Form & Function

This month’s cover feature celebrating seven decades of the Les Paul got me thinking about guitars that feel naturally comfortable to each of us – and those that take a bit more adjustment. I’ve always been most at home with Strats and Teles, likely because the first few electrics I owned were either based on them or were actual Fenders. And that probably set the mould. When I pick up a Les Paul, I enjoy playing it, but it’s a little like stepping into a hire car for the first time – everything’s in a slightly different place to usual, but get motoring and you soon start feeling at home.

Curiously, two of Gibson’s other landmark electrics lie at opposite ends of the comfort scale for me. Firebirds, although long-feeling guitars, always seem like the most Fender-like of Gibsons to me. Maybe it’s just the visual influence of that six-in-a-line headstock, but, to me, they share a certain linear, angular feel that Fenders also possess. By contrast, the SG – aguitar I’ve always wanted to love because of Robby Krieger – feels a little alien to me, even to this day. The neck feels way off to the left, almost in a different postcode to, say, a Les Paul or even a Tele, and I miss the extra heft to the tone that the Les Paul’s slab of mahogany and maple cap seems to bring. Not that SGs have even sounded anything less than great in the hands of players such as Angus Young. It’s just a c