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This almost went into the Gear Rants file - something along the lines of "Is the SG Gibson's longest running practical joke?", or some other hot take along those lines. Long story short, I've been trying to make an Epi Tony Iommi SG reasonably functional for about a year (in between bouts of giving up on it), and it's just not happening. To say this guitar has issues with tuning stability would be a laughable understatement. Forget about getting through a song, you can literally play a chord on this guitar and listen to it go out of tune in real time. If you actually play the thing for a few minutes (i.e. bending strings, etc.), it will go WILDY out of tune. I never imagined I could have this kind of trouble with a guitar WITH A FIXED BRIDGE.
But to be fair... it is a 24 fret guitar with a thin neck, and - crucially - I need it to work in C# Standard tuning. After months of polishing nut and saddles, playing around with the truss rod, etc., stability is "sorta OK" in E Standard - not what I would call great. In C#/Db, forget it. I'm better off staying in E and using a digital detune algorithm - any digital detune algorithm. Sad.
So, two questions, I guess:
-Is the SG, in fact, a big practical joke? The tuning question comes up frequently on the internet. How is a 60-ish year-old design still sucking this hard? If the SG is not a joke, can you offer a noob advice on how to set one up? I'm a total Strat-whisperer - I can make the cheapest Strat run like a top. But I am totally out of my element here.
-Do you have any advice (e.g. regarding strings) for lowered tunings? I think Epi set this guitar up for 8's, Tony's famously light gauge. But there's just no way he was playing 8's on the albums where he's this low. (I can't find any specifics on this anywhere.) I think I brought the guitar up to 10's to maintain his feel but also get a reasonable handle on the tuning. Next stop would be 11's? And a friend recommended strings that are specifically designed for detuning, e.g. Dunlop Heavy Core(?) But I'm skeptical that this would make a substantial difference - especially on unwound strings. Which is like, half the guitar. And it's not like Tony had these specialized strings in 1975 or whatever.
Chasing my tail. Ugh.
But to be fair... it is a 24 fret guitar with a thin neck, and - crucially - I need it to work in C# Standard tuning. After months of polishing nut and saddles, playing around with the truss rod, etc., stability is "sorta OK" in E Standard - not what I would call great. In C#/Db, forget it. I'm better off staying in E and using a digital detune algorithm - any digital detune algorithm. Sad.
So, two questions, I guess:
-Is the SG, in fact, a big practical joke? The tuning question comes up frequently on the internet. How is a 60-ish year-old design still sucking this hard? If the SG is not a joke, can you offer a noob advice on how to set one up? I'm a total Strat-whisperer - I can make the cheapest Strat run like a top. But I am totally out of my element here.
-Do you have any advice (e.g. regarding strings) for lowered tunings? I think Epi set this guitar up for 8's, Tony's famously light gauge. But there's just no way he was playing 8's on the albums where he's this low. (I can't find any specifics on this anywhere.) I think I brought the guitar up to 10's to maintain his feel but also get a reasonable handle on the tuning. Next stop would be 11's? And a friend recommended strings that are specifically designed for detuning, e.g. Dunlop Heavy Core(?) But I'm skeptical that this would make a substantial difference - especially on unwound strings. Which is like, half the guitar. And it's not like Tony had these specialized strings in 1975 or whatever.
Chasing my tail. Ugh.
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but it wasn’t bad enough to throw from the roof.
