But every once in a while, the copy confounds expectations.<\/p>\n
Everyone who deserves the right to vote knows the Gibson SG:<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.zikinf.com\/_gfx\/matos\/dyn\/large\/gibson-sg-standard.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Originally putatively a lighter, double-cutaway version of the Les Pau<\/a>l, (whre “lighter Les Paul” makes about as much sense as “Lamborghini with a Hyundai engine”), it’s most famous as Angus Young’s main guitar this past thirty years or so. So you’d think the cheap knock-off would be a real doozy – right?<\/p>\n Well, no.<\/p>\n Ibanez guitars was, and is, a company based in Japan that started in the late sixties and early seventies making knock-off guitars. And one of their mid-seventies efforts was the SG:<\/p>\n If you look online, sellers will refer to various early-mid ’70s Ibanezes as “Lawsuit Models”, because – well, in 1975, Gibson sued Ibanez<\/a> for copying Gibson guitars down to the absolute finest details of their designs (tuning machines, headstocks, truss rods…everything<\/em>). Ibanez responded by changing some of the details…<\/p>\n …which is where my old SG comes in. It is a virtual dead-ringer for the red Gibson at the top of this post – but for the “Gibson” marque on the headstock, it could be the same axe.\u00a0 I bought it from a friend in 1979, after he’d <\/em>gotten it from a second-hand store for $90. I’m not sure if it was built immediately before the lawsuit (it looked exactly <\/em>like a factory SG) or immediately after (the neck was thinner and slicker; the rosewood fingerboard was much <\/em>nicer than any SG I’ve ever played). But it is a sweet guitar – especially after I dropped a Seymour Duncan “Jeff Beck” pickup<\/a> in the bridge position (think “Hyundai with a Lamborghini engine”).<\/p>\n If you can find one, and you have a choice between saving your significant other’s life with a rare but relatively inexpensive surgery, and buying the SG – well, save you significant other. Duh. And then <\/em>buy the SG.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Generally, knockoffs aren’t as good as the original. Our Man Flint? Not as cool as James Bond. Mello Yello? Not Mountain Dew. Not by a long shot. John Cafferty? A great night out at a bar, but no Springsteen. Hot Gear Friday? Can’t hold a candle to Hot Chick Friday. But every once in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hot-gear-friday","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnd I always hated ’em; after years of playing the slim, elegant neck of my Fender Jazz, playing the SG felt like a thick piece of firewood; the fingerboards always seemed soft, almost porous. Maybe I’ve tried bad guitars – but every SG I’ve ever played felt cheap.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.ibanezregister.com\/images\/groups\/kosaku%20nakamura\/ibanez-sg.jpg\")
<\/p>\n