Gibson SG Standard '61 - Vintage Cherry

The Gibson SG Standard '61 is the SG as it first appeared: a deeply bevelled solid-mahogany body in Vintage Cherry, the small teardrop pickguard, a stop bar tailpiece, and a neck that meets the body at the very last fret. This is the current USA-built version, with a pair of 60s Burstbucker humbuckers, hand-wired controls and a Gibson hardshell case in the box — the guitar for players who want the classic twin-horn outline with nothing added and nothing missing.

The 1961 outline, cut from solid mahogany

When the Les Paul went on hiatus in 1961, the guitar that replaced it was this shape. Gibson carves the body from solid mahogany with the deep, angled bevels around both horns that give an SG its knife-edge look. The gloss nitrocellulose finish is thin enough to show the grain through the cherry, and the black five-ply teardrop pickguard sits tucked beside the pickups the way the earliest examples did, rather than wrapping the whole top.

A SlimTaper neck with all 22 frets in reach

The mahogany neck carries Gibson's SlimTaper profile: slim through the first position and quick under the hand higher up. It is topped with a cream-bound rosewood fingerboard carrying 22 medium jumbo frets and pearl-look acrylic trapezoid markers, on a 12-inch radius that keeps open chords comfortable while letting bends above the 15th fret ring out cleanly. With the neck set into the body right at the 22nd fret there is no heel to fight, so every note on the board sits under your fingers. Scale length is the familiar 24.75 inches, and the Graph Tech nut measures 43 mm across.

60s Burstbucker humbuckers, hand-wired

Both pickups are 60s Burstbuckers under nickel covers, wound with a little more output and top end than a vintage-spec humbucker, which is exactly what an all-mahogany SG wants. Rolled back, they stay clear and articulate for chord work; pushed into a cranked amp, they bite without turning mushy. The two volume and two tone controls run on audio-taper pots hand-wired with Orange Drop capacitors, so the volume knobs clean up smoothly rather than falling off a cliff, and the black top hat knobs with silver reflectors are the correct period detail.

ABR-1 bridge and an aluminium stop bar

The hardware is nickel-plated throughout. An ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge gives each string its own intonation saddle, and behind it sits a lightweight aluminium stop bar tailpiece of the kind Gibson fitted in the early sixties, a big part of why an SG sustains the way it does. Up top, Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons and the Graph Tech nut hold pitch through hard vibrato and big bends.

Hardshell case in the box

Every SG Standard '61 leaves Gibson's USA factory in a Gibson hardshell case with an accessory kit, strung with .010 to .046 gauge strings. The back of the headstock carries the Made in USA stamp, and the front wears the Gibson logo and crown inlaid in mother of pearl.

Set up and ready

Every guitar we ship gets a proper going-over on our bench first. Set up in-store by Guitar World Australia's techs before it ships to you, so it plays perfectly the moment it arrives.

Specifications