IN A WORLD where Gibson’s 1958–’60 sunburst Les Paul Standard reigns supreme for collectability and tone, the down-to-earth Gibson SG Special has long been seen as the rowdy younger sibling: brash, raw, a little unrefined and occasionally ill mannered. Given both its low cost and golden-era lineage, it became a nifty pawnshop find, even as the ’Burst values soared. Many punks and garage rockers were among the clued-in guitarists who knew it to be a stealth behemoth in the tone stakes.
The SG Special arrived in 1959 as the predecessor to the single-cutaway Les Paul Special of 1955–’58. The SG Special
