It’s Jake Kiszka’s birthday. Many happy returns, Jake. And to mark the occasion, Gibson has launched a signature guitar based on the Greta Van Fleet’s much-loved SG, aka the Beloved.
This is a limited edition model, but crucially, it’s not a Murphy Lab megabucks deal. At £2,149/$2,499, the Jake Kiszka SG Standard is priced not dissimilarly to Gibson USA electric guitar range.
Kiszka’s SG standard comes with all the extra metalwork of that modified sideways Vibrola (under which you’ll find a Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop-bar tailpiece), a pair of T-Type humbuckers, and ships in a signature hard-shell guitar case, where inside there is a signature guitar strap bearing the doubloon sigil that Kiszka designed himself. And there’s also a signed back plate and a plain, making this a real collector’s item.
It’s finished in Faded Vintage Cherry, spritzed with gloss nitrocellulose lacquer, and what you will notice is that this finish is pretty much pristine.
Unlike Kiszka’s original ’61 Les Paul/SG, you will have to put your own wear and tear into it. Speaking to MusicRadar, Kiszka he agonised over the question of how exact he wanted it to be to the Beloved.
“The question was really between whether it was going to be an exact replication of my number one, the Beloved, my ’61 SG – which is quite torn to bits, aged, and it’s seen a lot of battle [laughs] – or is it time to, in some ways, redesign the original Les Paul SG? The early ‘60s ones, the Les-G, if you will!” he says. “I was quite keen to take that guitar in its essence, as it was as a creation of the Gibson company in the early ‘60s, and I guess personify it, but also reconstruct it for modern sensibilities… So there were a lot of design elements that had to be altered for it to come into the new age.”
The T-Type humbuckers are another interesting choice. They are a vintage electric guitar pickup wind, and maybe have a little more something in the upper-midrange that your garden variety PAF-alike doesn’t have.
“That’s something that I really gravitated towards, that upper midrange,” says Kiszka. “The T-types had that. There’s definitely some sort of harmonic overtones as well that sort of give you this very strange, almost voice-like quality. Gibson is really quite brilliant at the replications of these pickups.”
The beauty of the SG – besides that double-horned shape – is the simplicity of the platform. It’s a plank of mahogany. Mahogany body. Mahogany neck, glued-in, SlimTaper neck.
If it didn’t have that 12” radius rosewood fingerboard (yes, with the 22 medium jumbo frets and acrylic trapezoid inlays) you’d swear it you could make one from the ground up all from the one tree. It doesn’t get better than that.
Unless, say you're a young rock musician who has just discovered a vintage unicorn and someone has offered to let you take it on tour with you... And then said guitar becomes your number one, aka the Beloved. Kiszka says it was love at first sight.
“It was like a lightning bolt just hit me from above,” he says. “I really did feel like this was sort of a divine intervention. It was everything that I was looking for in terms of the sound.”
You can read our full interview with Kiszka, coming soon to MusicRadar. You can grab one of these beauties over at Gibson.
