11 on 11/11/11: #5 - Gibson SB300 cheapo bass

OK, it's the 11th November 2011, that is 11/11/11, and as such today has been designated Nigel Tufnel Day. To celebrate this day of Maximum Elevenness, we here at Guitarz - for this day only - will be posting an unprecedented ELEVEN blog posts! So, keep tuned throughout the day for eleven weird and wonderful guitars!

You know already the Gibson SG200, the early 1970s budget version of the SG - well worse than budget, a big flaw in Gibson's production from a bad phase era. Here is its bass equivalent, the SB300. I don't have more to say about it, but I see more and more of these guitars showing up on eBay and sellers starting to ask vintage prices for them, so I thought I should repost the comment that our reader Teh Gav posted about the SG200:

"I've played dozens of these crude, downmarket '70s SGs over the years, hoping to find one that had potential. I found nothing but sadness and humility. They are bad guitars.

I say this as a huge fan of Melody Makers and pre-Japanese Epiphone solidbodies. It's not a snob thing. It's like, "Oh my God, this guitar feels like it's nailed together from leftover firewood and finished with slapped-on shellac. Uh, let's see how it sounds..."

That is where the sadness generally comes in. The humility has come from watching the numbers on the price tags rise from the moderate three-figures and move steadily toward a thousand dollars. Someone is buying these things, and it makes me feel like a cranky old guy who can't stop himself from wagging an index finger and telling 'back in my day' stories.

Because see here, back in my day, if you needed a guitar and were stuck with a hundred and fifty bucks in your pocket, you would step straight on top of one of those suck-Gibsons whilst making a straight path through the music store to the wall where the used Cort, Fernandez, Hagstrom, and/or Aria Pro II guitars were hanging.

These had no cachet or 'mojo' at all, but for God's sake, at least they freaking worked properly -- and at least they didn't make you feel shallow and vaguely dirty for playing a guitar purely because of the name painted on the headstock.

Seriously, these guitars suck. They have caused many people to experience pain and confusion. Not worth it -- really."

I won't deny that there is a certain wild beauty in this bass's crudeness, but guitars are still meant to be usable for music playing, aren't they?

Bertram

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