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Is there another guitar that burned so brightly but briefly as the Yamaha SG...

Very nice guitars but I can never get past the look

There was a point where you couldn't watch Top of the Pops without seeing somebody playing one...

I've played a white one as my main guitar for the past year and a half - big fan!

I didn't know Sid Vicious played one (actually that looks more like Sid than the actor who played Sid in "Sid and Nancy").

One of my first guitars was one of these. A mate swapped it with me for an old LP copy (that was pretty crap) that he was in love with because it was white (Pistols fan). It was pretty heavy but really well built. it was the one with loads of binging and a fancy stop tail. I think it was a 2000. I can't even remember what happened to it.

I like them a lot. I think they benefitted from an era where people wanted "sustain". Yamaha was actually bothering to make a nice carved top mahogany body guitar with a set-neck in the mid and late 70's when Gibson and Fender where having mixed results. Then Gibson objected to them using the moniker SG because they were probably selling well and finally figured out they had to start making better Les Pauls and SG's again.

I've tried many over the years but want a fancy SG 3000 in black, but it's on the long list of guitars I want.

lol @ Midge Ure for surely not the first time

Mikey "Mao" Chung, I can't the pic I wanted to, but here is the

official site.

Essentially it is a Les Paul with a different body shape. Beginning from the 80s Gibson started to produce good Les Pauls again. I guess Les Paul was a more desirable guitar for most of the guitarists. I think also that before the ebay/musiciansfriend/buying on the internet era a good Les Paul was a rarer and more desirable guitar in general. Nowadays the market is flooded with them and everybody is in the search for an alternative design

Always been a fan and owned about five 200 models over the years.
I think the Ibanez Artist was equally as good from that era.

My only issue is they are becoming more difficult to find, they are usually overpriced and usually have a lot of fret wear.

Fran wrote:Always been a fan and owned about five 200 models over the years.
I think the Ibanez Artist was equally as good from that era.

My only issue is they are becoming more difficult to find, they are usually overpriced and usually have a lot of fret wear.

Aye the price has rocketed since Johnny marr and John Fruciante name checked them in recent interviews... never played an artist but like the look.

I think I paid about £200 for mine a year and a half ago, have they jumped up since then? It was kind of beat up when I bought it and now even more so since I made the wise decision to start using metal picks.

dezb1 wrote:

Fran wrote:Always been a fan and owned about five 200 models over the years.
I think the Ibanez Artist was equally as good from that era.

My only issue is they are becoming more difficult to find, they are usually overpriced and usually have a lot of fret wear.

Aye the price has rocketed since Johnny marr and John Fruciante name checked them in recent interviews... never played an artist but like the look.

Artists are notoriously heavy, I had to buy a wide strap for mine and I'm not exactly a little bloke.
Tone though. As good as any Les Paul or SG I've heard.

Freddy, £200 is decent (for a 200 model), they've hovered around that price for a long time, but it seems a lottery on fret wear. People just played the shit out of them I suppose.
With prices I was thinking more the upmarket models like the 2000.

Incidentally, my local Crack Converter has a SG800 in, the tag said 'these sell for £1,000 on ebay'. MIJ maybe, but this was a Korean bolt-on model from the 1990's. He wanted £500 for it

Fran wrote:

dezb1 wrote:

Fran wrote:Always been a fan and owned about five 200 models over the years.
I think the Ibanez Artist was equally as good from that era.

My only issue is they are becoming more difficult to find, they are usually overpriced and usually have a lot of fret wear.

Aye the price has rocketed since Johnny marr and John Fruciante name checked them in recent interviews... never played an artist but like the look.

Artists are notoriously heavy, I had to buy a wide strap for mine and I'm not exactly a little bloke.
Tone though. As good as any Les Paul or SG I've heard.

Freddy, £200 is decent (for a 200 model), they've hovered around that price for a long time, but it seems a lottery on fret wear. People just played the shit out of them I suppose.
With prices I was thinking more the upmarket models like the 2000.

Incidentally, my local Crack Converter has a SG800 in, the tag said 'these sell for £1,000 on ebay'. MIJ maybe, but this was a Korean bolt-on model from the 1990's. He wanted £500 for it

The 800's are set necks I thought you had to go down to the 500's before you seen a bolt on neck?

Fran wrote: it seems a lottery on fret wear. People just played the shit out of them I suppose.

They came with low frets from the factory. After one or two levellings you can't get any lower.

dezb1 wrote:

Fran wrote:

dezb1 wrote:
Aye the price has rocketed since Johnny marr and John Fruciante name checked them in recent interviews... never played an artist but like the look.

Artists are notoriously heavy, I had to buy a wide strap for mine and I'm not exactly a little bloke.
Tone though. As good as any Les Paul or SG I've heard.

Freddy, £200 is decent (for a 200 model), they've hovered around that price for a long time, but it seems a lottery on fret wear. People just played the shit out of them I suppose.
With prices I was thinking more the upmarket models like the 2000.

Incidentally, my local Crack Converter has a SG800 in, the tag said 'these sell for £1,000 on ebay'. MIJ maybe, but this was a Korean bolt-on model from the 1990's. He wanted £500 for it

The 800's are set necks I thought you had to go down to the 500's before you seen a bolt on neck?

Can't remember exactly without research, May have been something like a 750, pretty sure it was above 500. These were cheap 90's reissues remember.

*Edit* 500B?

dub wrote:

Fran wrote: it seems a lottery on fret wear. People just played the shit out of them I suppose.

They came with low frets from the factory. After one or two levellings you can't get any lower.

That would explain a lot.

I used one to record the Pistols promotional demos, it had an incredible sound but some serious fret wear. Sold it in the end as a refret would probably have cost as much as the guitar itself.

The one I bought looks like it's hardly been played... the chips n scuffs must've happened when the guy was posing in front of the mirror

Looks like we have concluded that the answer is no...