A Very Fine and Totally Original SG Standard

This forty-two-year-old 13-inch-wide SG Standard weighs just 7.20 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid Honduras mahogany body, one-piece mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and inlaid pearl trapezoid position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and pearl crown inlay. Black plastic truss-rod cover with "Les Paul" engraved in white. Individual single-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with double-ring tulip-shaped Keystone plastic buttons. Two original Gibson patent-number humbucker pickups with outputs of 7.71k and 7.87k. The neck pickup has a black label ("Patent No 2,737,842") on the underside. Original "MR 491" and "MR 490" black pickup rings. Four-layer (black/white/black/white) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on lower treble bout. The potentiometers are stamped "134 6308" (Centralab February 1963). Black plastic bell-shaped knobs with metal tops. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge with nylon saddles and Gibson sideways Vibrola tailpiece. The absolute bare minimum of belt buckle scarring on the back of the guitar, a very small amount of light finish checking, and a few tiny chips on the edges are all that prevent this totally original and unfaded example from being mint. This guitar is truly as fine an example as one could ever hope to find. Housed in the original Gibson deluxe black "faultless" hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.00).

This fantastic example is one of the very first guitars to have the stronger neck joint that was introduced in early 1963, and also one of the very last guitars to have the "Les Paul" designation on the truss-rod cover. The neck is wonderfully straight and we were the first to open up this totally original and almost unplayed guitar.

"Considering all the Les Paul models as a whole, sales declined in 1960 after a peak in 1959...[and] by 1961 Gibson had decided on a complete re-design of the line in an effort to reactivate this faltering model. The company had started a $400,000 expansion of the factory in Kalamazoo during 1960 which more than doubled the size of the plant by the time it was completed in 1961...One of the first series of new models to benefit from the company's newly expanded production facilities was the completely revised line of Les Paul models. Gibson redesigned the Junior, Standard and Custom models, adopting a new, distinctly modern, sculpted double-cutaway design. The 'Les Paul' name was still used at first, but during 1963 Gibson began to call these new models the SG Junior, the SG Standard and the SG Custom...The transition models -- those produced between 1961 and 1963 -- had the new SG design but the old Les Paul names, and these are now known to collectors and players as SG/Les Paul models...SG-style solidbodies have attracted a number of players over the years, including John Cipollina, Eric Clapton, Tony Iommi, Robbie Krieger, Tony McPhee, Pete Townshend, Angus Young and Frank Zappa" (Tony Bacon, Electric Guitars: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, pp. 134-136).