The Arsenal Pt. 3 - Joey

I've always been a sucker for SG's. They've always been *the* punk rock guitar - during the hardcore years, they're what we all lusted after. But in this neck of the woods, they were scarce, and they were typical Gibsons: great designs poorly built. No shit, I've tried about 150 Gibby SG's in my life, and maybe 3 or 4 had the correct neck angle. How you can design a guitar that requires a very particular neck break angle and set them too shallow 99% of the time is beyond me... And the last Gibson SG I tried, a 2013 Jr style, *still* was set way too shallow. I mean, if you can't build 'em properly, leave it to people who can. (Which is basically my argument against Fender as an entire entity...)

About 8 years back, I tried an Epiphone 310 at a local dealer. Typical 90s Epi, crap hardware, crap electronics. But, oddly enough, the neck angle was correct, and on a bolt-on one at that. Which made me figure, if'n some anonymous builder in China can finally get the angle right, maybe others can too...

And shortly thereafter, I stumbled across Joey:

Labelled J&D Brothers (which seems to be the factory brand Guitarfetish is selling off), a mid-70s wide-body copy. Set neck, all mahogany, and on sale from an online dealer (no longer around) for $130 + Shipping. He shows up, and wonders of wonders, the neck angle is dead on, ON A $130 CHINESE COPY. After decades of shallow Gibsons, I held in my hands an SG with the correct angle. And it was mine.

Let me try to explain why the neck angle matters so much on an SG. A properly built SG vibrates with the notes played: even accounting for harmonics that are emphasized by the particular pieces of wood used, even an B played on the high E string will be transmitted to the body. You feel the notes as you play them. Dampen them off, the whole guitar stops vibrating. It creates a type of dynamic sustain that Les Paul owners would kill for: you can let notes ring out forever or stop them on a dime.  All great SG players quickly learn how to use this sustain to maximum effect, even when they're not playing long legato passages. 

The problem is, the design spec for an SG is a neck angle of 4.25° for most years. Usually, it sits around 1° to 2.5° on most Gibsons. Now, I've played Les Pauls where the neck angle have been incredible shallow to absurdly steep (I had a friend with a Pro Deluxe that had to have a 20° pitch!) and the guitar will work ok. But an SG body is an inch of mahogany, leaving very very little extra wood at the neck joint to compensate. And too shallow of a neck angle leaves you with a cool looking guitar with banjo sustain and total ghost notes on the lower strings. It's really *really* critical, and sloppy factory work has wasted thousands of these axes. Such a shame...

Anyway, back to Joey. So 70s wide body, but with the 60's break angle. Great tuners, neck a little flatter than I like, hardware damn good. The stock neck pickup gives the greatest tone rolled off sound of any of my axes: coupled with some Big Muff, I can fulfil all my Fripp fantasies. The bridge pickup sounded like ass though, and had to go. I ordered in a Mean 90 and broke out the soldering iron.

Problem was, somehow I wired it out of phase with the humbucker. And somehow, it created this amazing tone, almost like a half-cocked wah. I really don't understand the frequency cancellation going on, but damn is it fun! You can hear it in the middle of this vid I did, about dudes and their "my tone" banalities:

Eventually, I screwed up the neck's tone pot from violent wrenching around, so I replaced it with a toggle switch. Joey stays tuned a full step, strung 9-46 for that Iommi playability. This is one of my favourite axes, and one I use constantly when I record, especially on the inEffable stuff. 

Oh yeah, and in spite of all the SG players I love (Townsend, Iommi, MacKaye, McPhee, Sensible, etc), in terms of players who made them look so cool, nobody beats Keithley in my books.