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1970 Gibson SG Special: Salvaged from Obscurity

May 19, 2018
1 min read
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With a pile of new and vintage parts (left), and the vision of a white SG Special with batwing pickguard, I set out to create one badass guitar.

I acquired the bones of this project at the end of November 2017. Bad timing as I was pretty busy getting stuff together to re-enter college after 19 years. Man, things have changed a bit! Then after acceptance, admission, registration - and nearly missing deadlines, I started classes in January. I thought I'd have more time to spend on guitar stuff, forgetting the demands of grad school... I was able to tinker here and there and collect the parts I needed to realize the vision I had for this guitar: An aged white body with aged nickel hardware, including converting the wrap-around bridge to an ABR-1. The guitar came to me in husk form - no hardware, electronics, and stripped of its original finish. The bones were excellent and it had no funky routing. It did, however, have plugs from a failed attempt to add a tune-o-matic and stop bar configuration... and, unfortunately, those holes went all the way through the body! Damn. I knew that I could repair those, and I knew that I'd have to do some plugging of my own to do a proper ABR-1 conversion. Since this guitar was destined for an opaque paint job from the get-go, that wouldn't be an issue. Had I wanted to do an original style cherry finish, I wouldn't even consider this guitar as the base of my project.


 
 
 

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