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Today's SG Standard Bass recreates the classic, dual-pickup version of Gibson's original bass--the E80--staying true to the design and specs of the original, including the popular 30.5-inch scale length. It's a favorite among player looking for quick action and thunderous response.
Gibson's innovative three-way adjustable bridge is the standard for simplicity and functionality. It provides players with the ability to adjust and fine-tune the height of the SG Standard Bass' strings in all directions--front, back, and side-to-side--which gives the bridge a "floating" feature, thus allowing the bass to be equipped with a variety of string gauges and multiple set-up options.
The SG Reissue's legendary resonance, tone, and sustain is the result of anchoring the bridge directly into the body at its three adjustable points, which provides a firm seating for the strings and yields a strong union between the strings and body. Readily accessible screws make setting the intonation simple. To this day, Gibson's three-way adjustable bridge remains an industry standard.
The pickups on the early Gibson basses of the 1960s remained unchanged for many years, undergoing only minor cosmetic modifications from time to time, but staying true to the originals' sonic characteristics. The pickups in today's SG Standard Bass--the vintage-style TB Plus humbucker and TB mini humbucker--are wax-potted and capture and recreate the classic attributes of those early Gibson basses.
The TB plus humbucker in the neck is a traditional hum-cancelling bass pickup with a full frequency, heavy-bottom sound, similar to pickups with a passive EQ. The EB mini humbucker in the bridge is traditionally smaller but packs a sweet punch with exceptional mid-range presence. This combination makes the SG Standard Bass a versatile instrument with a wide range of tonal possibilities.
Rosewood has always graced the fingerboards of the world's finest stringed instruments, including many of today's Gibsons. The fingerboard on the Gibson SG Standard Bass is constructed from the highest grade rosewood on the planet. The rosewood is personally inspected and qualified by Gibson's team of skilled wood experts before it enters the factories to be fitted onto the neck of the SG Standard Bass. The resilience of this dense and durable wood makes these fingerboards extremely balanced and stable, and gives each note unparalleled clarity and bite.
This guitar features a nitrocellulose finish--one of the most labor-intensive elements of the guitar-making process--which dries to a much thinner coat than a polyurethane finish, meaning there is less interference with the natural vibration of the instrument, allowing for a purer tone.
A nitro finish is also a softer finish, which makes it easily repairable. You can touch up a scratch or ding on a nitro finish, but you can't do the same on a poly finish. In addition, a nitro finish is very porous in nature, and actually gets thinner over time. It does not "seal" wood in an airtight shell--as a poly finish does--and allows the wood to breathe and age properly.
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Gibson Les Paul Traditional Electric Guitar, Ebony - Chrome Hardware Left Handed Review
With all the fat, sweet, snarling Les Paul tone that purists love, the Traditional plays, sounds, and feels like the Les Pauls that today's players grew up loving and lusting after. Taking design and visual cues from the Les Pauls of the '80s and '90s, the Les Paul Traditional starts with a Grade-A mahogany body and adds nine strategically placed traditional weight-relief holes for a beefy tone that maintains the resonance of modern Les Pauls, while losing a large portion of the weight. This is capped with a maple top, giving the Les Paul Traditional the look of the great Les Pauls that helped to bring rock back to the front of the stage in the mid '80s. Capping the Traditional with a maple top not only looks great, but it also brings out presence and definition to the tone. With the look of the great Les Paul Standards that helped to make rock king again, and every ounce of the tone thanks to legendary Gibson construction, classic tonewoods, and two genuine humbucking pickups, the Les Paul Traditional is the guitar to take your music center stage where it belongs.
Each Les Paul Traditional is made from a figured two-piece Grade-AA maple top attached with ultra-strong Franklin Titebond 50 glue to a solid, one- or two-piece Grade-A mahogany body.
These tone woods nail that legendary Les Paul combination of good clarity, definition and treble bite from the maple, and excellent depth and richness from the mahogany. This is one of the most revered wood combinations of all time, and truly offers a "best of both worlds" design in the way that mahogany and maple complement each other to offer superior resonance, sustain, depth, clarity, and definition.
The neck of the Les Paul Traditional is constructed from one solid piece of quarter-sawn, lightweight Grade-A mahogany for improved strength and resonance. The luthiers in Gibson's Custom Shop carefully match the grains and weights of these guitars' bodies and necks to optimize tone and sustain.
The neck on the Les Paul Traditional is carved to a comfortably rounded '50s "D" profile. Every detail counts in the effort of bringing authentic '60 Les Paul tone to the Les Paul Traditional, and the angled, classical-style peg head and fuller mahogany neck work together to provide exceptional tonal richness and resonance from the neck, with a good string definition and sustain.
The Les Paul Traditional carries a Grade-A rosewood fingerboard, the traditional fingerboard of the original Les Paul Standard. Rosewood is both hardwearing and sonically superlative, adding sweetness and depth to the guitar's overall sound. To enhance the guitar's classic look and feel, this fingerboard is trimmed in antique cream binding.
The fingerboard carries 22 medium-jumbo frets made from traditional nickel-silver wire, along with acrylic trapezoid position-marker inlays, echoing the traditional look of the original Les Paul Standards.
Just like the original Les Pauls of '50s, and many classic Gibson models, the Les Paul Traditional headstock is carefully angled at Gibson's traditional 17 degrees. This subtle yet crucial element of the guitar's design increases pressure on the strings and helps them stay in the nut slots. An increase in string pressure also means there is no loss of string vibration between the nut and the tuners, which equals better sustain.
The Les Paul Traditional Plust Top is equipped with a pair of pickups from Gibson's popular 57 Classic series. Its 57 Classic (neck) and 57 Classic Plus (bridge) accurately recreate the tone and performance of original PAF humbuckers with a few tonal enhancements that players appreciate. The standard '57 Classic in the neck position is wound to a DC resistance toward the lower range of the original PAF pickups, for a warm, round, rich tone with plenty of definition and clarity. The 57 Classic Plus in the bridge position is wound toward the hotter end of the PAF spectrum to reflect vintage pickups whose coils were wound "until they were full," for an open, clear, punchy vintage voice with plenty of snarl and aggression when you crank up your amp. The coils are wax potted to combat microphony and feedback squeal at high volumes so, while vintage voiced, they are suited to high-gain playing, too. The number of windings in the two coils in each pickup are also equally matched, an enhancement that provides a creamy, balanced performance that many players enjoy.
The Les Paul Traditional boasts an independent volume and tone control for each pickup, along with a three-way toggle.
The headstock of the Les Paul Traditional is equipped with Kluson-style Tone Pros tuners with green tulip buttons. These keys have a vintage look that complements the model, while offering an extremely efficient 16:1 turns ratio for precise tuning performance.
The Les Paul Traditional carries a "Nashville" Tune-o-matic bridge that is made from zamak and plated in chrome. This bridge provides a firm seating for the strings, while also allowing the player to adjust and fine-tune the intonation and string height in a matter of minutes. It also yields excellent coupling between strings and body, maximizing resonance, tone and sustain.
Every Tune-o-matic bridge is combined with a separate "stopbar" tailpiece, which is essentially a modified version of the earlier wraparound bridge that's designed to further enhance the connection between the strings and the body. The Les Paul Traditional's stopbar tailpiece is made from zamak and plated in chrome.
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