I've had this about a month now and I've been meaning to do a write up on it. It started as a discussion a while back on making a John Birch SG. I've been looking for one for years but with no success (though I know there are quite a lot out there - I sold at least 30 or so John Birch's in the mid seventies - but not all were SG's). Anyway, Tim made me a set of P-90's in nickel dog ear covers as I was going to get a new JB SG made, but that fell through. About that time I started emailing Wez and he was up for having a go at one, so I went to see him with some parts and we had a discussion, and he got on with it.
The guitar is a neck through with a mahogny neck with wenge centre stripe and korina wings and a ziracote fingerboard with acrylised sycamore binding and a ziracote head overlay. The neck shape is based loosely on my 60 Les Paul Special, but is 1 3/4 inch at the nut and a 25 1/2 inch scale. The back heel is copied from my John Birch JB1, and the tailpiece is a Schaller with Tone Pro's locking studs. The machine heads are Grover, and in the controls are a pair of original old russian paper in oil capacitors.
It feels great to play, Wez fitted Dunlop straplocks (my request), with the top horn one contersunk to give more strength. Once you get used to how it hangs, the neck feels great and you don't notice the lack of fingerboad dots (there are side dots though). Acoustically it rings nicely and has some good attack on the notes, it also sustains really well. When you plug it in though it really shines. It's natural tones are great for all styles of blues, you can play it lightly on the neck pickup and have almost an acoustic sound, then hit it hard and the notes start to snarl at you. To get more of that P-90 bite, switching to the bridge pickup will do the trick. When you put an overdrive on with it, you can get the original Black Sabbath sounds and some great driving solo sounds that will cut through in a band.
I am really happy with the neck shape and the feel of it, I can dig in and let the notes ring. There are 24 frets and it is fretted with 6100 wire to the 12th fret and 6105 after that. The narrower wire helps a bit when you get up near the end of the neck. The neck heel shape means that there is no resistance or changing hand position when in the high frets. Now I am thinking about an SG Standard with neck through, though Wez is starting something else to take a break from SG's!
