Westfield Gibson SG Copy Reviews 5

I bought this guitar off eBay and I think it cost me around £100. It was my own first guitar - the one I originally taught myself on for about a year when I was 13, was borrowed from my Dad's friend who had given up on the guitar. Surprise, surprise it was a Squier Strat package. I don't really blame him. I almost gave up after using the crappy amp given in these 'beginner' packages. They truly are terrible. So when I got my own guitar and equipment for Christmas, I decided to get a fairly decent one.

I like pretty much everything about this guitar. Granted, I wasn't exactly a guitar expert when I chose this one (I only wanted a Gibson SG style guitar because Charlotte Hatherley from Ash plays an SG, and I desperately wanted to be her when I was a young girl of 12 or 13... incidently, I am a girl...) however, I am genuinely happy that I did choose this. The tone of this guitar is lovely. When used in conjunction with the correct amp (I'm mainly using a Kustom KGA16R, amongst others, at the moment) it can do nearly anything. I play mainly punk and pop-rock and it suits me perfectly. The selector switch is cool too, allowing you to switch between rhythm and lead in a quick flick... It is a very clean guitar and has made me appreciate cleanliness much more but it can also achieve a really cool, crunchy distortion as well. Also, it stays in tune for copious amounts of time, even though I am often changing the tuning of it.

There isn't a lot I dislike about my guitar. The humbuckers sound great, there's no fret buzz whatsoever and it does everything I command it to do. The only thing I don't like is the weight of the neck. It's far too heavy for the guitar and when you let go of it, it drops straight to the ground and you do have to support the neck well with your hand if you are attempting a one-string solo or something similar. Apart from that, I have no complaints :)

The quality of the guitar is fab. It looks really ace (exactly like a Gibson SG '61 Reissue) and even though I have never gigged it (hell, I ain't even in a band yet! Damn those sexist guy musicians at school!) there have been times where I have banged it fairly hard on stuff and it hasn't chipped or marked it at all, (then again, that is probably due to about ten million coats of lacquer...) it has usually been my parents' antique furniture that has suffered. I don't know what kind of strings the guitar came with but they were soon replaced with Ernie Ball Super Slinkies because I just generally prefer them.

All in all, I think this is a fantastic guitar. The money I paid for it was unbelieveable and it was a wonderful little guitar for me to have started on. I have since moved on to much better (and more expensive!) guitars but I have never considered ridding myself of my little 'ole Westfield. I am very glad that I didn't make the grave mistake of buying a crappy beginners package like so many pompous rock-star wannabes I know did. I admit that it can be off-putting for a beginner guitarist to play out of a crappy amp with a crappy guitar and get a crappy sound, and especially when they're paying about £200-50 for it. I got all my first guitar gear for around £180 and it was much better quality. Thank-you Westfield. Had I not started on a brilliant guitar, I might not be playing today and God knows what my life would be like...

Mo rated this unit 5 on 2004-01-02.

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