SamTherapy opened this issue on Sep 27, 2012 · 65 posts
SamTherapy posted Sun, 30 September 2012 at 3:28 PM
Quote - > Quote - @SamTherapy -
Maskda's got a new blog about a guitar, but even translated, I can't appreciate the technicalities of the instrument, not being a guitarist myself. You make any sense of his discourse ?
Please excuse me butting in...
But, oh wow, it's a pre-1965 Gibson Melody Maker. The best electric guitar ever.
I have six of them (one of which is in fact a 1959 single cutaway).
Can't wait for this!
Anyway, the Melody Maker, introduced in 1959, was Gibson's low cost student guitar.
It's a lot slimmer than a Les Paul and therefore nice and light. Body and glued neck are solid mahogany, combined with a single piece combined wrap over bridge/tailpiece, they give an amazingly loud and fat acoustic tone rich with sustain.
The drawbacks are the wimpy single coil pickups (it came with a choice of one or two) that, while they don't actually sound too bad, start feeding back if they just look at proper amp, and the very ropey original machine heads.
(I've customized mine, they all have sealed Gotoh tuners and all except the '59 have at least one original PAF in place of the single coil.)
They have recently been reissued by Gibson, and the new models are quite nifty, but of course, the wood isn't anywhere near the quality on the old ones.
I thought Melody Maker at first but IIRC, they had softer corners to the cutaway wings, which made me think of the SG Jr mk 2. If, however, you have one of these beasts, you know what you're talking about. :)
Thought they had P90s on 'em, which is a very nice single coil, IMO.
@ jerr3d - Mahogany isn't - or rather, wasn't - a particularly heavy wood, compared with Maple or Rosewood. Newer all mahogany guitars are much heavier than old ones because the wood used now is much newer. A Les Paul from the 1950s weighs a lot less than the ones made up to 2001. After that, Gibson started drilling holes in 'em to keep the weight down. They, naturally, call them "tone chambers". We call 'em holes.
Anyhow, a Les Paul isn't a lightweight guitar, compared to most Strats, but a Melody Maker is quite a bit lighter by comparison. So is an SG, for that matter.
Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.