humbuckers for full-sized humbuckers. 

And lastly, we can't forget to pay homage to Dave's most flamboyant instrument, the iconic Gretsch White Falcon. This '90s Japanese-made Gretsch, once owned by Dave's partner in crime, Pat Smear, holds a special place in their shared musical journey. It was a staple on and off stage for both musicians, with its most memorable appearance in the video for the band's chart-topping hit, Monkey Wrench. Astonishingly, the guitar fetched a whopping $53,000 when it went to auction back in 2022. 

Last month, Gibson got back into the 12-string electric guitar game with the Jimmy Page EDS-1275. 

Now, for those who don’t want a 12-string guitar with a six-string fretboard attached (or want to pay $50k for a guitar) the firm has issued a new Non-Reverse Firebird V 12-string.

With a very alluring Aqua Mist VOS colorway, the quirky offset revives a highly collectible model from 1965, though does so with “one key improvement” – it offers a fuller neck width instead of the narrower, harder-to-navigate alternative found on the original. On paper, that means it should be easier to play.

Not only that, Gibson also returned to its 1959 Oldsmobile color chart to help source that striking finish. Said chart has been the force behind a collection of “historic Gibson custom colors.”

The Non-Reverse Firebird is one of Gibson’s most out-there ergonomic designs, so to see it with a longer, more traditional open book-style headstock and 12 strings makes it even more obscure – in the best way possible.

Gibson first unveiled the model back in NAMM 1965, ushering in a collection of quirky-shaped six-strings that arrived in a handful of pickup and hardware configurations. The 12-string model, though, was arguably the most eye-catching.

For its revival, the guitar has been treated to a mahogany body, traditional ‘60s-profile mahogany neck, and 22-fret rosewood fingerboard. It also boasts a 12” ‘board radius, dot inlays, and a corian nut.

Tones come by way of two Firebird Alnico V pickups that, like most other Non-Reverse models, are controlled by two volume and two tone controls laid out in a one-on-three fashion.

“Sparkle, jangle, and chime, refined,” Gibson says of its new release. “The 12-string electric guitar has been a mainstay of popular music since the mid-1960s, when its unmistakable jangle was embraced by bands such as The Beatles and The Byrds. 

“Gibson’s iconic EDS-1275 has starred on many classic recordings and concert stages the world over, but for those who prefer to play a 12-string electric guitar without a six-string attached to it, Gibson Custom is proud to introduce the 1965 Non-Reverse Firebird V 12-String Reissue.”

This is the latest addition to the Gibson Custom Shop’s ‘Historic’ range, which also includes a regular 1965 Non-Reverse Firebird V. This one is slightly more expensive, weighing in at $5,999.

Head over to Gibson to find out more.

Nobody disputes the fact that the Jazzmaster was designed for jazz guitarists, so it’s hard to understand why Leo Fender imagined all those ‘one tone for everything’ archtop huggers would be drawn to complex control layouts and a floating vibrato mounted on a plank. And if anything, the Jaguar is an even more baffling proposition. 

Like so many of Leo Fender’s products, these instruments ended up being wildly successful at producing sounds that ran contrary to his intentions and that would not have met his approval. 

That’s why we’re going to take a deep dive into the radical design features, ingenious hardware and innovative electronics that make Fender’s finest offset guitars more popular than ever and continue to inspire guitar players and builders alike.

Offset Bodies 

The Jazzmaster and Jaguar body shape represents a significant departure from conventional guitar design. Guitar bodies had traditionally been symmetrical – cutaways notwithstanding – but the offset waist was introduced for ergonomic reasons and the term ‘offset’ is now generally applied to most asymmetrical guitars. 

Observing how jazz players performed, Leo Fender and Freddie Tavares set out to design a guitar that would feel more comfortable in a seated position. 

As Leo explained to author Tom Wheeler in American Guitars: An Illustrated History: “Normally, the player is forced to hold the guitar at an angle to play it because it’s not balanced. So it was a matter of fitting it to the ribcage. The offset waist […] went right along with the idea of the dressed away portion in the back. It was just a matter of function.”

The body was larger and generally heavier than Tele and Strat types and was slightly thinned down by mid-1959. Most were constructed from two or three pieces of alder, but rare blonde-finished examples were ash.

Most Jazzmasters are played standing up, which somewhat undermines the design concept and makes the neck feel like it’s protruding further from the body. The Jaguar body, meanwhile, was pretty much identical, besides a slightly pointier top horn.

When surf groups started playing them, the Mosrite company took notice and introduced offset models of its own that were good enough to lure The Ventures away from Fender. 

Gibson’s reverse Firebird came out in 1963 with a body and headstock that looked like an upside-down offset. Some say Fender took exception, prompting Gibson to introduce the non-reverse Firebird in 1965. 

In truth, it was probably done to relaunch an under-performing model and reduce production costs. But if Gibson was really responding to Fender, why is the non-reverse design even more Fender-like? You might conclude Gibson was ‘flipping the ’bird’.

Necks

The desire to move upmarket resulted in the Jazzmaster being the first Fender with a rosewood fretboard and top-loaded truss rod. An early advert shows a Jazzmaster with Telecaster knobs, black pickup covers and a rosewood-capped neck with a walnut plug at the headstock, but it was probably a prototype. 

The headstock shape is subtly different from the Strat’s, with a tad more curve on the bottom. The Jaguar neck’s 24-inch scale length was shorter than the Jazzmaster’s 25 ½-inch scale, and it had 22 frets, rather than 21. This gives Jaguars a slightly looser and slinkier feel, for the equivalent string gauge, and arguably a warmer acoustic response. 

Up to mid-1962 all Jazzmasters and the very earliest Jaguars had slab-rosewood fingerboards. Fender changed to veneer ’boards from July 1962 onwards and began binding them in 1965. The Jaguar’s headstock was always slightly bigger and more curved – a portent of the ‘big headstocks’ that would follow.

Hardware

Had Leo Fender been left to his own devices, the Stratocaster would have been equipped with a vibrato very similar to the design featured on the offsets. He’d understood that low friction was key to stable tuning and designed a bridge with roller saddles. 

After Bill Carson’s road tests revealed a vibration issue with the bearings and poor sustain, Freddie Tavares talked Leo into a complete redesign. It must have stung because $5,000 had already been invested in tooling, but Leo eventually revisited his favoured option.

The bridge was redesigned with threaded steel saddles and long posts at each end of a bridge plate that slotted into metal ‘thimbles’ that were set into the body. It was intended to rock back and forth, and string-height adjustments could be made by altering the post lengths and/or individual saddles. The Jaguar bridge also had a string-muting device attached.

The strings were anchored in a curved plate that passed through (but made no contact with) a baseplate that was screwed to the body. This string plate was placed over a strong spring at one end and pivoted against a knife edge at the other. The spring pressed up against the string plate to resist string-pull and the unit was fully floating.

With a Strat vibrato, the springs stretch when the bar is depressed and then pull the bridge back into its default position. And with the offset vibrato, depressing the bar compresses the spring and equilibrium is restored when it expands.

This allowed Fender to implement a locking feature that would slide across to deactivate the vibrato and restore tuning in the event of string breakage. Some modern players have found this feature invaluable when drop tuning, but careful adjustments are needed for it to work.

The offset vibrato was designed for heavier gauge strings, but the lighter strings that were becoming commonplace revealed some issues with insufficient break angle, strings popping off saddles and extraneous noises behind the bridge.

Circuitry

The Jazzmaster’s two fully independent circuits were inspired by a home-built lap steel that Forrest White showed Leo Fender in the early 1950s. This allowed players to switch instantaneously from a darker and quieter ‘rhythm’ tone to a louder and brighter ‘lead’ setting. 

In rhythm mode, only the neck pickup is active, and the volume and tone settings are controlled by two knurled thumb-wheels. They barely protrude above the pickguard and do not obstruct the player. 

A 50kohm tone potentiometer darkens the rhythm circuit because it’s much like a regular tone control that only operates between 3 and 0. The lead circuit is more conventional, with a three-way selector and master volume and tone controls. Rather than Fender’s usual 250k value, 1 meg-ohm potentiometers are used with a 0.033μF tone capacitor.

Jaguar wiring was very similar, but the rhythm circuit had a 0.01μF tone capacitor and Fender employed three slider switches on a metal plate, rather than a three-way switch. Two flicked the pickups on and off, while the third routed both pickup outputs through a 0.033μF capacitor that only allowed upper midrange and treble frequencies to pass through. It’s widely known as the ‘strangle’ switch.

The tone control is unconventionally wired, with a 56k resistor across the tone control’s input and wiper lugs, and the volume control connected from the wiper. 

There is much debate about what this does, but the consensus is that it operates as a treble bleed that also shifts the cut-off frequency of the tone control upwards. With the strangle switch engaged, the resistor allows the tone control to operate more like a bandpass filter and it prevents drastic loss of volume when the tone control is rolled fully back.

Shielding

The Jazzmaster followed hot on the heels of Gretsch and Gibson’s humbucking pickups, but since Leo Fender remained a devotee of single-coil pickups, it became necessary to upgrade the shielding. 

All of the Jazzmaster’s control and pickup cavities were lined with form-fitted brass shielding trays, and the earliest Jazzmasters had gold anodised pickguards. By early 1959, the control rout had been modified to accommodate the extra screws of a new celluloid nitrate pickguard, with a thin aluminium shield installed beneath.

For the Jaguar, Fender only installed flat brass plates in the bottom of the cavities. Metal coverplates were used for all three control cavities, but the shielding was far from complete.

Pickups

To entice jazz players, Fender needed pickups that sounded fatter and warmer. One way to achieve that with a single-coil pickup is to make the coil wider and shallower. Stratocaster coils are around 7/16-inch tall, while Jazzmaster coils are only 1/8‑inch, and the coil widths are around 9/16-inch and 1 ½ inches respectively. 

This also means that more magnet wire is needed to wind a Jazzmaster pickup with the same number of turns as a Strat pickup, so Jazzmaster DC resistance readings tend to read closer to 8k than 6k. But the higher inductance is more significant.

Typical Fender parts included vulcanised fiberboard flatwork and Alnico V magnetic slugs. The slugs were lightly bevelled at the top and barely protruded beyond the upper flat, but they extended further beyond the bottom flat. 

Of all the pre-CBS Fender pickups, Jazzmaster types varied more than any other and offset expert Jim Shine has shared some invaluable information. From 1958 to 1962, the coils were scatter-wound with plain enamel wire that would fill the bobbin.

Fender used heavy Formvar magnet wire from 1962 until 1964, and began making the windings less scattered. Both types were potted in an alcohol activated material, which was probably blonde shellac. 

During the CBS changeover period of 1964 to 1966, black flatwork changed to grey and Fender started dating the flatwork with stamps, pencil and black marker pen. Some coils during this era were wax-potted, but when Polysol magnet wire was introduced in 1965, Fender reverted to the alcohol-based potting liquid. Plastic insulated leadout wires replaced cloth wires in 1968 and, once again, date codes were stamped.

Leo Fender had concerns about the Jazzmaster’s ‘broad spectrum’ pickups placing excessive demands on valve amplifiers and causing distortion. In many ways, the Jaguar pickup was a return to type, with a narrower and taller coil that “put out a little more punch and a cleaner sound”, as Leo put it.

Although in essence a rehash of the Strat design, the Jaguar pickup had non-staggered Alnico V slugs and a solder terminal at each end of the lower flat. The obvious difference was a steel U-shaped yoke that enclosed the pickup. 

In addition to raising inductance, it was supposed to lessen susceptibility to hum and modify the magnetic field – which it did to an extent, albeit with a small decrease in treble sensitivity.

Two of the ‘teeth’ are shorter than the others, so there’s fractionally less treble loss. The yoke can be fitted either way round, so place the shorter teeth adjacent to the strings you want to brighten up. Heavy Formvar 42 AWG magnet wire was only used in 1962, after which Fender changed to plain enamel wire of the same gauge. The slugs got a stagger in 1964.  

This reviewer recalls hearing Cream’s live version of the blues classic Sitting On Top Of The World on the band’s Goodbye album very well. Clapton spits out reams of notes with a huge distorted tone that it turns out was his 1964 sunburst Gibson Firebird I. 

Just as memorable was first catching the infectious swagger of Johnny Winter’s Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo, most likely played on Johnny’s own 1964 Firebird, this time a white model V.

While Winter made a Firebird the main staple of his career, Clapton only stayed with his for the final Cream tour and on a few Blind Faith shows the following year. EC’s use of the Firebird inspired Gary Moore and Joe Bonamassa to purchase identical models, and it’s likely that many a Firebird lover took Winter’s fiery licks and slicing tone as inspiration. Gibson later produced limited-edition runs of both electric guitars.

We’ll spare you the full history lesson, but in the face of Fender’s success with its futuristic designs Gibson brought in auto industry designer Raymond Dietrich to see if his genius as a motor vehicle architect for brands such as Packard, Studebaker and Lincoln would transfer to the guitar. 

Visually, it most certainly did, but commercially the result was more akin to Ford’s ill-fated Edsel model (not a Dietrich design). Even when Kalamazoo undertook a radical rethink of the Firebird in 1965, partly due to threats from Fender regarding headstock and body shape infringements, by 1969 the range had fizzled out.

Although Gibson has reintroduced the model in various guises over the years, with none in the current mainstream line-up (you’ll find some Murphy Lab ones but for mega bucks), it falls to Epiphone to fly the flag for this largely undersung guitar.

The Firebird I with its single bridge pickup and wrapover bridge would be one of the simplest guitars that Gibson ever made were it not for some highly unusual features. Like all reverse-body Firebirds it features a neck-through-body design with two body ‘wings’ glued into V-shaped recesses milled from each side of the body end of this nine-piece multi-laminate. 

Using five mahogany lengths interspersed with four slim walnut strips for additional strength, it’s a complex build that also led to the model’s stepped body, onto which pickups and bridges are mounted. 

It also means that the pickguard, with its natty Firebird emblem, butts neatly up to the step’s lower edge. On the base model the fingerboard was unbound rosewood with pearloid dots, and on our Chinese-built Epiphone it’s the same but using Indian laurel.

Firebird pickups buck the usual trend, too. Those fitted here are US-made Gibson Alnico V ’buckers, which, although appearing like regular mini-humbuckers but without adjustable polepieces, are actually quite different inside.

A Firebird pickup comprises a magnet set in the centre of each of the two bobbins with the windings effectively surrounding them, as opposed to the mini- or standard humbucker where a single magnet is centred underneath both coils. That’s it in a nutshell, and what it means for the guitar’s tone we’ll get to shortly.

The Firebird I’s bridge is the wrap-around ‘lightning bar’ style as found on various ’60s Gibsons. With its six raised compensated ridges it’s a fair compromise between an adjustable tune-o-matic and the more basic wrap-around of the Les Paul Junior.

Which brings us to the tuners. Dietrich didn’t want a line of buttons sticking out to spoil his reverse Strat-style headstock design, so opted for Kluson’s rear-facing banjo machines instead.

This wasn’t a bad move from a practicality point of view, either, as it allowed easier access to the keys than would have been possible had the buttons been lined up facing the floor, as the reverse design might have implied. The downside is that they are huge and heavy, and on an already lengthy headstock the tendency when hanging on a strap is for the neck to dive. 

Speaking of which, Firebirds have three strap buttons: one on the body end, one on the top shoulder, and one attached to the heel. Due to the body’s shape you can’t lean the guitar against an amp or it will tip over sideways, and we wouldn’t give great odds on the headstock surviving such a fall. A hanging stand, adjustable for height, is your best bet here.

With single volume and tone pots, electronically the Firebird I is as basic as it gets. The components are all top quality, though, with CTS pots, a Sprague capacitor and Switchcraft jack. 

And with all constructional aspects the same, bar the bound laurel fingerboard with trapeze inlays, it’s only the Firebird V’s long Maestro Vibrola with tune-o-matic bridge, plus an extra pickup with twin volume and tone pots, that distinguish the two guitars.

As with all Epiphones we’ve played recently it’s hard to fault the build and finish. The Heather Poly of our Firebird I packs a real statement, while the V’s Ember Red look is classy and timeless.

Feel & Sounds

These are big guitars, and getting used to their playing geometry can take a while. With no top horn it feels like the entire fingerboard is at the player’s disposal, and despite the Firebird’s size and odd shape, sitting down to play, everything seems in the right place. 

Due to its hefty Vibrola tailpiece, extra pickup and controls, the Firebird V is a weightier lump than its junior sibling. But this will certainly make it balance better on a strap.

Plugging the Firebird I into our Laney Lionheart 20-watt combo amp it’s immediately apparent that this dual-rail mini-humbucker breathes fire. Johnny Winter said he loved Firebirds because sonically they sit somewhere between Fender and Gibson, and our single-pickup model certainly has the vibe of an extra beefy Telecaster about it.

It snarls and seems to suit a driving tone that can be backed off to clean up. Also, the single tone control is your best friend for darkening the tone (which Clapton surely did on Sitting On Top of the World).

While the Maestro Vibrola has something of a reputation as a tone sucker, we spotted no evidence of that here on the Firebird V. The bridge pickup matched that of the Firebird I’s in size and tone, while the neck humbucker is not exactly Strat-y but certainly moving in that, or perhaps a DeArmond-loaded Gretsch’s, direction. 

The ‘both pickups on’ setting provides clear and clanky sounds and, of course, everything can be sweetened up using the tone pots. Light waggles of the vibrato bar add pleasing dips to single notes and a lovely shimmer to chords.

Verdict

The recent joint ventures between Epiphone and Gibson’s Custom Shop have produced some stunning guitars of late, and this pair of Firebirds is right up there with the best. 

Of course, what such collaborations also do is whack up the bottom line somewhat, and at $/£1,699 the Firebird V is closing in on Gibson’s own price points. We don’t think it’s unfair for what you get, which is some of our favourite instruments of late, and perhaps we’ll simply have to get used to it (ask yourself what you paid for half a pound of butter a year or two ago!).

Aside from the pricing issue, however, there’s nothing we don’t love about these guitars. They look fabulous, play really nicely right out of their huge leather-look black cases, and sound phenomenal. Were we to play one live, though, we’d definitely fit strap locks and use the shoulder-mounted button to aid balance.

If it came to a choice? It’s tricky, as the Ember Red V is a fabulous beast, but for its unadulterated simplicity and staggeringly good looks, we’d opt for the Firebird I. Okay Ginger, “one, two, three…”  

Specs

Epiphone Inspired By Gibson 1963 Firebird I

• PRICE: $1,299 / £1,349 (inc guitar case)
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Reverse solidbody electric
• BODY: 2x ‘wings’ of solid mahogany
• NECK: Mahogany and walnut 9-piece laminate, neck-through-body design
• SCALE LENGTH: 628.65mm (24.75”)
• NUT/WIDTH: 43mm
• FINGERBOARD: Indian Laurel, 305mm (12”) radius, dot inlays
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• HARDWARE: Wrap-around ‘lightning bar’ bridge/tailpiece, Kluson banjo-style Planetary rear-mounted tuners
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 1x Alnico V Epiphone Firebird mini-humbucker, single volume and tone controls, CTS pots, Mallory capacitor, Switchcraft output jack
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.4/7.5 
• OPTIONS: No
• RANGE OPTIONS: Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Firebird V (as reviewed)
• LEFT-HANDERS: No 
• FINISH: Heather Poly (as reviewed), Silver Mist, Inverness Green

Epiphone Inspired By Gibson 1963 Firebird V

• PRICE: $/£1,699 (inc case)
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Reverse solidbody electric
• BODY: 2x ‘wings’ of solid mahogany
• NECK: Mahogany and walnut 9-piece laminate, neck-through-body design
• SCALE LENGTH: 628.65mm (24.75”)
• NUT/WIDTH: 43mm
• FINGERBOARD: Bound Indian Laurel, 305mm (12”) radius, trapeze inlays
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• HARDWARE: Epiphone ABR, Maestro Vibrola vibrato tailpiece, Kluson banjo-style Planetary rear‑mounted tuners
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Alnico V Epiphone Firebird mini-humbuckers, individual volume and tone controls, CTS pots, Mallory capacitors, Switchcraft output jack
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 4.0/8.8 
• OPTIONS: No
• RANGE OPTIONS: Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Firebird I (as reviewed)
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISH: Ember Red (as reviewed), Frost Blue
• CONTACT: Epiphone

Epiphone has expanded its premium ‘Inspired by Gibson Custom’ range with a wealth of new electric guitars and acoustic guitars – including an updated take on the firm’s 1959 Burst Les Paul Standard.

The series was originally envisioned as an outlet for Epiphone to give players high-end, near-Gibson instruments that were built in collaboration with the latter’s Custom Shop, and that bridged the gap between lower-end US-made Gibsons and higher-end offshore Epis.

It has since gone on to produce the most talked-about Epis of recent months, from the Epiphone Kirk Hammett Greeny and Adam Jones Les Pauls, to the more recent Firebird V and Firebird I models.

Now, the above have been joined by a trio of acoustics and four new electrics: a Les Paul Custom, 1959 ES-355, 1963 Les Paul SG Custom and, perhaps most notably of all, the 1959 Les Paul Standard.

In a continuation of Epiphone’s commitment to offering authentic Gibson aesthetics, its latest quartet of six-strings all retain the Gibson ‘open book’ headstock, which replaces Epiphone’s larger and more rounded Kalamazoo alternative.

It makes for Epiphone’s first non-signature drop of instruments (since the takeover of parent-company Gibson Brands in 2018) to come fitted with that coveted headstock. Before, only the Greeny and Adam Jones Les Paul could boast such a feature.

Its presence here isn’t that much of a surprise, though: Gibson Brands’ VP of Product Mat Koehler promised that it would be a regular appointment for the ‘Inspired by Gibson Custom Shop’ builds.

But new-look headstocks are only part of the package, with Epiphone stressing these models faithfully recreate “some of the most iconic electric and acoustic guitars in history” by way of Gibson USA pickups, solid wood construction and an “unrivaled combination of professional features and accessibility”.

As mentioned, the new Epiphone ‘59 Les Paul Standard is the standout model here. Said to be “updated and more authentic than ever”, the LP weighs in at $1,299, making it slightly more expensive than its $999 predecessor, and just shy of the $1,499 Greeny.

But, of course, guitar prices these days are a different kettle of fish, and you get some appointments – as well as a vintage-style hardshell case – that look to justify that middle-ground price tag.

They include that headstock, and a set of Gibson USA Custombuckers, which swap out the old Epi R9’s Burstbuckers. This version also has a hand-wired ‘50s style wiring.

As for construction, a premium long neck tenon – a staple of Custom Shop Gibsons, which increases sustain and resonance – is used alongside a period-correct tailpiece. Also, the mahogany body is topped with a maple cap and a AAA flamed maple veneer (as is the case with Epi Bursts) and an accurate “1959 Rounded Medium C” neck profile.

It’s a similar story for the rest of the electric drop. The flagship Les Paul Custom, ‘63 Les Paul SG Custom, and 1959 ES-355 all feature those upgraded pickups, hand-wired electronics, period-accurate tailpieces/vibratos, the open book headstock and neck profiles that are, in most cases, matched to their respective vintage models.

Some standout specs from the remaining drop worth shouting about include the ebony fretboards and mother-of-pearl block inlays, as well as the Maestro Vibrola of the ‘63 Les Paul SG Custom – which recreates the famed Les Paul-named model that paved the way for the SG. 

A host of classic finishes are available for each, from the ‘59 LP’s exclusive Washed Cherry Sunburst, to the 355’s Ebony VOS.

Price-wise, they all sit above the $1k mark: $1,299 for the '59 Les Paul, Les Paul Custom and '59 ES-355, and $1,499 for the '63 Les Paul SG Custom.

Epiphone's drop is further bolstered by a trio of acoustics: a ‘42 J-45 ($1,299), ‘57 SJ-200 ($1,499) and a J-180 ($1,299). Again, these are all concerned with delivering faithful recreations of original Gibson models, with the appropriate headstocks, an assortment of spruce/mahogany/maple constructions and LR Baggs electronics.

Shoutout must go to the J-180 – a reimagining of the Everly Brother's iconic Star-inlaid Flattop, which has been made available in a rather generous array of pastel colors. 

Those Frost Blue and Pink models look rad, and we can’t help but wonder whether this is a nod to the custom-colored Gibson J-180 that Taylor Swift plays. If it is… well, fair play, Epiphone. A very savvy move indeed.

All in all, it makes for a rather sightly set of guitars – and, dare we say, Epiphone’s best-looking batch of Gibson-inspired guitars yet. 

Granted, it’s also the most expensive, and the knee-jerk reaction will be that the additional cost goes towards footing a fancy new headstock.

But that's without considering the included hard cases, ebony ‘boards, USA pickups, body binding and other premium appointments – and so the just-over-$1k price tags, particularly in today's guitar price climate, look pretty standard.

And, as Koehler explains, the cheaper alternatives are still there: “While you can still get all the same beloved Epiphone instruments at the same affordable price points, the new Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom line appeals to those who want the historic and premium specs that our Custom Shop fans love. 

“Collectively, we made sure every possible upgrade was included so that these would become the new crown jewels of our Epiphone range.”

Head over to Epiphone to find out more.

During Ted McCarty’s tenure as president of Gibson from 1950 through 1966, the company developed some of the greatest and most enduring electric guitar designs of all time. 

In fact, literally every electric model Gibson offers today was designed by McCarty and his team during this golden era, including the Explorer, Firebird, Flying V, Les Paul and SG. These are all timeless models, but McCarty’s semi-hollowbody design for the ES-335 and its numerous variants may be his greatest achievement of all time.

Gibson introduced the ES-335 – the music industry’s very first semi-hollow electric model – in 1958, only six short years after the company’s first solidbody model, the Les Paul, made its debut. 

The 335 was a natural progression of ideas sparked by input from players, who wanted a “best of both worlds’’ instrument that combined the best features of solidbody and hollowbody electrics, namely the former’s ability to be amplified to generous volume levels without feedback and the latter’s warm, round tones and acoustic-like resonance. 

Gibson’s thinline models like the Byrdland introduced in 1955 were a first step toward this goal, but the semi-hollow ES-335 was the ultimate refinement and, as a result, became an iconic electric guitar model.

The 335’s key feature is a solid block of maple extending through the body underneath the strings from the neck joint to the tail block, providing a truly solid center. This block is encased inside a slim hollow body, dividing it into two resonant chamber “wings” on either side of the strings. 

A generous double cutaway design allows easy access all the way up the neck to the 22nd fret, something even the “radical” new Fender Stratocaster model didn’t quite offer back in the day. The crowning touch was a pair of humbucking pickups, which had just started appearing on Gibson guitars around this time.

The 335 became the blueprint for several successful variants, like the fancier ES-345 and ES-355, one of two Trini Lopez models introduced in the mid-Sixties and much later the signature B.B. King Lucille model.

Early 335 guitars often came with Bigsby or Maestro vibrato or trapeze tailpieces, but most players agree that the “money” version is the one with a standard stop tailpiece.

While all of Gibson’s most popular solidbody models have come and gone and eventually come back again, the ES-335 has remained a consistent fixture of its product line since its intro in 1958, mainly due to its incredible versatility.

The list of guitarists who have played an ES-335 at some point in their careers encompasses pretty much every style except classical and flamenco, and that wouldn’t even count the variants like the ES-345/355 models played by blues and rock ’n’ roll icons like B.B. and Freddie King, Otis Rush and Chuck Berry or the Trini Lopez model favored by Dave Grohl.

The following is a select list of songs prominently featuring the 335:

• B.B. King – The Thrill Is Gone (Live at the Regal, using a custom 335 modified with a Varitone switch)
• Eric Clapton/Cream – Badge
• Alvin Lee – I’m Going Home
• Ritchie Blackmore/Deep Purple – Child in Time
• Alex Lifeson/Rush – Working Man
• Andy Scott/Sweet – Action
• Larry Mr. 335 Carlton/Steely Dan – Kid Charlemagne
• Eddie Van Halen – And the Cradle Will Rock…
• Eric Johnson – Cliffs of Dover
• Pepper Keenan/Down – Stone the Crow
• Peter Hayes/Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Red Eyes and Tears
• Chris Stapleton – Second One to Know

Back in January, Gibson Brands gave us a sneak peek of some of the year’s releasses in an exclusive pre-NAMM media event. At that point, our attention was grabbed by the natural headliner – the forthcoming Dave Grohl DG-335 – but once we were done gawping at the Foo Fighters’ man’s signature guitar, our eyes were quickly caught by a stunning pair of Firebirds.

Now Epiphone has officially launched those models: the Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird I and the HH-configured 1963 Firebird V. 

The two mark the latest additions to the brand’s luxed-out top tier line, created in collaboration with the Gibson Custom Shop, which aims to offer guitarists some of the refinements of Gibson’s classiest vintage recreations at a friendlier price point.

“Epiphone and the Gibson Custom Shop have teamed up again to create the Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird V [and I] – an authentic replica of the guitar designed by legendary automotive designer Ray Dietrich,” says Epiphone.

“When it was launched in 1963, the Firebird was Gibson’s first neck-through-body model, and it went on to be used by players in a wide range of genres, including blues legend Johnny Winter, Keith Richards and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, to name a few.

“The Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird V delivers vintage Firebird specifications at an accessible price... , giving this remarkable recreation not only the look but also the sound of a classic Firebird V.”

Both the V and I share the same nine-ply mahogany/walnut neck-through construction, with mahogany wings, plus an Indian laurel (as opposed to rosewood) fretboard and mother of pearl trapezoid inlays. 

The neck is modeled after the classic 1963 Firebird profile – and, as is the case with its Inspired by Gibson Custom brethren, including the Epiphone Greeny and Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom – they come loaded with Gibson USA pickups: in this case, the much-loved Firebird mini-humbuckers (which use Alnico V magnets). 

The other electronics are all top-tier, too, with handwired CTS pots, Mallory capacitors and Switchcraft toggle switch (on the Firebird V) and output jack. 

Hardware includes the classic three-ply white pickguard with the red Firebird logo, Kluson banjo-style Planetary tuners and the historically-correct three strap button positions. 

The V offers a combination of Epiphone ABR bridge (featuring individual string saddles) and Maestro vibrola, while the I opts for a simplified hardtail setup of a wraparound Lightning Bar bridge. 

Both options have their appeal: the Firebird V looks and feels more luxurious – and offers a wider variety of tones (with its HH configuration and vibrato), plus adjustable intonation at the bridge is always handy.

Meanwhile, the Firebird I nails that single-pickup utilitarian vibe that is an equally proud part of Gibson’s lineage – most notably, across the likes of the Les Paul and SG Junior builds. At $1,299, it’s also considerably more affordable than the V. 

In fact, the Inspired by Gibson Custom Firebird V now takes the crown as the priciest Chinese-made Epiphone build, at a not-insignificant $1,799. 

Regardless, they both look utterly stunning – with the Firebird I available in Heather Poly, Silver Mist and (our personal favorite) Inverness Green, and the Firebird V finished in a choice of Frost Blue and Ember Red.

The instruments we saw in our January preview were very promising – and, a month on, the spec list does not disappoint.

As for their respective price tags, well, both come with Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom hardshell cases – and that nine-ply walnut/mahogany construction is a much trickier (and therefore pricier) process than, say, the Les Paul’s slab and top. 

What’s more, it looks like Epiphone’s done this right – getting as many of the vintage details as correct as possible (the reverse headstock, the banjo tuners). It’s also filling a gap left in the broader Gibson range at a point when Firebirds can be hard to come by. Indeed, there are no standard USA Firebirds in the Gibson lineup right now.

Nonetheless, this might be a good time to point you to our piece on why guitars are getting more expensive...

Both instruments are available for pre-order now. For more information, head to Epiphone.

As we noted in our previous story about the Epiphone Dave Grohl signature DG-355, Gibson is not partaking in the NAMM 2024 industry group-hug, but has nonetheless capitalized on the industry influx to LA by offering its own 2024 preview event at its artist showroom yesterday (January 25).

While these things are often fun – it’s always good to try out gear – they can be a bit of a damp squib when it comes to actual announcements, but Gibson did not disappoint – surprising us all with an extensive preview of its forthcoming gear. 

The headliner for us has to be the Epiphone Dave Grohl, as mentioned, but we also saw a new Slash signature Gibson Les Paul, an enlarged Dual Falcon take on its recently revived Falcon amp, a pair of stunning Epiphone Inspired by Custom Shop Firebirds, alongside the return of the Theodore, new acoustics and more. 

Let’s lay out a little of what our resident kid-in-the-candy-store (i.e. Editor in Chief, Michael Astley-Brown) managed to capture while in attendance at the definitely-not-a-NAMM event.

Gibson Slash ‘Jessica’ Les Paul

This Honeyburst Slash signature guitar is based on the factory second model that the Guns N’ Roses icon picked up and began using in earnest as his go-to stage guitar from 1988. It’s got a mahogany body, three-piece plain maple top and a 50s neck profile with an Indian Rosewood fretboard. Then there’s a pair of uncovered Custom Burstbuckers, and it comes with pre-installed Schaller strap-locks for that pro player/stage-ready touch.

Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom Shop 1963 Firebird I and Firebird V

The Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom Shop line previously brought us the highly-rated Epiphone Greeny and the Korina Flying V and Explorer, and these are the latest offerings in the firm’s premium offshore range.

We love the Inverness Green finish and single pickup simplicity of the fancy Firebird I reproduction, though there is a double humbucker/Maestro vibrola equipped Firebird V (in Frost Blue or Ember Red), should you want more bells and whistles.

Both have a nine-ply mahogany body and walnut neck (in a neck-through construction) with mahogany wings, plus Kluson ‘Planetary’ style tuners, and Gibson USA Firebird mini humbuckers. 

We predict two outcomes: many of us will consider buying our first Firebird – and there will be some ‘debate’ on the price tag.

Gibson SG Supreme

The SG Supreme turns Gibson’s electric workhorse into a dressage pony – and is set to make its return in 2024 for the first time since Gibson’s 2018 takeover/subsequent turnaround. 

Expect a mahogany body paired with a triple AAA maple top, and a mahogany neck with an ebony fretboard and flashy split block inlays. It’s loaded with gold Burstbucker Pro humbuckers, plus a push-pull coil tap and a host of other luxe appointments.

Gibson Theodore Standard

Golden-era president Ted McCarty’s previously-unreleased design, the Theodore, was brought to vivid life by the Gibson Custom Shop team in 2022 and now, for the first time ever, it’s set to join the standard line-up. 

This time it’s got a mahogany (not alder/walnut strip) body and neck – and comes with ’57 Classic humbuckers, as opposed to P-90s. It’s quite the statement to bring it into the main line-up, so it will be interesting to see how these fare in the wider market.

Gibson Dual Falcon 20 amp

It’s no surprise that Gibson has more products in the works for its recently revived amp brand – especially as the new Mesa-made Falcon 5 and 20 seem to be very well-received so far. The first follow-up will be another installment in the Falcon, er, flock, in the shape of this Dual Falcon. 

Product details were not on hand for this one, so we can only speculate, but it looks like a two-channel take on the Falcon 20, with independent volume, tone and reverb controls, plus a master tremolo. 

Again, you get the two inputs and Full/Half/Low power break options. However, they they seem to operate independently on each channel, meaning, you could potentially drive one side to full-on dirt and the other to high headroom heaven. 

New Gibson acoustics

Unplugged players are still set to get some love in 2024, with a new rosewood back/sides take on Gibson’s go-to dreadnought, the J-45 (with an LR Baggs under-saddle VTC pickup and preamp). 

Then there’s a surprise Custom Shop return for the Gibson Everly Brothers J-180 – last seen in production in the early-’00s. Some regard it as the most beautiful Gibson acoustic ever made, others debate the controversial tonal qualities of the (huge) double-sided ‘moustache’ pickguard, then there’s the unique spec – including a maple body, sitka spruce top, star inlays, and an ebony nitro finish. 

Either way, we’re happy its back and pleased to see Gibson giving players the option to decide for themselves…

That’s it from our reporter on the ground in LA. We don’t have release dates or prices for any of the above yet (though we know the aforementioned Epiphone Dave Grohl is due in March), so stay tuned for more detail throughout the year.

In the meantime, you can also keep an eye on Gibson for more information.

Henry James Schneekluth is best known as the guitarist for Orange County rockers Robert Jon & The Wreck. Like many players, he’s torn between a love of vintage electric guitars and a need for road-worthy touring gear. 

We sat down to talk through the highs and lows of his journey as a guitar buyer, discussing his love for Firebirds and a sorry experience with a Jimmy Page Telecaster, in the process…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? 

“Let’s see… probably my SG. I have a 2004 ’61 reissue that I bought a couple of years ago. A couple of years before that I actually built my own Strat. So it would be one of those two – probably the Strat because that one was more of a labor-intensive thing. 

“I bought the parts individually and a local luthier helped me put it together. It had a left-handed neck and a sunburst body that I got on the internet, and then I got a custom pickguard from Warmoth. 

“Originally, it had two Firebird pickups and then eventually I took those pickups out to put them in an actual Firebird. And now the guitar has a standard three-pickup setup with the reverse bridge pickup. So it’s kind of a little Jimi Hendrix-ish tribute. Something about the reverse stuff balances out the sound a little better for me.”

What was the last guitar you bought and why did you decide to buy it?

“The most recent guitar I bought was my Epiphone Firebird. I bought it in 2021. I changed the pickups out to Seymour Duncans and changed the bridge and the tailpiece, and it’s my main touring guitar now. 

“I am a big Lynyrd Skynyrd fan and I especially like Allen Collins. There was just a curiosity; I thought it was a really cool‑looking guitar and the sound of it was attractive to me, so I thought I would try it out. It turned out that the first one I ever bought stood up to the test of the road. And so I continue to use it.”

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve had when buying gear? 

“The guitar I mentioned earlier, the SG. Knowing in the last couple of years how much the prices have gone up on used Gibsons and stuff like that, I got it for much cheaper than they’re going for nowadays. 

“I use it as my onstage slide guitar. I play open E tuning slide and it’s my main guitar for that. They can have a tendency to neck-dive, and the one I have does neck-dive, but it’s never been a huge problem for me as long as I have a strap that grips. I think if you have some source of friction in the right spot, it tends to negate it a little bit.”

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve experienced? 

“I bought a Telecaster a couple of years ago – one of the Jimmy Page Dragon Telecasters – and I am currently in the process of trying to sell it. It just wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. 

“I’ve used it on recordings occasionally. But I barely play it; I just don’t have an affinity for that guitar. I haven’t found a Telecaster that I’ve really found an affinity for. I know I will eventually, but that one, I kind of bought it on an impulse and it just never clicked with me.”

Have you ever sold a guitar that you instantly regretted letting go?

“No, I don’t think so. I haven’t really sold that many guitars – maybe one or two – and I don’t think about them any more. They’re all stuff that I’m glad to be free of and I’m happy I have what I have. Yeah, I can’t say I have any seller’s remorse.”

What’s your best guitar-buying tip? 

“Play it acoustically first and give yourself the time or the space to hear how it resonates. I can’t speak on behalf of everyone else, but for me I usually have a sense of what guitar is going to feel good in my hands and what guitar I’m going to enjoy the most. So generally I can tell by feel what’s going to be a winner for me. And if I don’t get that buzz from it, then I just don’t go for it.”

When was the last time you stopped and looked in a guitar shop window (or browsed online) and what were you looking at?

“I’m always looking at Reverb for different stuff, different deals. I’ve recently been looking into Explorer-type guitars. I’ve been playing one recently that I’ve borrowed – that’s been really great. But on my phone I’m always looking at a new pedal or Fender Tweed [amps] or different Firebird-style guitars, things like that.”

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?

“Ah, that’s a really good question. I would probably have to go with the latter because I feel like if you have an expensive amp, you can make any guitar sound good. And you can always upgrade a cheap guitar, as well.

“Case in point, I’ve got an Epiphone Firebird and it’s constructed really well – neck-through [body], you know, like they did in the 60s. It’s vintage-correct for all intents and purposes, but I upgraded it.

“So, yeah, I would rather probably get a cheaper guitar and a more expensive amp.”

If you could only use humbuckers, or single coils for the rest of your career, which would it be and why?

“Probably humbuckers. I just tend to find that with a good set of PAFs, lower output humbuckers, I don’t really find myself missing too much out of them. A good set of humbuckers really can cover all my bases. 

“I’m in possession of a 1962 ebony block SG – I didn’t buy it, I’m just borrowing it – but it has this quality to it that seems to cover all the bases: the pickups, and the pots and all that stuff have this quality. 

“When you roll the volume down, the pickups almost get this clarity, like a single coil. And that sound I just find is more relevant to the type of music I play.”

• For more information on Henry's touring activities, head to Robert Jon & The Wreck.

Today’s featured axe is a 1964 Firebird V. For those unfamiliar, Gibson made four different versions of the Firebird in the mid-’60s. 

A Firebird I, played famously by Eric Clapton for a spell during his days in Cream, has dot inlays and only one pickup; a Firebird III has dot inlays and two pickups; a Firebird V, like this one, has trapezoid inlays and two pickups; and a Firebird VII has block inlays, an ebony fretboard and three pickups, with all gold hardware. 

Back then, the decision as to which guitar was best for you came down to what you wanted to spend; the Firebird I was the least expensive and the Firebird VII was the top of the line. 

I like Firebird Vs the best, simply because this is the model that Johnny Winter played. My youth encapsulated in a guitar is a Firebird V, because Johnny was such a huge hero and inspiration to me, from when I first heard him when I was 11 years old. 

My very first Firebird was a “medallion” Firebird, which was a reissue of a 1964 Firebird V, first made available in 1972. In those days, all I wanted to do was to play like Johnny!

He would use the neck pickup only, and was just ripping blues-rock riffs all day long! To me, that was the epitome of blues-rock guitar – a Firebird V into a cranked Fender amp. Johnny was always on fire back then, singing and playing brilliantly on some of the greatest blues-rock songs ever. 

Because of the construction of the guitars – a mahogany neck-thru-body design with mahogany “wings” on the sides, plus the mini humbuckers – Firebirds have a very distinct sound and are a bit brighter than other Gibson solidbody guitars. 

Figure 1 is a six-bar phrase based on the G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F) and the G blues scale (G, Bb, C, Db, D, F). These phrases are intended as nods to Johnny’s phrasing style – with an emphasis on fast 16th-note triplet pull-offs and fast, aggressive vibratos.

Firebird Vs produce a throaty sound that is absolutely unique and immediately recognizable. 

Figure 2 offers another “Johnny approved” phrase, as G minor pentatonic is played up high in 15th position; you gotta get the vibrato right!

As I mentioned, Johnny never touched his toggle switch and always stayed on the neck pickup, but every toggle switch position on this instrument can yield fantastic results. 

Figure 3 offers a phrase played with both pickups engaged. Bar 1 features a G minor pentatonic lick, after which I switch to phrases based on D minor pentatonic (D, F, G, A, C).

In Figure 4, I’ve switched to the bridge pickup only, which is full treble and as bright as it gets. These lines are based on the G blues scale.

Utilizing the bridge pickup, the sound is very aggressive and just might rip your ears and your eyelids off! Rolling back the tone control a bit tempers the bite.

Many guitarists argue that behind every great song is a great instrument. To prove their point, they’ll bring up songs recorded with 1958-60 Gibson Les Paul Standard “bursts,” '50s and early '60s Strats and Teles, vintage Gibson and Martin guitars, one-of-a-kind custom guitars (like Jerry Garcia’s Wolf and Tiger) or even modern guitars like EVH, Music Man, PRS, and Taylor models. 

If you were to ask even the most casual vintage acoustic guitar collector if the Sixties Gibson J-200 was a great guitar, most would answer with an emphatic “No!” In its original pre-WWII iteration with rosewood back and sides, the Gibson SJ-200/Super Jumbo (as it was originally named) is one of the most desirable acoustics of the 20th century. The post-war version with maple back and sides produced through the Fifties (when the name was shortened to J-200) is not far behind. 

But for some unexplainable reason during the early Sixties, Gibson decided to mess up the J-200’s divine design in a huge way by embedding an ABR-1 Tune-o-matic adjustable bridge into an oversized rosewood bridge (screwed to the top, no less) with the previously open sections filled with heavy pearl inlays. (One of my acoustic purist friends compared the '60s J-200 bridge to “painting a huge handlebar mustache on the Mona Lisa then driving a Buick through the middle of it!”) 

It now also had a massive maple bridge plate and large wooden brace between the bridge and soundhole that adversely restricted top vibration. The modified neck design featured a narrow fretboard and slim, flat profile similar to a Gibson solidbody electric of that era. How could Gibson president Ted McCarty – the man behind such timeless classics as the Les Paul (!), Flying V, Explorer, ES-335, Firebird, SG and so on – allow such an abomination to happen under his watch?

Acoustic traditionalists may have averted their gaze in disgust, but the J-200’s modifications didn’t matter much to many of the most popular recording artists of the '60s and beyond. 

The list of legendary recordings featuring a Sixties J-200 is truly astounding. George Harrison used one with the Beatles on the White Album, Let It Be and Abbey Road on songs that include While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Here Comes the Sun. John Lennon also played Harrison’s J-200 during the Let It Be/Get Back sessions. 

Jimmy Page borrowed producer Mickie Most’s J-200 to record Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, Black Mountain Side and Your Time is Gonna Come on Led Zeppelin’s debut album. Bob Dylan famously posed with one on the cover of his Nashville Skyline album and played it on the record. Pete Townshend used his 1968 J-200 on every Who and solo recording he made from 1968 through 1989, most notably on Pinball Wizard.

But wait, there’s more. Brian Jones can be seen playing a '60s J-200 in the Rolling Stones film Sympathy for the Devil; Cat Stevens recorded and performed with a Sixties J-200 during his late '60s/early '70s prime; John Fogerty played his on the Creedence Clearwater Revival classics Cosmo’s Factory, (Lookin’ Out My Back Door) and Green River (the title track); and the '60s J-200 often appeared in the hands of everyone from Gram Parsons to pop sensation Mike Nesmith of the Monkees to Texas country-blues songster Mance Lipscomb.

The '60s J-200’s heavily reinforced and heavy bridge, maple back and sides (often made of laminated materials), and skinny neck combined to deliver a rather percussive tone (i.e. lacking the sustain and rich resonance of previous J-200 models) with pronounced, brilliant treble and subdued bass, but that made it effective in the recording studio for recording bright, aggressive rhythm tracks that cut through the mix. 

As Harrison proved on Here Comes the Sun, this bird could also sing quite sweetly when fingerpicked, particularly when using a capo.

Larry DiMarzio doesn’t do an awful lot of interviews. Which is a shame because he’s one of the most storied and rightly famous electric guitar pickup makers and tone innovators in the world. 

Cutting his teeth in the late ’60s and early ’70s, repairing guitars for the busy and demanding pro guitarists of New York, he soon learned that professional guitarists needed pickups that offered higher performance than the factory units being made by Fender and Gibson at the time. After a stint working for Bill Lawrence, he went on to almost single-handedly invent the mainstream pickup market. 

His first foray into designing original pickups yielded the FS-1 – an eponymous ‘Fat Strat’ pickup designed to correct the tendency of traditional Strat bridge pickups to sound shrill and thin, which was subsequently adopted by players such as David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. 

But it was his next creation, the fiery but surprisingly versatile Super Distortion humbucker, that really put DiMarzio on the map – and today his pickups are used by everyone from Steve Vai and Satriani to Nita Strauss and Andy Timmons. 

In a rare one-to-one interview, we ask Larry about his philosophy on getting great tone and learn how the Super Distortion kicked down the door of the ’70s guitar scene.

Before you founded DiMarzio, you cut your teeth at New York guitar-repair centre Guitar Lab. You’ve said that one of the commonest mods you were asked to do was retrofitting Les Paul Deluxes with full-size humbuckers. What was driving that, in your opinion? After all, mini-humbuckers can sound pretty good…

“Most guitar players – the hip guitar players and the guitar-repair people – accepted and recognised the fact that Gibson was not paying attention to what we wanted at that time. Nor Fender, for the most part. Jeff Beck and, in particular, Jimmy Page were playing Les Pauls, so suddenly everyone wanted a Les Paul. 

“So what does Gibson do? Did Jimmy Page’s guitar have mini-humbuckers? No! [Laughs] So I would say that on average, we were doing several conversions of mini-humbucker Les Pauls to full-size humbuckers a week during the time I was at the Guitar Lab. We’d take the original out, rout the hole bigger, drop the new humbucker in.”

The other in-demand mod back then was removing standard Tele neck pickups and replacing them with full-size humbuckers. How did beefing up factory Fender tones lead to your debut design, the FS-1 ‘Fat Strat’ pickup?

“I remember [Guitar Lab owner] Charlie LoBue was really happy with himself because he had bought a batch of Firebird pickups. Up to then, we had been installing full-size humbuckers in Teles, which were totally mismatched to the bridge pickup. 

“Also, the strings don’t line up… But we took the neck pickups out, put humbuckers in, and accepted the fact that it worked – and yet it didn’t really work. It was a half-solution. And so Charlie was really happy because he’d contacted Gibson and apparently they had a box of old [non-reverse] Firebird pickups that were never installed in guitars because the model was discontinued. 

“So he bought the box of pickups and then we started installing Firebird pickups [in the neck position of Teles]. But I didn’t like that, either, you know? So there was a lot of experimenting going on. But the typical experiment was to rout a big hole in a guitar and hope for the best.

“Actually, I don’t like Tele neck pickups at all – never did. As a matter of fact, when we [in later years] made the Twang King pickup, Steve Blucher was working on the design and I had just come back from Japan, where I was actually seeing an increase in interest in Telecasters. 

“And we had a request from our distributor saying, ‘Well, why don’t you make a neck pickup?’ So Steve Blucher said to me, ‘What do you want the next pickup to sound like?’ And I said, ‘Like a Stratocaster!’ But what Steve did was actually better: the Twang King has what I would describe as that elusive, mythical sound that you think you should be getting. 

“That said, I always thought the Stratocaster’s bridge pickup sounded terrible. Hence, the very first rewinds that I did were to change the sound of that bridge pickup to be warmer and darker – because what I really wanted to do was shift it in the direction of a P-90. I wanted that warmer, bigger, fuller [tone]. That was really the first pickup I designed from the ground up, where it was like, ‘I don’t want to fix the pickup, I want to change the pickup.’ Which is the separation between just repairing something and actual design.”

Back in those early days, you repaired an awful lot of pickups. What did you learn while fixing them that influenced your own pickup designs later on?

“One of my theories when I first started the company was that I never wanted a pickup back because it broke, right? So during the thinking and engineering process, I would kind of go a little bit more heavy duty than needed, simply because I would rather build in a safety factor. 

“Even today, when we work with artists they might say to us, ‘We’re going out on the road – could you send me some guitar straps?’ And we’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, sure. We’ll send you out guitar straps. What do you need?’ And they might say, ‘Well, I need six.’ 

“To which we’ll reply, ‘Well, take nine,’ right? And we’ll ask them what pickups are in their guitars and what pots they’re currently using. Then we’ll send them all of that stuff. So my standing joke with roadies is, if you have just one of anything in the case [of equipment that we send out], it won’t break. So it’s about ‘How do we make this so it doesn’t need repair?’ I love things that don’t need repair.”

You’ve described how Gibson and Fender failed to grasp what players wanted from the guitars they made during the ’70s. In what sort of ways did factory pickups fitted to guitars during that period represent a backwards step, in your view?

“Well, I realised early on that original PAF pickups sounded significantly different to the early ’70s and late-’60s pickups that we were seeing. For example, one of the things that Gibson had decided to do was make the Alnico magnet shorter. And I’m going to say that was probably a bean-counter decision. Corporations have a tendency to allow the bean-counters to have a little bit too much freedom in my opinion. 

“The story that I got – not verified – was that Gibson came out with a Melody Maker that had a bar magnet down the centre of the coil, and they wrapped the coil around that to make a cheap single coil that only used one magnet, okay? And the story that I got is that they decided to use the same Alnico magnet in [both the budget single coils and in standard humbuckers]. So in order to make that work, they shortened the magnet that was used in the regular humbucker.”

The DiMarzio Super Distortion was the first high-performance replacement humbucker to hit the market and it has been in demand ever since. What tonal benefits did it offer to guitarists as compared to factory humbuckers made by Gibson and others?

“Well, we made a device called a ‘Universal String Plucker’. It looked like something from a child’s Erector Set, but it had a guitar pick that swept across the strings and the idea was that the plucking was consistent, right? So we rigged a guitar so that it was being played [by the Universal String Plucker] and then used an oscilloscope and a camera to record the results. 

“In essence, this showed how different pickups performed while being plucked with the same intensity. So you’ll see on those graphs that there is an initial peak, then there’s a high point and finally there’s the sustain. 

“So using the Universal Plucker and striking all six strings, the Super Distortion produced 3.54 volts RMS, whereas an old ‘Patent Applied For’ produced 1.9 volts RMS and then the newer – at that point – 70s humbuckers produced 1.41 volts in our test results. So, again, part of my logic was: if we had a pickup with higher output, it would drive a Fender or Marshall amplifier into distortion.

“If you wanted to come out of distortion, you just rolled the volume back. And by clipping the front-end of the amp with the higher output of the pickup, the guitar now sustained longer, simply because you had more voltage hitting the front-end of the amplifier.

“I read an article recently [featuring a] Tony Bacon interview with Seth Lover, and Seth Lover talked about the original PAF pickup and how what they really wanted at Gibson was a kind of P-90 sound but quieter. And he came up with the idea of using the two coils to cancel most of the noise, put it in a metal cover, which again is all textbook. 

“He talked very specifically about how the original pickup that he designed had a stainless-steel cover, but they had difficulty attaching that because he wanted to have what I would call an almost ‘magnetically invisible’ cover. Which didn’t happen. And then when you change the plating on the cover… the cover becomes slightly magnetic, which means that you are [leaching] the magnetism away from the strings and dissipating that in the cover, so to speak. 

“All of us in the guitar business were taking the covers off pickups anyway. That was the other thing that I did all the time. And again, doing that allows you to raise the pickup up higher and closer to the strings. So all that was just a way of doing exactly what I eventually did [with the Super Distortion], which was to increase the initial output to the amplifier.” 

When you made the first prototypes of the Super Distortion you used surplus components left over from Bill Lawrence’s shop. In your biographical essay The Birth Of The Super Distortion, you describe using nails to pack out the space between the improvised magnet you used and the prototype pickup’s other components. What effect did that have and how did it influence the onward development of the Super Distortion?

“Well, it changed the iron load of the actual pickup – because there was now more iron. When I was working for Bill Lawrence and he left the ’shop, there were scraps left laying around, including some ceramic magnets. 

“The funny part is I took some of the ceramic magnets, which were not the right size, and installed them in a pickup and liked it better… because the other thing [besides increasing output] that I was doing was tone shaping. If you had a big, loud, bright pickup, I felt it was just annoying. What I really wanted was that singing, ‘vocal’ quality, especially in the bridge position, you know? 

“So I built those first pickups with the magnet scraps using iron [to fill a gap]. Then, when I could afford it, I went and bought my own magnets and changed the dimensions of the magnet, then A/B’d the two – and realised I didn’t actually like the new, larger magnet! So once again it was like, ‘Oh, gee, if I put this in, it should work better.’ But, no, when I tried it, I didn’t like it. 

“The same thing happened with amplifier work. I once built an ultra-linear Fender amplifier from a schematic, making what I thought were improvements to it – and it was a great PA amplifier but an absolutely horrific guitar amplifier. It would not break up.”

Great guitar tone often comes from things not working with ‘perfect efficiency’. But perfect efficiency is at least a clear goal. So how do you identify the elusive design elements that make a pickup or guitar amp sound good to our ears?

“Well, trial and error, error, error – over and over. You keep making mistakes and that kind of teaches you not to do certain things.”

The Super Distortion was the first aftermarket pickup of its kind, so how did you get people to take notice of it?

“I used to go around to music stores with my Goldtop Les Paul [fitted with a Super Distortion at the bridge] and I would say to them, ‘The neck pickup is always louder, right?’ And the store owner would agree. So then I plugged the guitar in, played the neck pickup then switched to the bridge pickup – which was, of course, louder with a Super Distortion – and I’d say, ‘Not any more.’ And that would sell six pickups… [laughs]. 

“But that was one of the early goals: clearly establishing the fact that I’d done something very different from what Gibson was doing. And when I finally got [a really good, genuine] 1959 Les Paul, it was magnificent… But if I was going to play a gig, I would have taken a guitar that I’d built that had a Super Distortion in the bridge position. It really let me do whatever I wanted to do and you got a very different effect to what a stock Les Paul would give you.”

Looking back over the decades since the Super Distortion’s launch, how gracefully do you think it has aged as a design? Is it still relevant today, when hundreds – possibly thousands – of hot humbuckers are now available to players?

“Oh, gosh… Oddly enough since we’ve written The Birth Of The Super Distortion article, I’ve had lots of love mail about how many people got it, love it and still use it and it’s their favourite pickup. I’m really proud of the design because it was groundbreaking – still is in many ways – and it’s really the pickup that everyone targets: you have guys on YouTube going, ‘Well, we compared the Super Distortion to this, this and this…’ 

“And you have to realise that basically anyone that’s building that kind of product is basing their design work on what I did 50 years ago… In a funny way, it’s the ‘SM57’ of the guitar pickup business. It’s got a shit-ton of hits [to its credit]. And it has its own character. 

“As a matter of fact, the guitar player who’s out with Corey Taylor [Christian Martucci] is a big Super Distortion fan. And when we first met, he just sang the praises of how much he liked recording with that pickup because it just works. I’m like, ‘Do you want to try this? Or do you want to try that?’ And he’s like, ‘No, in the bridge position, I really like what this does.’ 

“He’s now recorded an album with a bunch of different things. But in particular, he’s playing a Phantom in the bridge position – which is a modification on a P-90 we’ve made – but so many of the other recordings that he’s doing are all Gibson guitars with Super Distortions in the bridge. So the takeaway, for me, is that it’s a good piece of work. It’s consistent. I never sold it out. It’s never been built in Asia. And the goal was always to keep the brand and the identity clean.” 

How important has practical input from artists been in shaping what DiMarzio pickups are today? 

“You can come up with ideas that you think are good in your design area… and then you still have to take them into the marketplace. I mean, a lot of the pickups were road-tested, not just by me but by my friends. I mean, imagine if you would, it’s 1973, KISS is formed and recording, but they’re not even out on the road yet. 

“Right? Ace Frehley and I meet up and I give him some pickups because he heard about them. Well, those pickups were out on the road for like a year. Now, if there were problems, I was going to hear about it.

“Another example: Yngwie Malmsteen used the HS-3 pickup because basically he wanted an FS-1 that was quiet. The first version of the FS-1 [we came up with] that was quiet was an HS-3. After going through HS-1 and -2, that was the third version. He road-tested that pickup for about a year, liked it and that was that and he used [it for some time]. So I like the idea of getting a product and road-testing it. 

“Corey Taylor’s doing worldwide probably for a year, and our Phantom pickups will be out on the road doing a lot of shows. Something either works or it doesn’t [in that demanding environment], and the last thing I want to hear is, ‘Oh, gee, we had to fix this in the mix.’ It should be: plug it in, it sounds right.”  

• Visit DiMarzio to read more about the birth of the Super Distortion.

When it comes to the vintage market, few rules are set in stone. Consider the curious case of the Gibson Firebird. Launched in 1963 to a general shrug of shoulders, not even high-profile exponents like Brian Jones and Blind Faith-era Eric Clapton could boost the model’s sales beyond a desultory trickle.

But as Mike Long of UK vintage specialist ATB Guitars explains, that same outlier status now makes the Firebird an excellent lower-priced entry point for first-time collectors. But when true one-offs come to market – like this stunning non-reverse III circa 1968, with its irresistible Led Zeppelin connection – all bets are off as to what they can command as collectible instruments.

Can you tell us the story behind this Firebird and how it came to ATB Guitars?

“We were contacted by the owner to ask if we were interested in selling it and he relayed the story. The owner worked for a property development company of which John Bonham was the partner. 

“Before John became the world’s most famous drummer, he wasn’t sure if things were going to work out, so he still had this company, and the owner of this guitar was his business partner. As Led Zeppelin became well known, John sold his stake and his partner bought the business out, but they remained great friends. 

“This Firebird was bought by Jimmy Page from Mike Ladd’s Guitar City in Memphis, Tennessee. He bought, at the same time, a purple Les Paul that he’s been pictured playing. Page bought this Firebird as you see it now.

“It’s basically a heavily modified III, with three pickups and Jaguar-style switching. It’s been painted black and looks quite fetching. The pickguard has been replaced and it’s got a ‘Custom Made’ plaque on it. The modifications were done before Page bought it, by the technician who worked for Mike Ladd’s shop, Tom Keckler.”

How much do you know about Page’s ownership of the Firebird?

“He obviously saw it in the shop, played it, liked it and bought it. We don’t know how long Page had it for. We don’t know if it’s been used on any recordings or concerts – I’d love to find out. But we know he was playing Spoof with John Bonham; Spoof was a drinking game that was popular in the ’70s. 

“So John Bonham won the game [and the guitar], he had it for a while then gave it to his old business partner. This story has been verified by Mike Ladd’s shop. Also, Jason Bonham is aware of the guitar’s history and he knows it used to belong to his dad. So it’s got good provenance. And it’s the first time it’s surfaced in many years.”

Where does this particular model sit within the Firebird pantheon?

“Because it’s been refinished, the serial number was overwritten. However, because of the style of the tuners, we think it’s circa ’68. It’s a non-reverse body. Basically, if you follow the Firebird timeline, in 1965, Gibson changed them to non-reverse. I can show you a reverse body Firebird for comparison. 

“This is a 1964 reverse-body VII in Cherry Red [pictured over the page]. Very rare. You can immediately see the difference. That was a pretty drastic change in 1965 and it probably signalled the death knell for the already not-very-popular Firebird. Once they were changed in 1965, they only continued for a few more years – then they were dropped from the Gibson line.”

In the Firebird market, how does demand vary between reverse and non?

“Reverse bodies are far more popular and desirable. To the extent that a reverse will be worth probably three times as much. However, people like Brian Jones used to play a non-reverse, as well as a reverse. Also, Noel Gallagher was famous for using a non-reverse. I think Phil Manzanera did Firebirds the biggest favour by sporting that nice Cardinal Red VII with Roxy Music. He just looked the king of cool, didn’t he?

“Because they’re more affordable, Firebirds have become more popular over the last 20-odd years. People find they’re still great guitars, but it’s a matter of taste more than anything and whether you like the styling. I think they’re a good entry point into owning classic Gibsons. They’re great bargains at the moment.”

Which Firebirds are the most common and which are the hardest to find?

“In terms of reverse bodies, the most common is a III. You see many more of those than any others. The I is the next most common, but you tend to get a huge price jump because the Firebird I with the single pickup is the one Eric Clapton used in Cream, so it’s got that [connection]. 

“Then you have the VIIs, which are rare. The VII was the top of the range model with ebony ’board, gold-plated parts. Again, not very many were sold. This one is a Cherry Red – a custom colour – and I think it’s the only one ever made. It’s exceptionally rare. Again, with all these Firebirds, custom colours will add probably five times the price. I’ve seen custom-coloured VIIs going into six figures.

“With the non-reverse Firebirds, it’s pretty similar. The III is the most popular, but the I is not that popular; I don’t think anyone uses it. Most people will use the III or VII, with the III being the most popular.”

It’s interesting that the association with Clapton drives up the I’s price, even though it’s arguably less flexible. But it does have a beautiful simplicity.

“It does, I totally agree. The other thing with that guitar is that it’s the only one in the Firebird line that doesn’t have a whammy bar fitted. It came from the factory with a wrapover tailpiece, whereas all the other Firebirds had some kind of whammy bar fitted.”

Were custom colours for the non-reverse more prevalent than for the reverse models, just because it was later into the ’60s?

“I would say it’s easier to find a non-reverse in custom colours than a reverse. They do some really nice custom colours in the Firebird range, like Inverness Green or Heather Mist poly, as well as Ice Blue, I think it’s called. But again, it’s easier to find in a non-reverse model. Reverse-body custom colours are very rare and do tend to attract quite a premium.”

What are the special considerations with artist-owned guitars? When you get into the realms of who owned what, it must become more complex.

“It’s infinitely more complex, and by far the most important part is provenance. You have to make sure that [information] is solid before you start advertising ‘this guitar used to belong to so-and-so’. 

“Especially if it concerns people who are still alive because they can always come up and say, ‘Oi, I didn’t own that!’ We once had a Marshall we advertised as ‘ex-Bryan Adams’. He actually contacted us and said, ‘That’s not mine, I’ve still got it.’ It transpired the amplifier wasn’t used by him, but by one of the other band members. So we changed it to ‘ex-Bryan Adams Band’. But he was very nice about it.”

Can you describe what this particular Firebird III is like to play? 

“It’s good. It hasn’t been played for quite a while. It needs a tune – but we’ll do that free of charge! We’ve left it as John Bonham last had it. We haven’t changed anything. The guy we bought it off wasn’t a guitar player, so I don’t really know why John Bonham gave it to him. I mean, John obviously wasn’t a guitar player, either…”

Where do Firebirds sit in the market relative to other Gibsons?

“That’s a good question. Firebirds have never, ever really been popular guitars. They weren’t when they were originally made and, even today, they’re still not massively popular. They’re never number one on most players’ lists. 

“Most players will look for a Strat, Tele, Les Paul, whatever, and then at some stage, when they’ve got all those, they’ll look at Firebirds and other things. I don’t think there’s many people who’d pick a Firebird as their number-one guitar without having anything else in the back room. 

“That’s probably not going to change until somebody really famous starts playing one. But that’s good because it keeps values down and allows people to enter the vintage marketplace reasonably easily, especially with non-reverse Firebirds.”

What other areas are good to look at if you’re entering the vintage market?

“Certainly, Firebirds are a very exciting area. They’re unique. They have their own little foibles and they’re cool guitars as well. Other areas people might want to look at are Melody Makers. They’re starting to get on a rise now, especially the early 60s double-cut ones with two pickups.”

Finally, how often do you tend to have Firebirds come in at ATB?

“We’ve always enjoyed having Firebirds. I don’t think there’s ever been a point where we’ve not had at least one. We particularly like the reverse-body ones and the VIIs, and when we have really nice custom colour ones, I’m amazed at how quickly they spring out of the door.”  

If you have been with me for the last few columns, you know that I’ve been demoing a variety of my favorite vintage guitars and discussing each instrument’s unique attributes. We began with a 1954 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop with P-90s, followed by a 1961 Gibson dot-neck ES-335 and a 1952 Fender Esquire. This time, our focus will be the 1954 Fender Stratocaster.

While detailing all the great things about the ’52 Esquire, I said (as I often do), “Leo got it right the first time!”, of course refering to Leo Fender, founder of Fender guitars. The same can be said about the ’54 Strat, which was the first year of the model.

To me, all the instruments discussed thus far are sonic “staples of life,” for us guitar players. A Les Paul, a 335, an SG, a Firebird, a Strat, a Telecaster, are all benchmarks from which guitar tones are judged. 

Strats were first offered with maple fingerboards, and, starting in 1959, the guitars were available with rosewood fingerboards. One can argue that a rosewood board results in more of a Stevie Ray Vaughan-type sound.

I always refer to maple-neck Strats as the “Buddy Holly” guitar, and great players such as Eric Johnson. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix are also well known for playing maple-neck Strats. Personally, I’m more of a maple-fretboard Strat player.

To my ears, the notes jump off it in a different way, as compared to a rosewood board. Whether one prefers maple or rosewood fingerboards, Stratocasters will produce a wide range of fantastic tones, and combined with the ash body and the low-output pickups, these guitars do something very special.

Let’s begin on the neck pickup, with the example presented in Figure 1. Using the pickup’s full, round tone, I begin with licks based on C# minor pentatonic (C#, E, F#, G#, B). I then move down to B and F#m, the iv (four minor chord) of C#m, and then ascend through G, D and E before finishing up with some more C#m pentatonic-based lines. 

The licks in bars 5-7 are inspired by both Jimi Hendrix and Eric Johnson. On beat 3 of bar 5, I bend a B note on the 2nd string’s 12th fret up a whole step to C# with my ring finger, which additonally “catches,” or “snags,” the 3rd string, resulting in that string being pre-bent up a half step, after which I release the bend, slide down one fret to F# and then pull-off to E at the 9th fret. This move is one used prevalently by Jimi Hendrix.

The subsequent fast C# minor pentatonic phrases bring to mind runs Eric Johnson will often play. The reverse raking technique – dragging the pick across two or more strings in a single upstroke – in bars 6 and 7 is one closely associated with SRV.

Although the Stratocaster was originally equipped with just a three-way toggle switch (the modern five-way switch not being introduced until 1977), one can set it between the neck and middle pickups or the middle and bridge pickups to yield two more tonal settings. 

In Figure 2, I set the toggle between the neck and middle pickups as I play through lines based primarily on C# minor pentatonic. 

Warren Haynes’ electric guitar allegiances lean heavily in favor of Gibson, with his current Gov’t Mule axe arsenal comprising an ES-335, a couple of Firebirds and a few Les Pauls, just to name a few.

But, as he revealed in a recent interview with Premier Guitar, one of Haynes’ most cherished guitars of the bunch is a Custom Shop Gibson Les Paul – a model that, apparently, isn’t even “legally” allowed to be called a Les Paul at all.

The guitar in question, a Tobacco Sunburst example, was headed for the scrapheap due to manufacturing issues when Haynes, on the hunt for such an instrument, visited the Gibson Custom Shop for a spot of guitar hunting.

As the story goes, the guitar was hanging in the office of Rick Gembar – who formerly ran the Custom Shop – and had been rendered unsellable owing to the fact two extra screwholes had been drilled into the guitar adjacent to the neck humbucker. As such, it was exiled as a piece of wall art.

“Years, years, years ago, I went to the Gibson Custom Shop and said that I was looking for a Tobacco Sunburst Les Paul,” Haynes recalled. “They only had a few at the Custom Shop at that time, and I played three or however many they had.”

Alas, “none of them had that magic” that Haynes was searching for, and so Gembar directed the search towards the forgotten Les Paul hanging from his office wall – a guitar that was then without tuners, pickups or hardware.

“My friend Rick Gembar, who was running the Gibson Custom Shop at that time, said, ‘Well, I want you to get one that you love,’” he went on. “And he just happened to remember this guitar that had been hanging on the wall in his office. 

“He said, ‘What about that one hanging on my wall?’ And they said, ‘Oh, well, it's flawed, we can't sell it.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, there's two extra screw holes in it where somebody put screw holes in the wrong place.’ 

“So they were just gonna scrap it, so it's been sitting on his wall for like two years or something. It had no tuners, no pickups, no electronics. It was just wood.”

Shortly after, the Les Paul was set up and given to Haynes to try, which in turn swiftly brought about an end to the Allman Brothers Band guitarist's stuttering six-string search.

“We sat around and tried some other guitars, and they brought it out,” he went on. “And it sounded better than any of the guitars that I had been playing. And I was like, ‘Can I have this one?’ And they're like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’”

According to Haynes, the drill discrepancies meant “legally, they couldn’t call it a Les Paul”, and as such the guitar had been destined for the garbage. Despite its quirks, though, it became his “favorite” guitar from that era.

“For me, for all the guitars that I had from that time period, this is my favorite one. And had that not occurred, this guitar would probably be in the garbage somewhere. I mean, it's a really cool guitar all the way around, but I play slide on it a lot.”

While we were putting together our tribute to 70 years of the Les Paul, I asked Gibson’s senior director of product development, Mat Koehler, what his favourite pickups for Les Pauls were. While acknowledging the allure of the fabled PAF, he named the humble mini-humbucker as his favourite, underrated tonemaker. 

“It’s just a very specific sweet tone that I really enjoy,” he mused. “And a lot of the great recordings of the ’70s and beyond were done on mini-humbuckers – and you just don’t realise it.”

Not to be confused with the similar-looking Firebird pickup, which was constructed by winding coils round two bar magnets mounted edgewise on a baseplate, the mini-humbucker, as its name suggests, was somewhat truer to the concept of a downsized standard ’bucker. Like its full-size brethren, the Gibson mini-humbucker featured an Alnico bar magnet laid flat on a nickel-silver baseplate at the base of the pickup, with two unpotted coils mounted on top. 

One coil featured adjustable nickel-steel pole screws to conduct the magnet’s field upwards towards the strings. The other coil, less conventionally, featured a bar-like slug of steel, mounted edgewise, at its centre. This also served to conduct the underlying magnet’s field upwards through the coil, though unlike the screw poles it was non-height-adjustable. Typically, DC resistance was between 6 and 7kohms, only a tad cooler than the average PAF. 

So far, so interesting. But why, with a successful full-size humbucker and P-90s to play with, did Gibson feel the need to produce a third mainstream pickup design? The mini-humbucker was sonically brighter and crisper than either a PAF or a P-90, but was that the main reason it was developed? Mat Koehler picks up the story, which, as was so often the case, had commercial not sonic imperatives behind it.

“The story there is that when Gibson purchased Epiphone, the idea was that they could now find new markets outside of Gibson dealers. They could find dealers in competitive areas that wouldn’t sell Gibson against Gibson, so they created the Epiphone brand, basically, as an offshoot of Gibson,” Mat explains.

“It was also approached more as [a project led by specific individuals]. So it was Ward Arbanas who was leading Epiphone and then the mind behind the new models was Andy Nelson, one of their performers and salespeople who did all the Gibson clinics and things. So that was how those designs came about. 

“But it was very important to them both that Epiphone was distinct from Gibson in as many ways as possible. [Epiphone instruments were] made in the same factories alongside the Gibsons as we know, but mini-humbuckers were one way that they could make their models distinct. 

“So they came about originally, I believe, as a proprietary request from Harmony in Chicago because it was the same parent company, and they eventually went on the Silvertone 1446 model – another mini-humbucker with the same casing and the only difference was the staggered polepieces. 

“But I mean, it’s a mini-humbucker through and through, it’s just kind of constructed a little bit differently from the Gibson style. So I think that was the impetus for saying, ‘All right, well, we’ve already gotten this far. Let’s just have a proprietary humbucker for Epiphone.”

All change

And so it was that the mini-humbucker graced elegant semis such as the Sorrento and Riviera plus Epiphone’s toneful solid-body Coronet (from 1963), partly fulfilling the goal of giving Epiphone a distinctive sound and features to sell to customers. However, as Epiphone player John Lennon once observed, “Life’s what happens while you’re making other plans.” 

Introduced as a unique selling point for Epiphones, the mini-humbucker concept eventually had to perform a complete U-turn at the end of the ’60s as Japanese copies of US guitars began eating away at Gibson’s market share. 

“You only see the mini-humbucker on Epiphones, then… Gibson sales dropped and they started talking about moving Epiphone [manufacturing] internationally so they could compete with some of the pop-up Japanese makers and whatnot. But they still had this huge inventory of mini-humbuckers.

“So they had designed the 1968 Les Paul Standard – which was a Goldtop, but they were calling it a Standard – with P-90s. But I think, again, [it became about] factory needs and somebody said, ‘Hey, we have all this inventory, it fits in the same rout as a P-90. Can you guys use that up?’”

In a classic piece of psychological misdirection, the new Les Pauls equipped with surplus mini-humbuckers were named ‘Deluxe’ models, though in what sense they represented an upmarket progression from the previous P-90 ‘Standards’ wasn’t clear. And, in a way, it didn’t matter too much as they did offer a distinctive new voice for the Les Paul.

The story goes that Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy, on being instructed to equip himself with a ‘proper’ electric guitar, sought out a used Les Paul among London’s music stores. Finding used ’Bursts and Customs too expensive, he picked up a Deluxe instead. Looking back, one would have to say that his unique wiry tone wouldn’t have sounded anything like so distinctive had he got his first wish. 

“That’s honestly how the Les Paul Deluxe came about,” Mat reflects. “The need to use up inventory of mini-humbuckers – which is funny because they suit a Les Paul Deluxe so well. And like I said, it’s a really specific sound. I like the sound of an Epiphone Riviera with a mini-humbucker because of the sweetness and with the Les Paul I think what you add is even more sustain and clarity, which is a great quality to have in a pickup,” he concludes. 

One of Gibson’s most recognizable signature guitars is the DG-335 – an elusive, now-discontinued Pelham Blue ES-335 model built for Dave Grohl, which was in production from 2007 to 2014.

Because of the limited supply of such six-strings, these guitars are usually some of the most expensive second-hand signatures that can be found on the used market, with the cheapest example on Reverb currently listing for over $19,000.

Well, fans of the light blue DG-335 who have been priced out of their dream guitar are about to be very happy indeed, because Gibson’s stand-in CEO Cesar Gueikian has just hinted that Grohl’s Gibson model is about to be revived.

And, what’s more, he’s seemingly confirmed that a far more affordable Epiphone version of the Foo Fighter’s prized axe is also in the pipeline.

The tease came during an Instagram Q&A session, with Gueikian simply replying “Ok” to one individual who optimistically asked, “Can we get a DG-335 core model or Epiphone models?”

Now, it’s a pretty short tease, but enough to get us excited. Why? Well, we can’t imagine Gueikian would have responded to the question in such a positive way had the thought of reviving the DG-335 had not already crossed Gibson’s mind.

Not only that, Gueikian answered the following question – “What are your plans for Gibson in the future?” – by saying, “Do Epic Shit.” A DG-335 reboot would most certainly be epic. 

Gueikian also seemed to take the rest of that Q&A pretty seriously – he confirmed that an Epiphone version of the recently released Greeny Les Paul reboot would be arriving sometime in the future, and revealed that Dave Mustaine’s own Epiphone signature guitars will drop this month.

As such, we’re inclined to believe that the DG-335 will be making a triumphant return.

Noted for its Trini Lopez-inspired f-holes and reverse Firebird headstock, the original DG-335 was released in Pelham Blue and Ebony, with a Metallic Gold colorway arriving later. Though not quite as expensive as their Pelham Blue sibling, the latter two models still have eye-watering price tags – as much as $14,000 in some cases.

The initial run of DG-335s was highly limited, with only 300 examples – 200 Pelham Blue, 100 Ebony – shipped to customers.

It was, for all intents and purposes, a tweaked Custom Shop version of Grohl’s much-loved Lopez model, featuring a semi-hollow ES-335 design, diamond f-holes, split diamond inlays and a rosewood fretboard, as well as a pair of Gibson Burstbucker pickups.

Judging from Gueikian’s Q&A, it seems as though the new DG-335s will be core models, as opposed to Custom Shop creations, meaning some of those original specs might be altered. Naturally, even more deviation from the blueprint will be found on the Epi model.

Head over to Gueikian's Instagram account to browse the full Q&A.

If you look through Joe Bonamassa’s guitar rack at the side of the stage on any given night, chances are you’ll find all kinds of vintage instruments – from mouth-watering Fenders like mid-’50s Strats and B-bender Teles to rare Gibson originals including Korina Flying Vs, ’70s Firebirds and cherry red semi-hollows. But if there’s one guitar he’s going to play live or use in the studio more than any other, it’s the Gibson Les Paul.

It was a decision made early on in his career which came down to the design as well as the ’60s and ’70s masters who took the sound of American blues to new expressive heights...

“I play Les Paul Standards for the simplicity,” Bonamassa tells TG, in between the studio sessions for his next album and preparations ahead of his North American spring tour.

“I also like rosewood fingerboards, so that helps narrow it down. And my heroes played Les Pauls, too. Pretty much all of the English guitar legends of the 1960s – everyone from Eric Clapton to Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page to Peter Green and later influences like Gary Moore – that’s what they were holding.”

With so many precious tools at his disposal, arguably standing as one of the finest collections in the world, one can only wonder how he arrives to the final decision of which to employ on any given track. 

What can a Les Paul say that another guitar might struggle to articulate in the same manner and why might he use a Les Paul Standard instead of, say, a Junior or Custom? Many of us have wondered what exactly is it that the guitarist hears when he imagines one of his tracks coming to life.

“I find picking up a Les Paul makes it easier to achieve the tone that’s stuck in my head,” Joe reveals. “You can achieve your sound with any guitar. For example, I am a proud Les Paul Junior owner. With that said, I rarely play them. There is something about the flatness of the top that I never bonded with... but it’s worth bearing in mind that plenty of players have ruled and can rule the world with those things!

“A Les Paul Standard is definitely the sound I hear in my head. If had to pick a favourite out of the collection, it would be the one I call ‘Principal Skinner’. I’ve owned it for almost 15 years and it is the perfect guitar for me. It’s serial number 9-1951, made in 1959.”

This guitar had been bought by another collector in 2006 from American auction house now known as Bonhams Skinners for the price of $292,000, which, according to Bonamassa, set the non-celebrity record for an instrument sale.

The all-original Standard – originally owned and kept in great condition by a family in Benton, Minnesota – then came into Joe’s possession around 2011, before being renamed after one of his favourite Simpsons characters and taken to highly acclaimed Nashville luthier Joe Glaser for refretting.

In 2014, Gibson did a small run of 50 ‘Skinner Bursts’ aged by Tom Murphy as well as being signed and played by Bonamassa himself – every piece sold before even going into production. Which goes to show he’s one of the world’s most respected Les Paul aficionados and, ultimately, someone who is never afraid to share his unique insight and accumulated pearls of wisdom with the rest of the guitar community.

If you’ve ever seen someone top-wrapping their strings over the tailpiece of their Les Paul, for example, that decision will most likely have been inspired by either Billy Gibbons or Joe...

“I like top wrapping because it lessens the break angle over the bridge,” he says. “Two things are achieved: it’s easier on a vintage ABR-1 and it makes the guitar feel slinkier. The other tip I like to share is on truss rod tension – I believe it’s key to a good, resonant Les Paul, because when it’s too tight the guitar gets choked, and too loose, the guitar plays stiff.”

In more recent years, he’s been helping players on a budget get a taste of the world-class tones he’s associated with, thanks to Epiphone replicas of his 1960 ‘Norm Burst’ and his 1959 ‘Lazarus’.

As well as the good karma from making high-end guitars more universally inclusive, it’s easy to spec these kinds of signatures out, he explains, given that they’re based on choice models from his own collection. And as he says in conclusion: “When I want that big heavy sound and that’s what the song requires, I just grab a Les Paul Standard...”

Last week, it was reported a 1964 Gibson Firebird that had been stage-played by Chuck Berry at one of London’s most iconic venues was going up for auction, and that it was expected to fetch a healthy five-figure sum.

Well, that guitar has now sold, ever-so-slightly exceeding its £20,000 forecast and selling for a total sum of £21,488. Admittedly, the guitar went under the hammer for £17,000, and it was only a 26.4% premium charge that pushed it over the threshold.

Nevertheless, it’s a significant sum of money for a six-string befitting its heritage, having played a crucial role in Berry’s 1972 headline show during The Rock and Roll Show at London’s Wembley Stadium.

As the story goes – and, indeed, as video footage verifies – Berry was playing his Cherry Red Gibson ES-330TD for the majority of the set, though ran into a spot of bother when one of the electric guitar strings snapped during the end of the show.

Thanks to some quick thinking from his back-up guitarist Terry Gibson – real name Terry Clemson – Berry was handed a refinished Firebird to finish his set with. In the video below, the whole switch can be seen around the one-hour-and-16-minute mark.

Upon completion of the set, the Firebird was handed back to Gibson, who kept it until his death. The Firebird then passed on into the possession of its current owner, who purchased the guitar around 2020.

Notably, the guitar itself was originally a sunburst-finished six-string, though had received a fresh lick of black paint sometime between the late ‘60s and 1972. Other specs include a rosewood fretboard and Maestro Vibrola tremolo system.

The guitar in its black-finished state could also be seen on the cover of Berry’s 2017 three-album reissue of Rockin’ at the Hops, One Dozen Berrys and New Juke Box Hits, courtesy of a picture that was snapped at that London show.

As well as its connection to Berry, the Firebird was also a faithful member of Terry Gibson’s own axe arsenal, having featured on the front of his own solo album, Downliner, in 1990.

For more information, head over to Gardiner Houlgate.

A stage-played 1964 Gibson Firebird that was once owned and used by rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry is set to go up for auction in the UK later this month.

Though the Firebird wasn’t one of Berry’s go-to Gibson models – the ES-350T and, later, the ES-355 received that honor – the electric guitar legend was forced into playing this particular six-string during a headline performance at the 1972 Rock and Roll Show at Wembley Stadium in London, when his main instrument snapped a string.

After Berry’s guitar went a string down, his backing guitarist, Terry Gibson, showed impeccable initiative by handing over the Firebird in question, which Berry used to finish the set. 

Berry can be seen switching to and playing the Firebird in the video below around the one hour and 16 minute mark.

After the show, the guitar was given back to Gibson – whose real name is Terry Clemson – who kept it until his death.

Gibson, who had a prolific performing career as a solo artist and session man – his credits include work with Berry, Gene Vincent, Bo Diddley and Screaming Lord Sutch – passed away in 2020, with the guitar moving hands to its current owner around that time.

Despite its black lick of paint, the Firebird originally flaunted a sunburst finish, though was refinished sometime between the late ‘60s and 1972, when Berry was snapped playing the Firebird at Wembley.

One of the pictures captured from the event, which shows Berry in one of his iconic power poses, was later used for a three-album reissue of Rockin’ at the Hops, One Dozen Berrys and New Juke Box Hits in 2017. The Firebird was also used for the artwork of Gibson’s own solo album, Downliner, in 1990.

In terms of specs, the Firebird features a refinished body, rosewood fretboard and a Maestro Vibrola tremolo system, and is being auctioned off alongside a guitar strap that is believed to be the one used by Berry during the gig.

Owing to its association with Berry, the Firebird is expected to fetch a five-figure sum at the auction – as much as £20,000, to be precise – when it goes under the hammer next Thursday (March 9) in Wiltshire, England.

Head over to Gardiner Houlgate to find out more about the guitar.

We’ve been singing Eastman’s praises for many years now at Guitarist. But until the thinline Romeo model was officially launched at the Winter NAMM Show two years ago, the Chinese company was primarily known for building instruments based on well-known American designs. 

What made them stand out from the crowd, though, was expert craftsmanship and the choice of very high-end pickups, electronics and hardware, something not so common with guitars made in China. 

Also, since Eastman also manufactures other fine stringed instruments, the factory took advantage of its knowledge of violin finishing to bring a unique and appealing ‘antique’ look to its guitars.

Eastman’s new electric guitar, which has been on the cards for a little while, is now available in three flavours: Juliet comes in Pomona Blonde sporting two humbuckers, Juliet P-90 is Vintage Red with dual soapbar single coils (both use Eastman’s new Truetone gloss finish and are on review here), while a third Juliet/v Bigsby is in a lightly aged Antique Black Varnish with dual humbuckers and a USA B5 vibrato.

Pickups on all three Juliets are by Bare Knuckle and hardware comes from the renowned Gotoh stable, with pots, pickup selector switch, capacitors and output jack by CTS, Schaller, Sprague and Switchcraft respectively. All top-notch stuff more commonly found in boutique-level guitars.

Okoume has been chosen as a more sustainable wood than the more widely used mahogany, but also for its perfect weight and density. 

Mahogany requires careful selection as it can vary wildly in weight from one plank to the next, and sometimes requires chambering; our okoume guitars are not weight-relieved and Juliet weighs in at 3.04kg (6.7lb), Juliet P-90 very slightly heavier at 3.2kg (7.04lb), which makes for two very comfortable-feeling instruments.

The finishes on our two six-stringers are interesting, too. Since the boutique acoustic guitar builder Dana Bourgeois has joined forces with Eastman with his own company, Bourgeois, they have had access to the ‘special recipe’ that Dana uses on all his high-end acoustic guitars. 

While not nitrocellulose, this Truetone gloss is said to have all of nitro’s sonic benefits and looks but with far less impact on the environment – something Eastman is most proud of.

Sure enough, we thought they were indeed nitro; the Pomona Blonde is rather like Gibson’s limed mahogany, and the Vintage Red is a gloriously rich and vibrant cherry. The okoume’s grain shows through both colours extremely well, the guitars exuding a real touch of class.

Part of the Juliet range’s visual appeal is in its stepped body design, where the centre section that holds the pickups, bridge and tailpiece is raised a couple of millimetres from the rest of the body – much like Gibson’s Firebird. 

Although, while the Firebird consists of a centre section that includes the neck, with separate body ‘wings’ glued on either side, the Juliets are hewn from one solid okoume slab, with the similarly one-piece neck glued in. The stepped theme carries on to the headstock, and imparts an attractive and expensive look.

And this, of course, brings us to the design of the guitars themselves. It’s always scary for a manufacturer that’s made its mark by paying homage to established classics to bust out and go original. 

Sometimes it’s a disaster, and others a triumph. Well, we think these Juliets look fabulous. They are pretty radical, but like Collings’ 360LT design, Manson’s Matt Bellamy model, or even Brian May’s Red Special, they really come into their own when sitting on a guitarist’s lap or hung on a strap, where the outline and contours suddenly make ergonomic and visual sense.

Additional styling cues come in the form of inlaid pickguard and control panel, our Pomona Blonde’s in amber tortoise acrylic, and the Vintage Red’s in black. These are a serious extra amount of work compared with the simple screwed-on variety, demanding accuracy in machining and in the finishing process.

Actually, there is a tiny cosmetic flaw on our Vintage Red model where the inside edge of the cut-out looks partially unfinished. It’s not enough to put us off, though, and it’s also early days for the model so tiny inconsistencies such as this (and a small cosmetic flaw on the Pomona Blonde’s headstock) are highly likely to be ironed out as everything else is so good.

Feel & Sounds

Both guitars feel great straight out of the box, the action height fitting in with Eastman’s stated 2.38mm on the bass side and 1.58mm on the treble side at the 12th fret. 

In feel the necks have a medium-to‑slender C section profile suiting the style of guitar perfectly, the 43mm nut and 305mm (12-inch) radius ebony ’board seeming like old friends. Depth-wise, both are 21.5mm at the 1st fret and slightly over 24mm at the 12th. 

Along with a quoted Fender-like 648mm (25.5-inch) scale length – which actually measures slightly shorter at 644mm (25.35 inches) – and medium jumbo Jescar frets (approximately 2.59mm wide by 1.2mm high), it’s all familiar fare that players of almost any other make and model would feel at home with. The jet black ebony ’boards are smooth and slinky, and the jumbo-ish frets beautifully set and polished.

As already mentioned, the Juliets sit just as beautifully on a strap as they do sitting down and noodling. Balance and weight are just right, and although their mass is similar to that of a Gibson SG, they don’t have that guitar’s issue of the 12th fret being where you expect the 15th to be. If you regularly play a Strat and then pick up a Juliet, there are no funny surprises.

With a P-90 Les Paul Goldtop and humbucking ES-335 on hand for a ballpark comparison, and a Custom Shop Blues Junior ‘Woodie’ to play through, the results were interesting.

Although the Bare Knuckle Old Guards in our VR model are ‘low wind’ P-90s, they were clearer and if anything a tad punchier than the Gibson’s. Of course, a Les Paul is a far heftier beast than a Juliet and so you wouldn’t expect them to sound the same.

There’s an openness here that our Gibson doesn’t possess, with 1st position chords having more of a Malcolm Young or Pete Townshend sprang, and bluesy licks sounding closer to Clapton’s Cream-era tone, or that of Malcolm’s precocious brother in his less lairy moments. There’s a lovely nasal ‘quack’, too, that gives the guitar a definite personality.

Perhaps surprisingly, there’s not a huge difference in voice when switching to the humbucking Pomona Blonde. That’s not too unusual, though, because we’ve always suspected that Seth Lover’s brief was to create a P-90 tone but with no hum. Indeed, this reviewer’s old humbucking Les Paul sounds pretty close to his current P-90 one. 

And the two Juliets here are identical to one another in all other respects save for pickups. If anything, we’ll stick our neck out and say the PB is slightly more open and a tad less honky than the VR, perhaps more Firebird than SG.

Both guitars have separate volume controls for each of the two pickups but a tone that only covers the bridge. Of course, it does modify the overall sound when both pickups are on (even though it’s only acting on one), and that provides an almost Brian May or Jimmy Page-style ‘honk’, which always sits great in a rock mix.

Verdict

As already mentioned, it’s all too easy to come up with an original design that’s merely a hotchpotch of other models, or something so outlandish that it just looks a mess. 

Of course, looks are always subjective but our view is that Eastman’s team, headed up by Pepijn ’t Hart with head designer Otto D’Ambrosio, has created something of a gem. Although full of interesting lines and angles, with stylish items such as the sunken pickguard and switch plate, and that two-tier body and headstock design, it all hangs together really well. 

The use of sustainable okoume rather than mahogany and the nitro-alike Truetone finish must also be applauded. Then there’s those super and original-sounding Bare Knuckle pickups that, when all the other elements come together, lend a distinct and interesting voice to both models. And at under a grand and a half, what’s not to like?

Specs

Eastman Juliet P-90-VR

• PRICE: $1,875/£1,499 (inc gigbag)
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Offset solidbody electric
• BODY: Solid okoume with Firebird-style centre step
• NECK: Okoume, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 644mm (25.35”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43mm
• FINGERBOARD: Ebony, cream dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium-jumbo (Jescar)
• HARDWARE: Gotoh 6-a-side tuners, Gotoh tune-o-matic bridge and stud tailpiece, recessed faux tortoiseshell pickguard
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Bare Knuckle BC Old Guard low-wind P-90s, 3-way pickup selector switch, individual pickup volume controls and one tone control (bridge pickup only)
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.2/7.04
• OPTIONS: Black tweed Juliet case (£129)
• RANGE OPTIONS: Eastman Juliet/v Bigsby (£1,899) with black Antique Varnish finish; Eastman Juliet PB (as reviewed)
• LEFT-HANDERS: Not yet
• FINISH: Vintage Red – Truetone gloss

Eastman Juliet PB

• PRICE: $1,875/£1,499 (inc gigbag)
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Offset solid body electric
• BODY: Solid okoume with Firebird-style centre step
• NECK: Okoume, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 644mm (25.35”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43.09mm
• FINGERBOARD: Ebony, cream dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium-jumbo (Jescar)
• HARDWARE: Gotoh 6-a-side tuners, Gotoh tune-o-matic bridge and stud tailpiece, recessed faux tortoise pickguard
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Bare Knuckle BC Old Guard humbuckers, 3-way pickup selector switch, individual pickup volume controls and one tone control (bridge pickup only)
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.04/6.7
• OPTIONS: Black tweed Juliet case (£129)
• RANGE OPTIONS: See Juliet P-90
• LEFT-HANDERS: Not yet
• FINISH: Pomona Blonde – Truetone gloss
• CONTACT: Eastman Guitars

With Fender enjoying a huge growth in popularity throughout the ’50s, Gibson was forced to try and beat Leo’s company at its own game. In the early ’60s, the Stratocaster hit what was arguably its peak as a design, with the classic rosewood-’board spec and a raft of custom colours available to order.

Keen to come up with a product that echoed the Strat’s sleek modern lines and versatile range of tones, Gibson hired car designer Ray Dietrich to design the reverse-shape Firebird – a difficult-to-construct guitar that didn’t last long before being altered to a simpler, non-reverse design – making early Firebirds in Custom Colours some of the rarest electric guitars in existence.

“First of all, they didn’t make Firebirds in big numbers to start with,” says David Davidson of New York’s Well Strung Guitars. “Reverse Firebirds were a failed experiment that lost Gibson money on every guitar. The coloured ones were basically made to hide shoddy workmanship, at first, until they decided to compete with Fender and put out an official Custom Colour chart. 

“I would say that their rarity, as opposed to that of a custom colour Fender, is dramatic. Especially pastel-colour Firebirds – because most custom-colour Firebirds are red, white or blue. Pastels were far less common, probably because young guys in the ’60s were thinking: ‘Do I really want to own a guitar that looks like my kid sister’s bedroom?’ They didn’t really want those baby-green, baby-pink colours. So only a handful of guitars in colours like Kerry Green were made.”

So were these scarce custom-colour guitars individually made to order? Or did Gibson ship a few out to selected dealers to see if they would prove popular? The answer was a bit of both, David says. “I think really what it was, is that a dealer was sent the Custom Colour chart and a bulletin. 

“Gibson was always putting out these typed bulletins. I’ve had many different ones and these bulletins might say: ‘In response to customer demand, Gibson has decided to offer these 10 exciting new colours for our instruments.’ 

“And they would send an envelope with this little chart and a tri-fold and it would show a colour wheel of finishes. And sometimes a dealer would request these colours – other times the Gibson rep would insist that you would stock some guitars in those colours, because they wanted to promote this idea and get it out there.”

“Since Firebird production was low in the first place, when you’re talking about a Kerry Green Firebird of any type: ones, threes, fives or sevens, you’re talking about handfuls of a particular colour,” David Davidson says. “I had virtually every model and every colour at Songbirds. The museum did not have a Kerry Green VII, though – and I don’t know of a Kerry Green VII in existence, in fact.

“I have been right through the logs at Gibson and sometimes there’s a [serial or order] number but no description next to it. So there could be a Kerry Green Firebird VII, but I’ve never seen a promotional picture that showed one and I’ve never seen one in the flesh.” 

Announced in spring 1963, the Gibson Thunderbird bass guitars originally appeared as two distinct models: the single-pickup Thunderbird II and the dual-pickup Thunderbird IV. There were no I or III models, rather the II and IV designations conveniently sat betwixt their six-string siblings, the Firebirds (models I, III, V and VII). 

All six appeared together as a series intended to modernize Gibson’s solidbody line. The firm had attempted something similar in 1958 with the release of the ‘modernistic’ Flying V and Explorer, though production was halted by the following year.

In the early 60s, Fender was leading the pack with its colorful, forward-thinking designs. The 34-inch scale Precision and Jazz Basses were unprecedented successes that had turned the music world on its head, while their automotive-influenced custom color chart and less traditional forms spoke to the zeitgeist. 

Instrument builders overtly referenced the names, finishes and geometry of hot-rod culture. It was a phenomenon instantly identifiable in a booming electric guitar industry that stretched from coast to coast – notably Fender in the West and Gretsch in the East.

If Gibson were to keep up, it needed to respond. And what better way to return to the drawing board than with a bona fide automotive designer? Well, that was the thinking behind the first run of Firebird/Thunderbird designs anyway when Gibson hired Raymond Dietrich. As it turned out, these so-called ‘reverse’ guitars proved especially difficult and costly to build.

Indeed, Gibson still maintains the reverse ’Bird is one of the trickiest to produce. And while a laminated neck-through-body construction provides great stability and tone, reverse Thunderbirds are especially prone to headstock breaks (aka Firebird disease) – a problem exacerbated by the instruments’ heavy Kluson tuners.

The reverse Thunderbirds, it seems, were doomed from the start. Sales were dire. And with Fender claiming a patent infringement of its Jazzmaster body styling, Gibson was further prompted to overhaul the entire range.

Interestingly, however, the ‘non-reverse’ design that followed – a virtual mirror image of the reverse counterpart – appears much closer to the Fender offset with respect to body and headstock profile. It seems reasonable to presume that the Fullerton firm was distracted enough by its CBS takeover during 1965 not to interfere.

Regardless, the revamped Thunderbirds arrived that year featuring glued-in necks. As before, the II and IV were structurally identical – the main difference being pickups and electronics (the IV sported an extra volume knob as per its second pickup).

From its inception back in ’63, one of the range’s main selling-points was Gibson’s all-new custom color chart, and these options extended into the latter half of the 60s.

Taking inspiration from Fender, the finishes included Ember Red, Frost Blue, Polaris White, Cardinal Red, Heather, Pelham Blue, Golden Mist, Kerry Green, Silver Mist and Inverness Green. Exotic-sounding enough, but the regular, less expensive sunburst finish proved to be the most popular choice by far.

Alas, the Thunderbirds were not deemed popular enough to remain in production beyond the 60s, and with sales dropping off towards the end of the decade manufacturing ceased in 1969.

1964 Gibson Thunderbird II

1. SERIAL NUMBER

Six digits on rear of headstock

2. HEADSTOCK

Asymmetrical reverse design; tuners on bass side; raised middle section; black/ natural finish

3. PLASTICS

Gold Gibson logo on black truss rod cover; three-ply (w/b/w) pickguard with bevelled edge and Firebird emblem; two metal cap/reflector knobs labelled Volume and Tone

4. HARDWARE

Nickel-plated: Kluson tuners with metal buttons; fully adjustable four-saddle bridge; stop tailpiece; bridge and pickup covers. Front-loading jack socket; two metal strap buttons; wooden tug bar

5. PICKUPS & ELECTRONICS

Single bespoke humbucker; two 500k pots (volume and tone controls)

6. BODY

Asymmetrical reverse design; 11⁄2-inch depth; neck-through- body construction (two-piece mahogany); glued-on mahogany sides/wings; raised middle section; standard sunburst finish

7. NECK

Two-piece mahogany neck- through-body construction; unbound 20-fret Brazilian rosewood fingerboard with pearl dot inlays; 34-inch scale (often measured slightly longer)

The Evolution of Gibson Thunderbirds

• Spring 1963 Thunderbird II & IV announced (reverse)
• Late 1963 Thunderbird II first shipped
• 1964 Thunderbird IV first shipped
• 1965 Non-reverse models
• 1966 Circa 500 shipped (II & IV)
• 1967 120 shipped (IV)
• 1968 Circa 100 shipped (II & IV)
• 1969 Discontinued 1976 Thunderbird ’76 released; reverse; dual pickups; Sunburst, Natural Mahogany and Ebony finishes
• 2022 Gene Simmons G2 Thunderbird released; reverse; dual pickups; Ebony finish

Randy Rhoads not only had a massive influence on how metal guitar is played; he also had a profound impact on how metal guitars look, thanks to the now-legendary Jackson Rhoads guitars he helped design. 

On December 23, 1980, while on a break from Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz tour, Rhoads visited Grover Jackson at his workshop at Charvel HQ. The guitarist pulled out a sketch he’d drawn on a cocktail napkin and asked Jackson to build him a guitar that looked something like a shark’s fin. The pair sat down, and by midnight, the design Randy had conceived was completed and ready to be built.

The resulting white, angular, asymmetric ax was nicknamed “the Concorde” as it looked like the supersonic airliner of the same name – although legend has it that Rhoads named the guitar after the aircraft because he actually flew home (from the U.K.) aboard the Concorde in late 1980. 

It had neck-through construction like a Gibson Firebird, where the neck and center of the body are one piece of wood, with “wings” glued onto the sides to make the rest of the shape. The entire guitar was made of maple.

Due to its futuristic, “pointy” aesthetic, Grover was worried that putting the Charvel logo on its headstock might possibly alienate some of the company’s more traditionally minded customers, and so the Jackson brand was born. 

They designed a new headstock – an angular take on the Gibson Explorer – and made the first Jackson. Randy took the guitar on tour and it quickly became synonymous with him. As a result of his extensive road-testing, he came up with a few refinements.

The changes included making the body shape smaller and sleeker (remember, Randy was a pretty small fellow) and also making the higher frets more easily accessible by moving the spot where the body meets the neck. 

The resulting black Jackson prototype met with Randy’s approval, and the now legendary Jackson RR line of guitars was born — and so began the era of “pointy” metal axes.

To this day, Jackson’s RR line of guitars remains incredibly popular with players and fans; the line also is treated to frequent updates and refreshers, including the brand’s new-for-2022 Concept Series Rhoads RR24 HS and Concept Series Rhoads RR24-7. 

In fact, back in 2006, you guys, GW’s readership, voted it the most “Legendary Guitar” in our 25th anniversary readers poll – beating out instruments from Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, B.B. King and SRV. 

Not surprisingly, Jackson offers the best-selling, iconic RR design at all price points: from entry level to Custom Shop and all points (no pun intended) in between, including a 2/3rds scale JS Series Minion model. Yes, even youngsters can start out with a Rhoads axe!

In 2010, Jackson released an extremely limited edition in conjunction with the Rhoads family – an exact replica of Randy’s legendary Concorde. The original was painstakingly measured by the much-lauded pairing of Mike Shannon [Jackson] and Chip Ellis [Fender – the man responsible for the amazing limited-edition Edward Van Halen “Frankenstein” relics], and every single scratch, dent, ding and divot was replicated. 

As a bonus, the resulting 60 handcrafted relics came with a certificate of authenticity signed by Randy’s mother, Delores. The price? A seemingly random $12,619.56 that’s actually anything but random – and I’m 110 percent guilty for it (I was the product manager at Jackson Guitars at the time). 

The reason for said price tag? Randy’s birth date – 12/6/1956.

Though Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Fleetwood Mac electric guitar legend Mike Campbell slightly thinned his enviable guitar collection with a Reverb.com sale last summer, his stash of vintage six-strings is still world-class.  

A new episode of Gibson TV's The Collection – hosted by Mark Agnesi – explores Campbell's literal "carousel" of stunning guitars, how he came to own some of them, and what role those magical instruments played in his lengthy, incredible career. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Agnesi begins the proceedings by asking Campbell about his 1959 'Burst Les Paul Standard. Kept in immaculate condition, the guitar was used by Campbell to write the riff for Tom Petty's Good Enough.

Campbell reveals to Agnesi that he had been offered a 'Burst – for $50,000 – in the '80s, but declined, due to the guitar's darker tone conflicting with the trademark jangly and bright sound of the Heartbreakers. Decades later, during the recording of Petty and the Heartbreakers' blues-influenced 2010 album, Mojo, another 'Burst became available for Campbell. This time, he quickly snapped it up. 

"It doesn't have the buckle wear and tear like the other ones do, but I love it anyway," Campbell says. "[Out of] all these guitars, [the 'Burst] is the only one I put back in the case when I'm done with it."

Next, the video moves onto a '80s - '90s-era white Firebird V Campbell picked up while on tour with Fleetwood Mac. Signed by none other than Johnny Winter, the guitar was sold to Campbell – just a few years ago, mind you – for $500, because of its broken neck, and the fact that the pawnbroker evidently didn't know who Winter was.

Not only did Campbell go on to use the guitar for the rest of the Fleetwood Mac tour, it's also become his guitar of choice when playing with his band, the Dirty Knobs. 

Also of note is Campbell's '62 Les Paul SG Junior, which he bought – at a video store, of all places – for just $120. Sporting just one pickup and a pair of control knobs, it's the guitar Campbell used for his solo on Petty's classic 1989 tune, Runnin’ Down a Dream.

It's not just electrics on tap, though. Campbell also tells Agnesi about his huge-sounding, well-worn '56 J-200 acoustic guitar – which he purchased while recording with Johnny Cash – and his 1968 Dove with a double pickguard, among other stalwart acoustics.

The show runs well over an hour, and features more gorgeous guitars than we have time to tell you about, but you can see the whole episode above. 

For more episodes of The Collection, visit Gibson TV.

You don’t need us to tell you that there’s a rich seam of very high-quality guitar makers throughout Europe that, if we’re honest, we often overlook. 

Framus, owned by Warwick, certainly falls into that category – and visiting its factory a few years ago was like dropping into an otherworldly futuristic dream. 

Nobody that we’re aware of makes guitars (or world-class basses) quite like Warwick. That said, the modern Framus instruments that we’ve played over the past few years have an almost organic quality – obviously imbued by the spirit of Warwick – and from the moment we pull it out of its sturdy Rockbag gigbag, our Idolmaker sample feels very luthier-made. 

Exactly the origin of the Idomaker design we’re not sure, but we’d wager the good old reverse Firebird was there in the inspiration. One of the many clever things about this design, however, is that it doesn’t feel huge – like Gibson’s big ol’ ’bird – and it’s no boat anchor, either.

The mahogany body is actually quite sculptural. Both top and back are curved, while the centre maple section is raised approximately 4.5mm above the mahogany – at its thickest point by the neck join it’s actually 20mm thick dropping slightly by the base, closer to 18mm.

The body is also a lot thinner by the bass-side lower bout, around 12.6mm at the thinnest rim, and on the treble side it’s thicker at 32mm, while the thickness rises to 46.5mm at the centre of the body.

Not only is that inset maple highly unusual, combined with the different thicknesses, we’d say it’s unique, and the contrast is enhanced by the gloss finish of the maple and a more satin open-grain opaque black to the mahogany, including the neck back. There’s certainly some SG in the design, too, not least the fact that the neck joins the body at the 19th fret with a minimal curved heel.

The compact back-angled headstock helps to avoid any neck dive, too, as well as providing nearly straight string-pull over the Graph Tech nut. In contrast to the unique quality of the design, the hardware, pickups and electrics are more generic but far from lacking.

The TonePros ‘Nashville’-style bridge and stud tailpiece lock to their posts, the wide-diameter bridge posts are slotted, and fine height adjustments are dead simple. The Graph Tech Ratio tuners have rear locks and also different gear ratios: from 12:1 to 39:1.

As Graph Tech explains: “One turn is about one tone change on all strings, making tuning, retuning and open tunings easier, quicker and more intuitive.” Whatever the science, they’re very positive and firm in use, and this is one very stable guitar, tuning-wise, with minimal neck flex despite its length.

The dual covered humbuckers are Seymour Duncan’s best-selling pair with a simple circuit that takes zero adjustment. They’re a bit of an obvious choice, and you’ll find these pickups on many instruments at a much lower price point, but it’s hard to argue with the no-frills proposition.

Feel & Sounds

Plugged in, we’re reminded once more of the SG in terms of the mid-focused response here, particularly with the JB at the bridge, which really kicks in the midrange with slightly less width than our reference Les Paul Classic – it has a more trimmed bass response and rounded top-end – and a lot more power.

The tone control’s coil-split switch voices the screw coil of each humbucker and is very valid on the JB, producing a really usable and edgy hot single-coil voice.

The ’59 at the neck pulls back the bluster for a pretty classic neck voice, and whereas on a brighter-sounding chassis it can be a little too crisp, here it really suits. Again, the coil-split can be over-bright, too, but not on this platform, and mixed with the JB’s split adds some welcome funk and bounce. Not for the first time, we spent a lot of time in this split mode.

The volume control is very well tapered and sweetens the high-end of that split JB very nicely. Conversely, in full coil mode we’d be tempted to add a treble bleed. The simple volume, tone and three-way selector means changes are fast, and it’s far from a one-trick pony.

That said, the pretty large jumbo frets (approximately 2.9mm by 1.2mm) do suggest a more modern aim, but in combination with an excellent neck shape (20.5mm in depth at the 1st fret and filling out to 23.5mm by the 12th) it’s not dissimilar to Gibson’s ’60s profile, for example, and it feels a little rounder and fuller than previous modern Framus guitars we’ve had in our hands.

It’s the sort of shape that ‘disappears’, likewise the classic 305mm (12-inch) radius fingerboard. For us, it’s the mark of a good guitar design: the features don’t get in the way. As we said, the weight is good and, strapped on, the neck extends more than a Les Paul or Strat, but it doesn’t feel overlong like an SG. Unlike many ‘shapes’, the Idolmaker has very little to adjust to.

Verdict

Framus might have some way to go to build its brand, but you can’t knock the quality and the reassuring sense of a very well-built, stable guitar that’s a definite stage friend. 

The actual body and construction with its sculptural style is unique, but unlike many other forward-looking designs it feels a lot more classic than its outline suggests. 

There’s no lack of rock power here if you want it, thanks to the bridge-placed Seymour Duncan JB – still so valid after all these years – yet there’s surprisingly subtlety to the guitar in the split mode that extends its repertoire. 

You could actually see the Idolmaker in a host of more retro-y finishes – even a non-reverse style – but as is it’s a welcome slice of unique style in an increasingly me-too market.

Specs

• PRICE: $3,233 approx / £2,519 (inc gigbag)
• ORIGIN: Germany
• TYPE: Original offset shape, solidbody electric
• BODY: Mahogany with inset AAA figured maple
• NECK: Mahogany, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.75”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Black Tusq/43.3mm
• FINGERBOARD: Tiger-stripe ebony, small oval abalone inlays, illuminated side-dots, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, jumbo
• HARDWARE: TonePros locking ‘Nashville’-style bridge and stud tailpiece, Graph Tech Ratio real-lock tuners – chrome plated
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51mm
• ELECTRICS: Chrome covered Seymour Duncan ’59 at neck, JB at bridge, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, master volume and tone control (with pull switch coil-split)
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.67/8.1
• OPTIONS: No, but check out the Framus Custom Shop (£POA)
• RANGE OPTIONS: The Idolmaker also appears in the Chinese-made D-Series at £782
• LEFT-HANDERS: Yes, £POA
• FINISHES: Nirvana Black transparent high polish (as reviewed), Solid Black high polish, Burgundy Blackburst Transparent high polish, and Vintage Sunburst Transparent high polish with Nirvana Black Transparent satin b/s

For some players, the thought of conforming to the norm simply isn't an option. Luckily, there is an entire subculture of guitars out there, ready-made for breaking the mold – the offset! Now, creating a guide to the best offset guitars is quite a daunting task. Not only do these lopsided guitars have a devoted following, but the term offset is so broad it can be used to describe everything from the classic Fender designs of the late '50s and early '60s to the futuristic Gibson Firebird and pretty much anything else with a crooked waistline.  

Although Fender originally designed the asymmetric silhouette with jazz guitarists in mind, offset guitars quickly became the contrarian’s choice. Players looking for an alternative to the Telecaster or Les Paul gravitated toward quirky designs like the Jazzmaster, Jaguar and Firebird – guitars that have since become symbols of counterculture and musical outcasts.

So, do the sleek contours and bold look of these misaligned six-strings appeal to you? Well, luckily, we have put together this handy guide to the best offset guitars available from an array of brands and budgets. If you have any immediate questions, we have a handy FAQ section at the bottom of the article. Let's dive in. 

Our top picks

Best overall

While the Jazzmaster may live in the shadow of its siblings - the Telecaster and Stratocaster - it still has quite the cult following, and for good reason. The smoother tone is favored by players not taken by the spikey tone of the Tele or the spanky sound of the Strat. If that sounds like you, then the Fender American Pro II might be the best Jazzmaster available to you right now.

The Deep C neck - with its rolled edges - is a joy to play, while the sculpted neck heel solves the problem of the clunky nature of the original design. The V-Mod II single-coil pickups are a triumph, delivering the vintage tones you'd expect from this wonky axe, while the tap function on the bridge position gives you access to a modern throaty tone.

So, if you find yourself longing for the tone only a Jazzmaster can provide, then the American Pro II should be at the top of your list.

Best on a budget

Galloping on to the scene in 1964, the Fender Mustang was designed as a student guitar - much like the Duo-Sonic and Musicmaster before it - but has since found favor with alt-rock and grunge fans chasing the electrifying sounds of the early 90s. 

The Mustang's petite stature and light weight made it a fantastic guitar for young players starting out, and the single-coil pickups with switchable phase settings made it very versatile. However, a feature not discussed much on the Mustang is the rather unusual tremolo system. Shorter than a Jaguar or Jazzmaster trem, it offers a different feel and is perfect for adding a little bit of wobble to chords or lead lines. 

If you are in the market for a Mustang, you should not overlook the classic vibe. Not only is it a fantastic beginner guitar, but it will also get you scarily close to the original 60s aesthetic and sound at a much more reasonable price, making it one of the best Squier guitars on the market.  

Best for rock

Don't worry, it's not all Fenders on this list. Next up, we have the brainchild of Gibson and a retired motor designer, the Firebird. In a last-ditch effort to keep up with Fender in the early ‘60s, Gibson commissioned Ray Dietrich to take what he had learned from designing cars and apply it to the world of guitars. The result was a striking guitar of flowing lines and smooth curves, with a fully neck-through construction.

Now, we've chosen to go for the Epiphone Firebird for this list, as frankly, it offers incredible value for money. Just like the Gibson guitar on which this is based, the Epiphone features a 9-ply mahogany/walnut neck-through-body and reverse headstock, giving you the sustain this scorching guitar is known for.

The ProBucker FB720 pickups are sure to get you that unique 'bird tone. These mini-humbuckers have the top-end of a single-coil and the bottom-end and grunt of a standard humbucker. So if you fancy channeling your inner Johnny Winter or Allen Collins, then you might want to seriously consider a Firebird.

Best vintage spec

Originally released in 1962, the Jaguar was Fender's top-of-the-line instrument – and one of Leo's favorite creations. Developed to appeal to the surf musicians of California, the Jaguar may look like the Jazzmaster above, but with differences in scale length, pickups and switches, it has an entirely different sonic identity. 

The Vintera II 70s Jaguar gives you access to the classic feel and tone of a retro Jag but without the mammoth price tag. The Vintera II features a hugely playable 7.25" radius neck, while the shorter scale length of 24" provides a slinky feel, only found on short-scale guitars. The ’70s-inspired pickups do a fantastic job of creating the chime and bright attack you get from this era of Jags, and the rhythm and lead circuit make switching between tones a breeze. 

We must say, we have been mega impressed with the full Vintera II range and the sheer amount on offer for the cash. So, if you are looking for a well-made, stylish-looking guitar that is more than capable of standing up to the demands of gigging, then look no further than the Fender Vintera II 70s Jaguar.

Best for style

The Airline name was used on many different instruments produced by Valco and distributed by Montgomery Ward in the late 50s and early 60s, but today they are manufactured by Eastwood guitars. Airline is no stranger to offset models, and it was difficult to decide which guitar to feature here. We opted for the Airline 59 due to its connection to White Stripes frontman and crooked guitar fanatic Jack White.

The Eastwood reissue is far from a faithful recreation, but let's be fair, the originals had their issues. Gone is the delicate Res-O-Glas construction, in favor of a chambered mahogany body. Not only is this way more stable and hardwearing, it also increases sustain and ultimately leads to a better overall tone - without compromising on the look!

The bolt-on maple neck sports a modern C profile and will feel comfortable to the majority of players, while the medium jumbo frets should mean there are no issues when going for those large bends. Of course, this guitar is available in the crimson finish Jack White popularised, but it also comes in many other options - and if you ask us, the Satin Candy Green is pretty swish.

Best semi-hollow

Okay, so Jazz legends D'Angelico might not be your first thought when it comes to offset guitars. Still, the Bedford should most definitely be on your radar. The wide, semi-hollow flat body is surprisingly comfortable, and the sweeping pickguard adds a visual flair we absolutely love. 

The secret weapon of the Bedford is undoubtedly the neck. While the slim profile will feel familiar to players of bolt-on maple necks, the insanely smooth satin finish means this is a joy to play. With Duncan Designed pickups and a five-way switch, the Bedford SH delivers everything from high-gain rock tones to smooth cleans – and plenty in between.

So if you are looking for something a little different, with a neck that practically plays itself, then you should certainly consider the D'Angelico Premier Bedford SH. That said, we found the semi-hollow design a little heavier than expected. 

Best premium

Let's just take a minute to appreciate how gorgeous the Mariposa is. Its sharp angles are juxtaposed with an ornate floral pickguard, resulting in a truly distinctive-looking instrument. Coming from the mind of Mars Volta and At The Drive-In axeman, Omar Rodríguez-López the Mariposa sees the prog/post-hardcore guitarist step away from Ibanez and join forces with Music Man. 

This new signature guitar features a lightweight okoume body with a perfectly smooth roasted maple neck, ebony fingerboard, and block inlays. The custom humbuckers at the heart of this guitar are designed with high gain in mind and are perfect for recreating the chaotic riffs Omar is known for. 

This is all capped off with a beautiful laser-etched pickguard, which changes depending on which of the four finish options you choose. Available right now are Sahara Sunset, Galaxy Pearl, Imperial White, and our favorite Dorado Green. 

Best for beginners

This is yet another offset guitar with Leo Fender's fingerprints all over it - albeit with some modifications. The Fallout takes inspiration from the G&L SC-2, building on its simplistic approach and turning it into a rock machine. 

It may share the body of the SC-2 - designed by Leo Fender in the early 80s - but the guitar has been reimagined for today's modern player. The MFD single-coil pickups have been swapped out for the Paul Gagon designed humbucker in the bridge and P90 pickup in the neck position. This makes the Fallout a tonal powerhouse, perfect for high-octane riffage. 

If you're looking for a comfortable, slim-bodied offset with bags of tone, then the G&L Tribute Series Fallout might just be the best option for you. 

Best with vibrato

When you initially think of Duesenberg, your mind may go straight to the ever-popular Starplayer, but the Paloma model deserves your attention - especially if you are a fan of offset guitars.

The fabulously wonky body is constructed from alder, much like the offsets of the past, while the Diamond Deluxe Tremola and HSS pickup configuration bring something entirely new to the table. The incredible GrandVintage humbucker, as the name suggests, delivers the warm, retro humbucker tones you know and love, and the specially designed single-coils would easily go up against the greatest Strat.

Not only is the Duesenberg Paloma effortlessly cool, but it also has the goods to back it up. It's a joy to play, insanely versatile, and built to last. There is a reason we had to include it among the best offsets.

Best for versatility

The S2 range for PRS offers players seeking the Maryland company's craftsmanship but in a stripped-down, more accessible format. While the S2 range features its fair share of familiar shapes and styles, the one that caught our attention is the Vela - a lopsided take on the standard.

The Vela may be missing the bells and whistles of the Custom 24, but that doesn't stop it from delivering the tone you'd expect from Paul Reed Smith. The full mahogany body offers up a copious amount of sustain. At the same time, the PRS plate-style bridge - with brass saddles - gives an extra level of attack and added brightness. 

This might be the first venture into the weird world of offsets for PRS, but let's hope it isn't the last. The Vela certainly offers Paul Reed Smith fans a different take on the tried and tested formula they are famous for. 

Best 12-string

The new Paranormal Jazzmaster XII proves Squier is currently at the top of their game - producing some of the most creative and exciting guitars on the market right now.

While sitting down with the 12-string Jazzmaster for the first time, our first thought goes straight to how comfortable the neck is, despite the extra girth to accommodate the additional strings. In our tests, we found this humble guitar to be exceptionally pleasing to play, making it ideal as an entry point into 12-string guitars.

This Squier guitar's tonal heart is a pair of Fender-Designed alnico single-coil Jazzmaster pickups, which sound bright, sharp and very articulate. Rounding off the retro-inspired 12-string is the "hockey stick" headstock, which, in our opinion, takes the guitar's design to the next level.

Brief history

Looking back, it seems like a sure thing that offset guitars would catch on, but in reality, the odds were stacked against them from the beginning.

We can trace the roots of the offset back to the introduction of the Fender Duo-Sonic, in 1956. Unfortunately, this student model would receive very little fanfare, and it would take two years before the Californian guitar giant would release arguably the most famous of the offsets, the Jazzmaster - a guitar that was so ahead of its time the jazz cats had no idea what to do with it.

Dwindling sales in the mid-70s would threaten the survival of the offset forefathers - Jazzmaster, Jaguar, and Mustang - and it would take a mammoth shift in the musical landscape to renew interest in these designs.

Although these wonky guitars would ultimately be betrayed by the very musicians they were designed for, the offset would go on to be embraced by a daring new breed of guitar player. This new strain of musician was fueled by uniqueness, creating a musical shockwave still felt today.

FAQs

How to choose the best offset for you

As we said above, the world of offset guitars is a rather vast one, and it can get overwhelming, but there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing the best offset guitar for you. 

Scale length
The scale length on offset instruments can vary wildly from model to model, so it's worth keeping it in mind while choosing your next guitar. For fans of the "standard" scale length of Fender style instruments, you may want to stick to the likes of the Jazzmaster, Airline, and Paloma, while players seeking a shorter instrument may want to check out the Jaguar and Mustang.  

Pickups
Like choosing any electric guitar, it's essential to know what sound you are looking to get out of your new axe. Therefore it’s worth putting a lot of thought into which pickups are right for you. Looking to bring the house down with bone-crushing riffs? Then make sure you have at least one humbucker. 60s twang, more your thing? Then the unique Jaguar pickup will get you there. Some models like the Fallout, Bedford and Paloma offer a selection of pickups within one guitar. 

Bridge
Lastly, it's worth thinking about whether or not you need a tremolo - or vibrato as it should be known. Most vintage-style offsets will come with one attached, and it can result in some spectacular sounds. That said, it can cause some problems, mainly in the tuning department. So, if you don't see yourself utilizing the vibrato, then best to go for a modern offset such as the G&L Fallout. 

How we choose products

Here at Guitar World, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything guitar and bass-related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products for our guides.

When choosing what we believe to be the best offset guitars available right now, we combine our hands-on experience, user reviews and testimonies and engage in lengthy discussions with our editorial colleagues to reach a consensus about the top products in any given category.

First and foremost, we are guitarists, and we want other players to find the right product for them. So we take into careful consideration everything from budget to feature set, ease of use and durability to come up with a list of what we can safely say are the best offset guitars on the market right now.

Read more about our rating system, how we choose the gear we feature, and exactly how we test each product.

Why trust us?

☑️ A global audience of 3.8 million guitarists monthly
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☑️ 30+ years of product testing at Guitar World

Guitar World boasts over 44 years of expertise and stands as the ultimate authority on all things related to guitars. The magazine and website feature expertly written gear round-ups and top-quality, authoritative reviews penned by a team of highly experienced industry professionals. 

Guitar World's inaugural print issue hit the shelves in July 1980, and ever since, it has been captivating players and enthusiasts with engaging lessons, insightful interviews with the biggest guitar heroes, and priceless buying advice for newbie players. 

Furthermore, GuitarWorld.com continues this legacy online and serves as the hub of the world's foremost authorities on guitar playing. The site not only hosts content from Guitar World but also showcases articles from respected publications such as Guitarist, Total Guitar, Guitar Techniques, and Bass Player. With a reach extending to 3.8 million players each month, GuitarWorld.com is a go-to destination for guitar fanatics globally.

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A lot of great guitars were conceived during Ted McCarty’s reign as president of Gibson from 1950 through 1966, including the Les Paul, Explorer, Flying V, Moderne, SG and Firebird. These solidbody models have withstood the test of time admirably, but in my opinion the greatest and most innovative achievement to come from Gibson’s McCarty era was the semi-hollow thinline ES-335. 

By combining the best attributes of solidbody and hollowbody designs, the ES-335 and its offspring (the ES-345, 355 and more recent 339) is somehow more than the sum of its parts. A perfect guitar for almost any style of music, the semi-hollow Gibson ES has been a favorite of a diverse crew that includes Chuck Berry, B.B. and Freddie King, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen (in his early days), Ritchie Blackmore (ditto), Alex Lifeson, Johnny Marr and, more recently, Dave Grohl, whose Trini Lopez model is a direct offshoot of an ES-335.

I highly recommend an ES-335 or one of its descendants for guitarists seeking a first instrument as well as anyone looking to expand their collection. In the past, this used to be a somewhat expensive proposition, but, thanks to Epiphone, the price of a genuine ES semi-hollow electric is more affordable than ever. We took a look at two examples from Epiphone’s “Inspired by Gibson Original ES Collection”: the Epiphone ES-335 and smaller proportioned ES-339.

Features

At a quick glance, the Epiphone ES-335 and ES-339 look almost identical, with the latter having a body that’s two inches smaller (the ES-335 measures 16 inches across the lower bout while the ES-339 measures 14 inches) but still maintains the same proportions and curves. However, there are a few subtle differences, with the ES-335 conforming more to original vintage specs while the ES-339 has a few modernized customizations.

Both models feature a body constructed from laminated maple with an arched top and back, both surrounded by single-ply cream binding. The center block, which extends the full length of both bodies, is maple as well. The glued-in set necks are identical, constructed of mahogany with a single-ply cream bound Indian laurel fingerboard and providing a 24.72-inch scale length, rounded C profile, 12-inch radius, 22 medium jumbo frets, dot inlays and a Graph Tech NuBone nut measuring 1.69 inches. 

Hardware similarities on both models include a LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge with LockTone stop bar, floating black five-ply pickguard and black “top hat” control knobs with metal inserts. Pickups are a pair of Alnico Classic Pro humbuckers with nickel-plated covers, and controls consist of individual volume and tone controls for each pickup featuring CTS potentiometers and a three-way pickup selector toggle switch. 

In addition to the smaller size body of the ES-339, differences between the two models include vintage Kluson-style Epiphone Deluxe tuners with tulip-shaped buttons on the ES-335 while the ES-339 has Grover Rotomatics with nickel-plated buttons; a top-mounted output jack on the ES-335 while the ES-339’s jack is side mounted; and an adjustable pickguard mounting bracket on the ES-335 while the ES-339 features a less-obtrusive L-shaped bracket. Also, the ES-335 is only available with a Cherry or Vintage Sunburst finish, while the ES-339 provides both of those plus Pelham Blue or Natural options.

Performance

The Epiphone ES-335 and ES-339 sound close enough to each other to fool most listeners in a blindfold test, but the smaller 339 has a little less acoustic resonance and a tighter, more focused midrange than the 335. Both models deliver bold, fat tones with a satisfying percussive attack that morphs into smooth sustain. 

The classic-voiced pickups are just slightly hotter than vintage spec, able to push an amp into dazzling overdrive and also clean up nicely when the volume control is backed down even when the amp is dialed to a high gain setting. The tone of both models is perfect for any style of music: classic rock, jazz, blues, alternative and all but the most extreme versions of metal and the twangiest country.

Even more impressive is the attention to detail evident in the construction and playability. In a blindfold touch test, most players wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between these highly affordable models and their much more expensive new Gibson counterparts. With the Epiphone ES-335 selling for $549 and the ES-339 going for only $499, either (or both) are very affordable options for beginners as well as seasoned players looking to expand their sonic arsenals. 

Specs

• PRICE: $549/£499 for ES-335, $499/£419 for ES-339
• TYPE: Semi-hollow electric guitar
• BODY: Layered maple with solid maple center block, with one-ply binding; ES-339 measures 14" across lower bout, ES-335 measures 16"
• NECK: Mahogany, rounded C profile glued-in
• SCALE: 24.75"
• NUT: Graph Tech NuBone 
• FINGERBOARD: Indian laurel
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• PICKUPS: 2x Epiphone Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers
• CONTROLS: 2x volume, 2x tone, three-way pickup selector
• HARDWARE: LockTone Tune-O-Matic with Stop Bar, Epiphone Deluxe tuners
• FINISH: Vintage Sunburst and Cherry (ES-335), Natural or Pelham Blue (ES-339) 
• CONTACT: EPIPHONE

With rockabilly and heavy rock as well as blues, what do you think Aquarius says about you as a player? 

“I think it’s a bit of a showcase for me. I’ve always been kind of known to play blues– that’s been the ‘thing’. Having the different styles throughout the album was to introduce my influences that have inspired me to be where I am now.“

Who inspires you the most? 

“Most of the amazing blues legends aren’t with us anymore but you’ve got people like Rory Gallagher, BB King, Gary Moore, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.“ 

Can you let us in on the secrets of your tone? 

“My amp always, always has the reverb on 10 and if it could go any further it would! I use metal picks for an almost ‘resonator feel’ – it brightens your sound up a bit.“ 

What about pedals? 

“My grandad, who passed away in the last couple of years, left me a little bit of money to get something that I would completely adore, so I got a Klon Centaur. There’s a huge enigma around them. I’d never played one, never seen one, never been near one. And then all of a sudden, I had one. That thing’s really changed my sound!“  

What’s in your guitar collection?

“I am kind of a Gibson guy. There’s been an association since I was about eight, but it’s only recently that it’s changed to me being a Gibson Artist. I’ve been getting into vintage gear a lot lately. I recently sold about 12 guitars to get a ‘61 SG Special and 1959 ES-125. 

“I swapped the Special for a 1976 bicentennial Gibson Firebird, which has had quite a lot of mods. It’s been refinished, it’s got triple humbuckers – all things it wouldn’t have originally had. There was a 1976 Gibson Explorer in the deal as well and that has P-90s in it which is a bit weird!“ 

We’ve heard there’s a pretty special 335. What’s the story there? 

“It’s a 1961 Custom Shop reissue. It’s amazing! I basically had this conversation with Cesar Gueikian from Gibson. We were sat in a hotel lobby having pizza and he said: 'If you could spec your absolute dream guitar what would it be?'

“As every guitarist does, I had the specs in my head in like, a little storage box right at the back. So I just listed off a huge amount of things – from the shape of the neck to the type of wood. When we went back to do some filming at the Custom Shop, I walked in and this thing was just sat there!“

• Aquarius is out now on Lee Records.

When Phoebe Bridgers attempted to lay waste to her Danelectro Dano '56 last month on Saturday Night Live, she probably didn't anticipate quite the level of backlash she received.

In a new interview with Variety, Bridgers addresses the controversy, and explains why she's sticking to her guns after calling David Crosby a “little bitch”, following his tweet labelling her performance as “pathetic”.

“I stand by it!” she exclaims. “The fact that it made people so mad is kind of what’s punk rock about it. No thought whatsoever went into what it represented or meant: I’d never done it before, so might as well do it [on Saturday Night Live], where it’s gonna be immortalized.”

She continues, “It’s hilarious to me that people care so much, but, I mean, there’s a video of a steamroller crushing a bunch of Gibson [guitars] as a tax write-off because they weren’t selling all of their stock – let that piss you off!”

The video Bridgers alludes to was uploaded to YouTube back in 2019 by former Gibson employee BJ Wilkes, and shows the destruction of hundreds of Firebird X electric guitars. 

Gibson issued a statement shortly after, stating: “The Firebird X destruction video that surfaced months ago was an isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011, which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components. This isolated group of Firebird X models were unable to be donated for any purpose and were destroyed accordingly.”

Since the controversy, Gibson – now under CEO James “JC” Curleigh – founded the Gibson Gives foundation, which donates guitars to music development programs, including musicians who lost instruments in last year's Nashville tornadoes.

To hear more from Bridgers, check out her new “sadder version” of Kyoto and cover of John Prine's Summer's End – both released as part of the Spotify Singles series.

In August 2020, Mexican-American guitar legend Trini Lopez – the man once hailed by Gibson as “probably the most exciting young star in the music business” – passed away at the age of 83 after contracting COVID-19.

Born Trinidad Lopez III and hailing from Texas, Trini formed his first band as a teenager and began his recording career in his early 20s. Having eventually scored a residency at PJ’s nightclub in Los Angeles, he was promptly scouted by Frank Sinatra for his new label, Reprise Records.

The Top 10 debut live album Trini Lopez At PJ’s soon followed in ’63, spawning a smash hit single, If I Had a Hammer, and with Trini pictured on the LP cover cradling his beloved Gibson Barney Kessel Regular model, it wasn’t too long before Gibson began hammering on his door for a signature guitar of his own.

In the early 60s while Gibson’s premier solidbody electrics, the Les Paul line, completed their transition to the thin-bodied, double Florentine cutaway design and non-signature/SG designation, the company sought to fill its artist endorsement void with several new models. With electric jazz guitar in its heyday, three of the scene’s hottest players collaborated with Gibson to produce a series of electric archtops.

Subsequently, the Barney Kessel Custom, Barney Kessel Regular and Johnny Smith were launched in ’61, followed by the Tal Farlow in ’62 and the Johnny Smith Double in ’63. Along with the release of the Gibson Everly Brothers flat-top in ’62, and Epiphone Al Caiola and Howard Roberts signature guitars in ’63 and ’64 respectively, Gibson’s Kalamazoo plant boasted an impressive array of new artist models.

Hoping to bolster this line-up with a young, popular rising star, Gibson approached Trini Lopez in ’64, developing two unique signature models later that year. He had already established a strong association with the Barney Kessel Regular, so Trini’s personal spin on this deep-bodied, double Florentine cutaway electric archtop came in the form of the Trini Lopez Deluxe.

Additionally, in order to capture some of the less traditional end of the market and capitalise on the success of the company’s double-cutaway thinline semis – a revolutionary design concept introduced in ’58 with release of the ES-335T – the Trini Lopez Standard was added to the line. The very first samples of both models were shipped in late ’64, with production beginning in earnest the following year.

Both the Trini Lopez Deluxe and Standard models are easily identified by their diamond-shaped soundholes (in place of regular f-holes) and fretboard inlays.

Both models can be further distinguished by their Fender-like asymmetrical headstocks with all six tuners in a line across the bass side – a feature common to the ‘non-reverse’ Firebird range, also announced in ’65.

The Deluxe is the rarer of the two Trini Lopez models with around 300 shipped in total, whereas the Standard model proved considerably more popular with nearly 2,000 guitars being shipped between 1964 and 1970, when both instruments were discontinued.

Trini was still a highly active musician in later life, appearing on stage at the NAMM Show only last year to talk about his life in music and the release of his new Gibson signature model.

The 1964 Trini Lopez Standard Reissue is currently available from Gibson’s Artist Collection.

Gibson Firebirds first appeared in 1963 in the form of four models: the single-pickup/dot-inlay I; dual-pickup/dot-inlay III; dual-pickup/trapezoid-inlay V; and triplepickup/block-inlay VII. 

With their angular geometry and custom colours, the original line-up of Explorer-like ‘reverse’ Firebirds was intended to tap into the zeitgeist of the forward-thinking, automobile-obsessed younger generation and compete directly with Fender in the popular solidbody market. 

Unfortunately, the Firebird did not rise like the proverbial phoenix as hoped. Despite its flashy looks, it failed to catch on, and shipping figures show the early reverse Firebirds had only a fraction of the SG range’s success during their brief existence from ’63 to ’65.

To add insult to injury, the Firebird’s design was hotly contested by Fender as a mirror image of its patented offset Jazzmaster and Jaguar body shapes. Furthermore, its construction made them tricky to build, transport and handle. 

In a recent interview, Mat Koehler, Gibson’s head of product development, told us: “In ’63, after the first [Firebirds] were made, [Gibson president Ted McCarty] was probably thinking, ‘What did I get myself into here?!’ It was a difficult build – and still is for us now.” Alas, in June 1965, a new breed of Firebirds was unveiled at the NAMM show – the non-reverse models. 

Although Gibson retained the same model names, these guitars were a world apart from their reverse-style counterparts…

• Looking for Reverse Firebirds? Here's everything you need to know

Gibson Firebird I

The reverse Firebird I features a single bespoke-designed Firebird mini-humbucker pickup adjacent to the bridge and two knobs, whereas the non-reverse Firebird I is endowed with a pair of black ‘soapbar’ P-90 single-coil pickups controlled by a black sliding selector switch and four knobs (volume and tone for each pickup). 

Unlike the reverse Firebird I, the nonreverse model came with a Gibson Vibrola tailpiece as standard. Priced at $189.50, upon its release it was the least expensive instrument in the line-up.

As per the reverse Firebird range, Sunburst was the standard finish across all non-reverse models. In addition, Gibson continued to provide customers and dealers with a range of 10 Fender-style custom colour options. 

These included Frost Blue, Ember Red, Cardinal Red, Kerry Green and Polaris White, as well as metallic (‘Poly’) shades called Golden Mist, Silver Mist, Pelham Blue, Heather and Inverness Green.

Gibson Firebird III

Aside from body shape, the non-reverse Firebird III can be distinguished from its dual mini-humbucker reverse-style predecessor by its configuration of three single-coil pickups.

Like the non-reverse Firebird I, this version of the Firebird III came with a Gibson Vibrola as standard. $239.50 upon release, the Firebird III offered “all the range and versatility you could ask for, plus sharpness in the treble range and depth in the bass”, thanks to its ES-5/Switchmaster-style triple P-90 configuration. 

The reverse ’Birds had a neck-through-body construction that was difficult and expensive for Gibson to make, and their heavy banjo tuners exacerbated the issue of headstock fractures. 

In the wake of Fender’s CBS takeover in ’65, Gibson made its move and unveiled these more Jazzmaster/Jaguar-like non-reverse designs. With a flat body, unbevelled headstock with regular bass-side right-angled tuners and a glued-in neck they were less costly to produce and, therefore, ultimately cheaper to buy.

Gibson Firebird V

While the reverse Firebird V features a single-bound rosewood fretboard with trapezoid inlays, the non-reverse version was scaled back with an unbound rosewood ’board and dot inlays (as featured on all non-reverse Firebirds) and its price was reduced in ’65 from $360 to $289.50. 

It did, however, retain its ‘leaf-and-lyre’-engraved Deluxe Vibrola tailpiece, Tune-o-matic bridge and dual mini-humbuckers. The Firebird mini-humbuckers feature a solid metal cover. 

As opposed to other PAF-derived Epiphone/Gibson mini humbuckers with a single Alnico bar magnet below passive slugs and adjustable pole pieces/screws, the Firebird pickup’s design has a pair of blade magnet coils and inductanceenhancing ferrous reflector plates above and below both coils. 

With a narrower coil aperture and fewer coil windings, the midrange-focused tone is often described as somewhere between a Fender single coil and regular Gibson humbucker.

Gibson Firebird VII

With its gold-plated hardware – including a ‘leaf-and-lyre’-engraved Deluxe Vibrola, Tune-o-matic bridge, tuners and pickup covers – and triple mini-humbucker configuration, the Firebird VII remained at the top of the pecking order priced at $379.50 (a reduction in price from the $500 ’65 reverse Firebird VII with its bound ebony fretboard and large block inlays).

“Here is the ultimate in a solidbody guitar,” reads the Gibson catalogue. “A completely new and exciting instrument that offers all the sound, response, fast action and wide range that could be desired.” 

Unfortunately, the guitar-buying public did not wholeheartedly agree. 

After Firebird sales reached their peak in ’66 with around 2,500 guitars shipped (not including around 250 V-12 electric 12-string Firebirds) sales plummeted to around 750 in ’67, and again to only around 275 in ’68. By 1970, the range was discontinued with less than 100 Firebirds shipped in ’69.

There have been numerous Firebird reincarnations since they were discontinued in 1970, but during their original run at Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory in the '60s, the Firebird I, III, V and VII models appeared in two different forms widely known as ‘reverse’ and ‘non-reverse’. 

The Explorer-like reverse Firebirds appeared first in 1963 and were superseded by their non-reverse counterparts in 1965.

As if eight different Firebirds emerging within this short time isn’t convoluted enough, the waters muddy even further with some instruments having left the factory during the ’65 transition phase with both reverse and non-reverse specs. 

Nevertheless, in this article – the first of our two-part focus on Firebirds - we aim to clear things up and make it simple to identify all four of the early reverse-style ’Birds at a glance.

Announced in the spring of ’63, they were intended to compete directly with Fender and boost Gibson’s flagging solidbody sales. However, Fender argued the Firebirds’ “new-style offset body” mirrored its own patented “off-set waist” body shape and, following talks, Gibson decided to change the design - albeit to a far more Fender-like one!

We’ll be looking at those later non-reverse models next time, but for now here’s a rundown of Gibson’s original Firebird line-up...

Firebird I

Much like Gibson’s Junior/TV, Special, Standard and Custom models represented different price points within the original Les Paul and SG solidbody lines, the Firebird range comprised four instruments at various levels of spec and ornamentation.

And as per the style of Junior and TV models, the reverse Firebird I features an unbound dot inlay rosewood fingerboard and a single pickup with volume and tone controls.

This particular model was also the least expensive instrument in the range with a list price of $189.50.

A Sunburst finish was standard across the board, but in order to help Gibson shake off its staid, old-fashioned image and appeal to the more forward-thinking younger generation, all Firebirds were offered in a choice of 10 custom colors for an extra $15.

Along with FrostBlue,Ember Red, Cardinal Red, Kerry Green and Polaris White, these included five metallic (“Poly”) shades called Golden Mist, Silver Mist, Pelham Blue, Heather and Inverness Green.

Firebird III

In the same vein as the Les Paul/SG Special, the $249.50 reverse Firebird III features dual pickups with individual tone and volume controls and a single-bound rosewood fretboard with dot inlays. 

These models are sometimes confused with the equally twin mini-humbucker-loaded Firebird V but can be easily differentiated by their dot fretboard markers, compensated bar bridge and short flat-arm Vibrola (Firebird Vs have trapezoid inlays, a Tune-o-matic bridge and Deluxe Vibrolas as standard).

All instruments in the reverse line-up feature bespoke Firebird pickups, whereas the later non-reverse Firebird I and III models came with two and three black ‘soapbar’ P-90 pickups respectively. 

The original Firebird pickup is a unique device that evolved from theKalamazoo-era Epiphone mini-humbucker - itself derived from the Seth Lover-designed PAF humbucker.

Distinguished by its solid metal cover, it was constructed using blade magnets (as opposed to passive screws and slugs) along with inductance-enhancing ferrous reflector plates.

Firebird V

In the style of Les Paul and SG Standards, the reverse Firebird V sat one step below the top of the pecking order while sporting a single-bound rosewood fretboard with trapezoid inlays and dual pickups featuring separate volume and tone controls. 

Although identical to the reverse Firebird III in terms of pickups and electronics, an extra $75.50 would buy you an altogether fancier guitar with a ‘leaf-and-lyre’-engraved Deluxe Vibrola and a fully adjustable Tune-o-matic bridge.

In terms of body/neck construction, the reverse Firebirds utilized a unique neck-through-body design with wings glued on either side.

They were, however, troublesome guitars to build and were notorious for suffering headstock fractures.

An inherent weak spot behind the nut coupled with heavy banjo-style tuners (located along the treble side of the headstock) meant that breaks even occurred inside the case. Consequently, guitars with broken headstocks became so common they are often referred to as having ‘Firebird disease’.

Firebird VII

At the top of the line sat the $445 Firebird VII resplendent with Les Paul/SG Custom-style gold-plated hardware, three humbucking pickups and a single-bound ebony fretboard with pearl block inlays.

As per the Firebird V, these flagship ’Birds boasted a 'leaf-and-lyre’-engraved Deluxe Vibrola and fully adjustable Tune-o-matic bridge.The other models in the line came with nickel-plated hardware and rosewood ’boards, but VIIs perched well above the rest with their blingier upmarket appointments and triple mini-humbucker configuration.

Famously used by Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton and Brian Jones, reverse Firebirds have a unique tone that sits somewhere between a Fender single coil and a PAF humbucker guitar.

This tone is known for its midrange bite and can be up front and assertive with a good balance between thickness and sparkle. Although various reverse Firebird reissues have been released over the years, unfaithful pickup reproductions mean they don’t sound quite the same as these originals.

Earlier this month we wondered whether Epiphone’s Inspired by Gibson Collection could yield some of the company’s best guitars yet. And judging by the rollout of new electric guitars, as well as a few acoustic models, we can say that it’s looking very likely to be the case.

The Original and Modern Inspired by Gibson guitars boast a host of classic and new features, including the more Gibson-like Kalamazoo headstock, as well as upgraded electronics and finishes. What's more, the word on the street is that every Gibson model will now have an equivalent Epiphone version.

There’s a lot on offer here, with specs and features to satiate discerning Gibson players new and old.

But don’t just take our word for it – check out all the mouthwatering models below.

Epiphone Inspired By Gibson - Original Collection

Dot ES-335

Epiphone’s version of the ES-335 “Dot” features a laminated maple body, mahogany neck with a 1960's SlimTaper D-shape profile. There’s also a LockTone Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece, Grover tuners and Alnico Classic humbuckers.

The guitar is offered in a choice of Cherry and Vintage Sunburst finishes for $449.

Dot Deluxe

The Limited Edition Dot Deluxe boasts a Flame Maple Veneer top and body in new Aquamarine and Blueburst color finishes. Other features include a mahogany neck with a SlimTaper D-profile, Alnico Classic humbuckers and Grover Rotomatic tuners. The guitar is available for $499.

ES-339 PRO

Similar in shape to the ES-335 or Casino but with a reduced body size, the ES-339 PRO features custom wound Alnico Classic PRO humbucker pickups with coil-tapping plus Epiphone Deluxe tuners. There’s also a laminated Maple body with solid center block, maple neck and pau ferro fingerboard.

The guitar is available in Cherry, Pelham Blue and Vintage Sunburst finishes for $499.

Les Paul Junior

The Epi Les Paul Junior is based on the 1950s classic design. The guitar features a mahogany body in Vintage Tobacco Sunburst finish, a single dog-ear P-90 PRO single coil pickup, a Lightning Bar wrap around bridge and Epiphone Deluxe Vintage tuners. Available for $379.

Thunderbird Vintage PRO

An accurate reproduction of the electric bass first introduced in 1963, the Thunderbird Vintage PRO features ProBucker bass humbuckers and a vintage-styled ‘60s Thunderbird Tune-o-matic bridge and Claw tailpiece. Available in Alpine White, Ebony and Tobacco Sunburst for $699.

Flying V

The Epiphone Flying V recreates the 1958 original with an Ebony finish, ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, a Flying V string- thru tailpiece and Epiphone Vintage Deluxe tuners. There’s also a mahogany body and neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. The V is available for $599.

Firebird

A recreation of the original 1963 Firebird, the new Epiphone model features a mahogany body in a Vintage Sunburst finish, Grover 18:1 ratio mini tuners and Epiphone ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics. There’s also a mahogany body, mahogany/walnut neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. The Firebird is available for $599.

Les Paul Custom

The Epiphone Les Paul Custom “honors” the 1954 “tuxedo” version of the model. Features include a traditional Custom-style mahogany body and Ebony fingerboard, gold hardware, ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, Grover machine heads and a Custom-style inlay. The Les Paul Custom is offered in Alpine White and Ebony finishes for $799.

Les Paul Standard 50s

Based on ‘50s-era Les Pauls, the Les Paul Standard 50s features a mahogany body with a maple cap and mahogany neck with long neck tenon. There’s also ProBucker humbuckers with 50s style wiring and CTS electronics, LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece and Epiphone Vintage Deluxe 18:1 ratio tuners. The guitar is offered in Metallic Gold, Heritage Cherry Sunburst and Vintage Sunburst finishes for $599.

Les Paul Standard 60s

Based on ‘60s-era Les Pauls, the Les Paul Standard 60s boasts a mahogany body with a maple cap, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, Grover tuners and a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece. The guitar is available in Ebony, Bourbon Burst and Iced Tea finishes for $599.

Les Paul Special

Designed to recreate the sound of the single cutaway ‘50s-era Gibson Les Paul Special, the new Epiphone model features a mahogany body with a reproduction of the classic TV Yellow finish, a mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also P-90 PRO soapbar single-coil pickups and CTS electronics, Lightning Bar Wrap Around bridge and Vintage style Deluxe tuners with ivory buttons. The Les Paul Special is available for $399.

SG Custom

The SG Custom recreates the 1960s-era SG with “LP-Custom” style binding. Features include a mahogany body, mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard with a Les Paul Custom style inlay. There’s also Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with CTS electronics, gold hardware, a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge with Stopbar tailpiece and gold hardware. The SG Custom is available in Ebony for $579.

SG Special (P-90)

The SG Special (P-90) features a mahogany body, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard, and is loaded with Epiphone P-90-PRO single coil pickups. There’s also a Lightning Bolt Wrap Around bridge and Epiphone Deluxe tuners. The guitar is available in Sparkling Burgundy and Faded Pelham Blue for $399.

SG Standard

The SG Standard features a mahogany body, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard with trapezoid inlays. There’s also Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with CTS electronics, Epiphone Deluxe tuners and a classic “batwing” pickguard. The guitar is available in Heritage Cherry, Ebony and Alpine White for $449.

SG Standard '61

The SG Standard ’61 recreates the Gibson SG from its first year of production. Features include a mahogany body in a Vintage Cherry finish, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece and Epiphone Deluxe Vintage tuners. The guitar comes in a Vintage Cherry finish for $449.

SG Standard '61 Maestro Vibrola

Similar in spec to the SG Standard ’61, this model also boasts a newly-designed ‘60s-style Maestro Vibrola. The guitar comes in a Vintage Cherry finish and is available for $549.

Epiphone Inspired By Gibson - Modern Collection

AJ-100CE

This advanced jumbo style acoustic boasts a select spruce top with cutaway and a mahogany neck with 1960's SlimTaper D-shape profile. There’s also a NanoFlex pickup system, premium die-cast tuners and a pau ferro reverse-belly bridge. Available in a Natural finish for $249.

AJ-45ME

Boasting a J-45 round shoulder dreadnought body, the Masterbilt AJ-45ME features a solid Sitka spruce top and mahogany back and sides, a mahogany neck and a pau ferro fingerboard. There’s also an active preamp system, imitation tortoise pickguard and Grover Sta-Tite 18:1 ratio tuners. Available in a Vintage Sunburst Satin finish for $699.

Hummingbird PRO

This acoustic/electric features a solid spruce top, mahogany neck and body and pau ferro fingerboard. There’s also Grover Rotomatic 18:1 ratio tuners, traditional binding, a historic Hummingbird pickguard and a Fishman Sonitone pickup system. The guitar is available in Faded Cherry.

Les Paul Modern Figured

The Les Paul Modern Figured boasts a weight relief mahogany body with a figured top, a mahogany neck and an ebony fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker pickups with coil-splitting, phase switching and a treble bleed circuit, Grover Locking Rotomatic tuners with Tulip buttons with an 18:1 ratio and a Graph Tech nut. The guitar is available in Caffe Latte Fade, Magma Orange Fade and Caribbean Blue Fade for $699.

SG Modern Figured

The SG Modern Figured features a Mahogany body with a AAA Flame Maple Veneer top in a Trans Black Fade finish. There’s also a mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard, ProBucker humbuckers with coil-splitting, phase switching and CTS electronics and Grover Locking Rotomatic tuners with Tulip buttons with an 18:1 ratio. Available for $549.

Les Paul Classic

The Les Paul Classic features a mahogany body with a plain maple cap, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also open-coil “zebra” Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with CTS electronics, coil-splitting and phase switching and Grover Rotomatic tuners. Available in Ebony, Honeyburst and Heritage Cherry Sunburst for $499.

Les Paul Classic Worn

Similarly-spec’d to the Les Paul Classic, the Les Paul Classic Worn features new “worn” finishes. Options are Worn Ebony, Worn Heritage Cherry Sunburst, Worn Purple and Worn Gold Top, for $449.

Les Paul Modern

The Les Paul Modern features a weight relief mahogany body with a maple cap and contoured heel, mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker pickups with coil-splitting, phase switching and a treble bleed circuit, Grover Locking Rotomatic tuners with Tulip Buttons with an 18:1 ratio and a Graph Tech nut. Available in Vintage Sparkling Burgundy, Graphite Black and Faded Pelham Blue for $649.

Les Paul Studio

The Epiphone Les Paul Studio is a modern version of the classic ‘80s no-frills design. Features include a mahogany body with a plain maple veneer top, mahogany neck and pau ferro fingerboard. There’s also Epiphone-designed Alnico Classic humbuckers, Grover tuners and a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece. Finish options are Alpine White, Ebony, Wine Red and Smokehouse Burst, for $449.

SG Classic Worn P-90s

The Epiphone SG Classic Worn boasts a mahogany body with a "worn" open grain finish, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also Epiphone P-90-PRO soap bar single coil pickups, a LockTone ABR bridge and Stopbar tailpiece and black “batwing” pickguard. Available in Worn Cherry and Worn Inverness Green for $379.

Les Paul Muse

The Les Paul Muse boasts a lightweight chambered Okoume body with a maple cap, Okoume neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also high-output Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with coil-splitting and phase controls plus a treble bleed circuit. The guitar is available in new metallic finishes including Radio Blue Metallic, Wanderlust Green Metallic, Purple Passion Metallic, Jet Black Metallic, Smoked Almond Metallic, Pearl White Metallic and Scarlet Red Metallic for $499.

SG Muse

The SG Muse features a mahogany body, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also high-output Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with coil-splitting and phase controls plus a treble bleed circuit. The guitar is available in new metallic finishes including Radio Blue Metallic, Wanderlust Green Metallic, Purple Passion Metallic, Smoked Almond Metallic, Pearl White Metallic, Jet Black Metallic and Scarlet Red Metallic for $429.

For more information on all the new Inspired by Gibson guitars, head to Epiphone.

During the late 50s, Gibson was experiencing something of an identity crisis as it struggled to gain dominance in the rapidly expanding solidbody marketplace. While its upstart rival in California, Fender, continued to thrive as it spearheaded the new trend of sleek, ultra-modern electric guitar designs, Gibson was rendered the victim of its own success as an old-school guitar-building brand synonymous with traditional flat‑tops and archtops.

Company president Ted McCarty battled in vain to shake off Gibson’s old-fashioned image with modernistic Flying Vs and Explorers and by updating designs in Gibson’s existing Les Paul range. Alas, with Les’s influence declining and with the Flying V and Explorer neither flying nor being explored, Gibson’s vision of the future proved less convincing to the younger guitar-buying generation.

By the early 60s, Gibson was still testing the water with new designs - notably the SG ‘solid guitar’ range - when Ted McCarty met retired Ford and Chrysler car designer Ray Dietrich. Mindful of the success Fender, Gretsch and Rickenbacker were enjoying as they appealed to the classic car design aesthetics of the day, Ted began to pick Ray’s brain for inspiration.

“Gibson were very conscious of what Fender and Rickenbacker were doing,” Mat Koehler, Gibson’s head of Product Development, told us in a recent interview. “Within days of Ted McCarty meeting Ray, he asked him to design some guitars - and some amplifiers, which nobody seems to know about!

“Ray Dietrich had a brilliant mind for design, but for instrument design it was pretty wacky. And I think it seemed pretty wacky to Ted, too. In ’63, after the first [Firebirds] were made, he was probably thinking, ‘What did I get myself into here?’ It was a very difficult build - and still is for us now.

"The non-reverse Firebirds aren’t so troublesome because they have a set neck. It took eight different designs for Gibson to settle on something with Ray. That’s how the Firebird became the Firebird.”

Aping the sleek, angular geometry of classic cars, the Gibson Firebird line was released in 1963 in the guise of four models, all sporting a through-neck construction and bespoke mini humbuckers: the single-pickup/dot-inlay I model; the double-pickup/dot-inlay III; the double-pickup/trapezoid-inlay V; and the triple-pickup/block-inlay VII. 

In keeping with the automotive theme, as a Gibson first (and in direct competition with Fender’s custom colors), Firebirds were offered in Golden Mist, Silver Mist, Frost Blue, Ember Red, Cardinal Red, Kerry Green, Polaris White, Pelham Blue, Inverness Green and Heather, in addition to their standard Sunburst.

The original Firebirds are often referred to as reverse, meaning the treble horn extends further than the bass horn, while the lower bass bout extends beyond the lower treble bout (as per the Explorer).

In 1965, however, Gibson revisited the design and - beginning with a trickle of transition specs - Firebirds were soon relaunched in their updated ‘non-reverse’ guise. With an extended bass horn and lower treble bout, along with tuners positioned across the bass side of the headstock, the new Firebird was virtually a mirror image of its former self. Furthermore, the Firebird III now boasted three pickups, albeit black soapbar P-90s. It was eventually discontinued in 1970.

1964 Gibson Firebird in Cardinal Red

The anatomy of a classic guitar...

This '64 Firebird III features a reverse headstock in matching Cardinal Red, with a six-digit serial number stamped on the back. The hardware is nickel-plated and comprises nickel-plated, Kluson banjo-style tuners with metal tulip buttons on treble side of headstock, metal pickup covers and surrounds, stud-mounted compensated wrapover bridge and a short Vibrola with flat arm.

As for the build the neck is a laminated mahogany neck-through construction, with a single-bound 22-fret Brazilian rosewood fingerboard with pearl dot inlays. This 'bird has a 24 and 3/4-inch scale, and a 1 and 11/16-inch nut width. Both neck and body are finished in Cardinal Red. The body is reverse style with an extended treble horn and lower bass bout; there are mahogany side wings glued on to the through neck, with a raised middle section. 

The plastics comprise an oversized black single-layer truss rod cover with gold Gibson logo, three-layer (w/b/w) bevelled-edge pickguard with red Firebird logo, four metal cap bonnet knobs, and a white switch tip. 

While the pickups and electronics feature two bespoke mini-humbuckers, two 0.022uF ceramic tone capacitors, four 500kΩ pots (individual pickup volume and tone), a three-way Switchcraft pickup selector toggle and frontmounted Switchcraft jack.

The evolution of the Gibson Firebird III

• Spring 1963: Gibson announces new Firebird line.
• Late 1963: Earliest production ‘reverse’ models released, with dual mini-humbuckers, through-neck construction and bound rosewood fingerboard.
• 1963: Around 270 Firebird III guitars registered shipped.
• 1964: Around 1,250 Firebird III guitars registered shipped.
• Early 1965: CMI and Gibson discontinue reverse-style Firebird III.
• Mid-1965: Reverse-style transitions to non-reverse style [as depicted in the top picture], featuring three P-90s, a glued-in neck and unbound rosewood fretboard.
• 1965: Around 1,020 Firebird III guitars registered shipped ('reverse' and 'non-reverse').
• 1970: Firebird III discontinued.