Gibson Guitars was founded in 1902. Orville Gibson started out making mandolin-family instruments. By the 1930’s the company was making flattop acoustic guitars and hollow-body electric guitars. They sell guitars under different brand names. One of them happens to be one of the world’s best-known guitars, the Gibson Les Paul.
The Les Paul is a solid body electric guitar. Les Paul was one of the pioneers of this type of guitar. He was a songwriter, and jazz, country, and blues guitarist, who lived from June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009.
Solid body electric guitars don’t have a vibrating soundboard like an acoustic guitar. Instead, they use electric pickups, an amplifier, and a speaker. The Fender Esquire and Fender Broadcaster (later becoming the Fender Telecaster) were the first ones. Then in 1954 the famous Fender Stratocaster came out.
The Gibson SG is also a solid-body electric guitar that was introduced by Gibson in 1961. According to Wikipedia, it’s still in production today, as of the writing of this article. “SG” stands for Solid Guitar. The SG Standard is Gibson’s best-selling model of all time.
The SG is a lightweight guitar that’s comfortable to hold and play. The Telecaster is used for blues and jazz, along with rock music, while the SG is used more for heavy and classic rock music.
The SG fingerboard is made of Rosewood and the body is made of solid Mahogany. It uses what’s called a Tune-O-Matic guitar bridge system. With this system you can slide the saddles the strings rest on forwards or backwards. This allows you to fine tune intonations or rises and falls (flats and sharps) of sounds.
It also has a Humbucker Pickup – this is a double coil pickup (the other is a single coil) which uses two wire coils to cancel out noise interference.
Les Paul disliked the guitar, but many well-known recording artists have used it. There have and continue to be many Gibson SG Players. Here they are:
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973)
She was an American singer and guitarist. She did gospel recordings in the 1930s and 1940s that mixed spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was considered the first great recording star of gospel music.
Since Tharpe appealed to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, she was called “the original soul sister” and “the Godmother of rock and roll”.
She influenced Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, and Eric Clapton. It’s been said that she had a white Gibson SG which was a rare model from the 1960s with three humbucker pickups and a vibrola.
With her Gibson outfitted the way it was, she used heavy distortion in her music which gave way to the electric blues music style.
Frank Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993)
Frank was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. He had a career of more than 30 years and composed everything from pop, rock and jazz to orchestral music. He also directed feature-length films and music videos.
Zappa wrote classical music in high school. He played drums in rhythm and blues bands, but later switched to electric guitar. He was more successful in Europe than in the United States.
He liked Fender Stratocasters and Gibson Les Paul’s but was seen performing with lots of different Gibson SGs. One was called “Roxy”. It had a mirrored top and special feature (preamps, phase switches, etc.) to affect the sound.
Another was called “Baby Snakes” which he bought from a guy named Bart Nagel. It was also custom built with different electronic features, and even had 23 frets (22 frets is the normal number on a Gibson SG guitar). This guitar is shown in the movie Baby Snakes. This long movie, which was released in 2003, gets great reviews and is still available as of the time this article is written.
Eric Clapton (Born March 30, 1945)
Eric is an English singer, songwriter, and rock and blues guitarist. He’s considered one of the most successful guitar players in the world. He has a number two ranking in the Rolling Stone “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list.
He received an acoustic steel-stringed guitar for his thirteenth birthday. At first, he found it hard to play, but a couple years later, he started playing it again. He practiced a lot, mostly playing blues music, and by age 16 he was starting to get noticed as a guitar player.
He started out playing in several local bands, then joined the Yardbirds in 1963. After a couple years he played with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. He left that band and formed Cream in 1966. Then Cream broke up in 1968. He then formed a blues rock band called Blind Faith. They did one album and one tour before Clapton started a solo career in 1970. Eric also recorded “Layla”, one of his signature songs, with Derek and the Dominos.
It’s said that he started his career playing only Gibson guitars. He bought his first one in 1964, which was a cherry red ES-335.
It was the primary guitar he used while with Cream. He’s also owned some Gibson Les Paul guitars. He used a Gibson SG Standard which became famous because Cream’s manager wanted to come up with some psychedelic posters, costumes, and instruments.
They came up with an SG called “The Fool” with a psychedelic red, green, yellow, and blue design. After the SG Standard, Clapton switched to a model called the Gibson Firebird. He’s also used Gibson SG Special guitars.
What’s a “Signature Guitar”?
A signature guitar model is a guitar that’s usually only available in limited edition. It’s manufactured by a guitar company from the specifications of a high-profile guitarist. This guitarist may want it to have a certain look and feel, along with certain specifications and features, and a special sound.
The first “signature” model released by Fender was the Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster. Sometime after 1985 Clapton started giving Fender plans for prototypes. The final product was released in 1988.
Pete Townshend (Born May 19, 1945)
Pete really needs no introduction. There’s probably very few people that don’t know he’s an English musician and leader of The Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. He’s a co-founder, guitarist, and vocalist for the band.
He’s a self-taught musician and mostly plays guitar, but also plays bass guitar, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, accordion, harmonica, violin, and synthesizer.
Townshend has written more than 100 songs for 12 studio albums of The Who. Another 100+ songs he’s written have appeared on solo albums, television themes, and radio jingles. He’s also written or contributed to books, scripts, essays, and magazine and newspaper articles.
He has an aggressive guitar playing style and very inventive songwriting techniques that have helped to make him famous. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Who in 1990.
Townshend became the sole guitarist in a band called the Detours, led by Roger Daltrey. The band found out there was another band with the same name, so they came up with “The Who” for a name.
Guitar Smashing
In 1964 he accidentally smashed a guitar into the ceiling at a concert in west London. It was at a small pub called the Railway Tavern, which had a low ceiling. His other band members didn’t seem to notice, so Pete decided to smash the guitar into the floor and against his amp, which shattered it.
The audience liked that, so he started smashing guitars at most of his concerts. This actually went on for decades, and Pete Townshend became know for smashing more guitars than any other rock ‘n’ roll guitar player. He made a big production out of it.
Sometimes he would hold his guitar up high and slam it down. Other times he would chop down a mic stand with it, or slam it into a drum stand or a speaker tower. He wanted to make the guitar smashing an exciting event for the audience.
Pete has played a lot of different guitars, but usually Gibson, Fender, and Rickenbacker models (comes in 12-string). It was actually a Rickenbacker guitar that he smashed up at the west London pub.
He’s also used Guild, Takamine, and Gibson J-200 acoustic guitars. The J-200 is what he used on “Pinball Wizard”.
In his early days of playing he used a model called an Emile Grimshaw SS De Luxe. Later on he used a Gibson SG Special until they changed the design. Then he used a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. Joe Walsh gave him a ’59 Gretsch 6120 guitar that he often played.
Townshend mainly used Fenders, Rickenbackers and Telecaster guitars in the 1980s. There’s even a Fender Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster.
There are several Pete Townshend Gibson signature guitars, but it’s the Gibson SG that he’s probably most remembered for.
Tony Iommi (Born February 19, 1948)
Tony is an English musician who co-founded Black Sabbath. For almost 50 years he was the bands leader, guitarist, and primary composer of songs. He has always played guitar left-handed.
As a teenager he worked in a sheet metal factory. It was actually on his last day of work that he had an accident where he lost the tips of his ring and middle fingers in his right hand. This had a big impact in his guitar playing for the rest of his life.
A factory foreman let Tony listen to a recording of a famous jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who was only playing with two fingers on his fretboard hand, due to a fire injury. So Iommi was inspired and tried different methods to overcome his disability.
He first tried metal thimbles covered with leather. Later he tried tuning his guitar to lower pitches. This made the strings easier to bend, but also created a bigger, heavier sound.
Iommi played in a lot of different bands before Black Sabbath. He was with Ozzy Osbourne in a band called Polka Tulk Blues Band, which shortened it’s name to Polka Tulk. Then the band was renamed Earth in September 1968.
They were confused with another band in England also named Earth, so they renamed themselves Black Sabbath. The guitar detuning that Tony had done was also done by Geezer Butler, the bass player of Black Sabbath.
This detuning technique became a backbone method for heavy metal music. Iommi is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and a lot of people believe he’s the main creator of heavy metal.
He played different Gibson SG guitars, custom models, and other guitars, including The Jaydee Donnington SG, a Gibson SG Standard, a Gibson Custom Shop SG, Epiphone P94 Iommi SG, St. Moritz Tony Iommi Custom SG, and a Fender Stratocaster. He also came out with a Gibson Tony Iommi Signature Pickup, which was available back in the day.
Tony Iommi published an autobiography, entitled Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath. The book gets very good reviews.
Angus Young (Born March 31, 1955)
Anyone who’s ever seen AC/DC in concert, or seen videos of them, sees Angus Young right out in front. He’s very energetic and likes to wear schoolboy outfits and shorts. He constantly walks back and forth, and is known for doing the Chuck Berry duck walk, but at a faster pace than Chuck Berry did it. Angus often ends up without a shirt on and sweating profusely.
He’s a self-taught guitar player, and said the only kind of “lessons” he had was watching his brother play. He didn’t take it seriously until age fourteen. He started out playing a Hofner guitar. Then he bought a secondhand Gibson SG.
Angus is a small guy and picked the Gibson SG because it’s light and easy to hold. He said he liked the hard sound of it, and that it had more “balls” than Fenders. He also said you could “do a lot of tricks” with the Gibson.
As for playing, Young said he didn’t even know the names of chords. He didn’t really learn about them until joining AC/DC. He started making up leads, so becoming a solo guitar player came easy for him. He said AC/DC wanted to have a “fresh approach” with all their music. Angus has a harsh, frenzied guitar style.
He collaborated with Gibson to make an “Angus Young SG” model. His sister suggested the schoolboy costume that he’s known for wearing on stage. He’s continued playing a Gibson SG for decades and was one of the key players to give the guitar a hard-rock reputation. All of his sweating has done a lot of water damage to the guitars, so he’s had to buy a lot of extras/replacements, to always have one available to play. Besides his signature model, he owns many variations of the guitar.
Ian MacKaye (Born April 16, 1962)
Ian is an American musician. He is co-founder and owner of Dischord Records in Washington D.C. and played in the bands Minor Threat and Fugazi. He’s a key figure in the development of hardcore punk and promotes abstinence from alcohol and other drugs.
He plays a Gibson SG, and while with Fugazi he played a ’70s model with an Alpine White finish, and a DiMarzio Super Distortion Humbucker. He also has an SG with a Brown finish.
His guitar rhythm style can be heard on the album or CD Repeater, which gets excellent reviews.
Jeff Tweedy (Born August 25, 1967)
Jeff is an American songwriter, author, musician, and record producer. He’s know as being a singer and guitar player in the band Wilco. He released four studio albums with a band called Uncle Tupelo, and then twelve albums with Wilco.
He’s also produced three solo studio albums, as well as doing work with other musicians. Tweedy has done several solo tours and typically plays acoustic guitar in those.
While in Uncle Tupelo he played a Gibson SG. Other guitars he’s played are a Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar, Fender Jazzmaster, Fender Telecaster, Epiphone Casino, Rickenbacker 360, Gibson SG Standard, and a Breedlove, which is an Acoustic-Electric guitar.
Thom Yorke (Born October 7, 1968)
Thom is an English musician and the main vocalist and songwriter for the band Radiohead. He doesn’t read music, but plays guitar, bass, piano, and drums. He’s also been a dancer.
He also uses electronic instruments like synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers. He’s known for his falsetto singing and has a wide vocal range. Often, he will use synthesizers and an effects pedal to manipulate his voice.
As a child Thom decided he was going to become a rock star. In high school and college he was in different bands. Radiohead was formed in 1985 and were signed to EMI when Yorke was just 22 years of age. Radiohead has produced at least nine studio albums and done touring. Thom has also produced several solo albums.
As far as guitars, he’s used a Gibson SG, Gibson Les Paul, Gibson ES-125T, Gibson ES330, Gibson B25, Rickenbacker 330, Fender Jazzmaster, and many other models too numerous to list here. Like Angus Young, Thom said he preferred the Gibson SG because it’s light and a comfortable guitar to play.
Brian Molko (Born December 10, 1972)
Brian is a Scottish-American born in Belgium. He’s a songwriter, singer, and guitar player for the band Placebo. He’s known for having a feminine appearance. He probably wanted to rebel against his father, who was strict and wanted him to be a banker. So, growing up, Molko started wearing eyeliner, lipstick, and nail polish. He also listened to punk music.
He’s openly bisexual, and this is reflected in his earlier song lyrics. The band name Placebo and an album named Meds, reflect his use of recreational drugs. Brian said he gave up drug use after the release of Meds. He also happens to be bilingual, speaking fluent French and English.
While performing he’s played guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, saxophone, and harmonica. Brian has collaborated with many different musicians and bands, too numerous to list here. David Bowie was a friend and sang on a Placebo song “Without You I’m Nothing”.
Molko uses lots of different guitars, including the Fender Jaguar, Fender Jazzmaster, Fender Thinline Telecaster, Fender Toronado, Gretsch Duo Jet, Gibson Chet Atkins SST, Gibson Les Paul, and of course Gibson SGs.
Carrie Brownstein (Born September 27, 1974)
Carrie is an American musician, actress, writer, director, and comedian. She wrote and appeared in comedy sketches for Saturday Night Live. The sketches were developed into a satirical comedy TV series called Portlandia, which was an Emmy-winning series.
However, she was an accomplished musician before becoming a big-screen writer and actor. Brownstein began playing guitar at 15. She took some lessons from Jeremy Enigk who played in some Seattle-based bands.
She went to Evergreen State College in Washington. With some fellow students she formed the band Excuse 17, which was a pioneering band in the riot grrrl movement – an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s.
Her first music success was with a band called Sleater-Kinney that she formed with a fellow student Corin Tucker. The band recorded a self-titled album in early 1994. They recorded and toured with different drummers and released six more studio albums before going on a hiatus.
For most of her time with Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein played a Gibson SG. She said she liked it because it had a little bit of a growliness to it. She said it was “a little masculine” and “the harder you play; it will react to that.”
Daron Malakian (Born July 18, 1975)
Daron is an American musician, songwriter, singer, and record producer. His nationality is Armenian. In the heavy metal band System of a Down, he’s a songwriter, vocalist and guitar player.
He’s also the sole member of the band Scars on Broadway, where he’s the songwriter, lead vocalist, lead guitarist, bass player, drummer, and keyboard player. The band also has touring members.
At an early age he was listening to heavy metal music and people like Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, and Ozzy Osbourne. He started learning to play guitar by ear. The Beatles and John Lennon influenced him as a songwriter.
He was in high school with a couple System of a Down members. That band was formed in Glendale, California in 1994. All the members are Armenian like Daron. They released five studio albums, and three of them debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200.
Their song “B.Y.O.B.” won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2006.
Scars on Broadway released a debut album in 2008. The band then went through various line-up changes. They did do some touring, but it was 2018 before they released a second album. Most of Daron’s rhythm and lead guitar playing is done with a Gibson SG.
Derek Trucks (Born June 8, 1979)
Dereck is an American songwriter, guitarist, and founder of The Derek Trucks Band. He was actually a child prodigy and must have had a keen interest, because he bought his first guitar at age 9 at a yard sale. His first paid performance was at age 11.
He played slide guitar because he had small hands, and using the slide, he was able to play. He actually became known as a master of the slide guitar, and some have considered him one of the greatest slide guitarists of all time.
By age 13 he had played with Buddy Guy, and American blues guitarist. By the time he was only 20 he had played with Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh, Stephen Stills, and The Allman Brothers Band.
By age 20 he actually became an official member of The Allman Brothers Band. Duane Allman and bluesman Elmore James were slide guitarists who influenced him. He’s also been inspired by John Lee Hooker, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Albert King, and many others too numerous to mention here.
B.B. King heard him play and said, “That’s about as good as I’ve ever heard, and I mean it.”
Derek used a Gibson SG for slide his slide guitar playing. It’s said that he had 5 Cherry Red models. He was also known for playing one called a 2000 Gibson SG ’61 Reissue, that had custom humbuckers and other modifications.
Trucks also played a resonator guitar, which is an acoustic guitar that uses spun metal cones, called resonators, to produce the sound from the string vibrations. They were originally meant to be louder than regular acoustic guitars, because in some orchestras, before electric guitars were made, brass instruments (trumpets, tubas, etc.) and drums were so load they covered up the guitar sound. A resonator guitar has a unique tone and they’re used in bluegrass and blues music.
Gary Clark Jr. (Born February 15, 1984)
Gary is an American blues guitarist and singer from Austin, Texas. He started playing guitar at age 12. Because he combines blues and rock, he’s been called “the New Hendrix”. He has released albums and CDs with Warner Records that get great reviews.
He’s done a lot of live performances, releasing a Gary Clark Jr. Live album in 2014. He also received Grammy Awards in 2014 and 2020. He’s been on stage with B.B. King, the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Eric Clapton.
He has used an Epiphone Casino guitar. He’s also used Gibson SG guitars with P-90 and Humbucker pickup bridges, as well as Fender Stratocaster and Fender Telecaster electric guitars.
He developed a guitar with Gibson that has a glossy yellow finish called a Gary Clark Jr. Signature SG. There’s also a Gary Clark Jr. SG with a cherry finish. Gary likes to use fuzz pedals and wah pedals. A fuzz pedal distorts the guitar sound and a wah pedal makes a sound which mimics the human voice saying “wah-wah”.
Conclusion
There are certainly many other Gibson SG players out there. You may know of several more, but we just tried to list some of the most famous ones in this article. Feel free to comment below if you know of another SG player, or just have thoughts about your favorite musician.
Are you a guitar fan and can’t afford a real guitar? Get a miniature replica guitar.
