The Real Thing

I got my BB King Lucille in early 1995 and, to my shock, it was one of the last guitars Gibson produced in their Centennial Year of 1994. I was quite pleased by this since I paid the maximum discount price, several hundred dollars less than they go for 10 years later. But there is a but here.

The finish is not up to Gibson's standards from the 60s. One can get a better finish on a guitar made in Japan, and that is sad. It's a matter that the guitar's finish sanding and detail work was not quite right. It's a quibble but this IS a flagship instrument. That is the only reason the appearance rating got knocked down. Everything else on the guitar is letter perfect. BB King wouldn't have settled for this finish on HIS guitar, and Gibson wouldn't have asked him to.

Beyond cosmetics, and the understated elegance with which BB ordered his original Lucille, this guitar is the type of guitar that made Gibson's name. If you want one guitar to do a LOT of things, the Lucille is it. Look at what it does.

It has the standard Mono jack that all guitars have. It also has a stereo jack so that you can play both pickups at once and put the bridge pickup on one amp or channel, and the neck pickup on another. It is easy for me to make up a splitter cable that does this in about 5 minutes, including heating up the soldering iron.

The Varitone switch is a filter that has 6 positions in addition to the regular tone controls which vastly expands the tone produced. Yes, you CAN do this with a graphic eq and get more sounds that way but with the Lucille, you can just carry your guitar and not be a pretend keyboard player behind a wall of junk you have to constantly fiddle with.

The physical construction of the guitar is excellent; it's a very robust instrument. It has, so far as I can tell, only two downsides for most guitarists.

One is the body size. It is built as though it were an acoustic-electric, which is precisely what it actually was before the days of Arena Rock and the necessary addition of the maple centerblock to kill feedback problems. This means there is a lot more guitar body to loop one's upper arm over, like an acoustic. Some do not like it and prefer the smaller body of solid-body electrics like the Les Paul or PRS. Try it in the store; if it does not bother you, you have a shot at a considerably advanced guitar - tonally the most advanced you can buy I believe.

The other is weight. This is a HEAVY guitar. Well, of course. While the body is thin, the thing is deliberately built like a tank, and almost all of the guitar is maple laminates which are extremely strong but very heavy. Maple is one of the most dense of woods which is what lends the Lucille a particularly long sustain time. If you're sitting and playing you will notice the weight on this guitar more than any other of which I am aware.

I like this guitar and am not about to sell or trade mine. There is nothing made today which can replace what it does, give those great blues tones and still get up there and scream almost as well as an original Stratocaster.

If you get a chance to try one, and have the dosh, it is well worth looking into.

While I hesitate to recommend buying a guitar without looking at it first, and giving it a test drive, some epinions advertisers are listing the guitar today (15 Aug '04) for $1750 including shipping; some even allow an evaluation period of 30-45 days during which you can exchange or return it so long as you don't mar it up. This is not a bad deal and quality at Gibson is still on the upswing. The finish on yours will no doubt exceed that on mine.

This is one of the best "classical" electric guitars in existence, by the firm that made them famous - and perhaps the best remaining example of a thinline hollowbody still in production. If you can afford a guitar in this price range it would be a shame not to consider it.

A word on "tone" is in order. This guitar is a semi-hollowbody. The result is that with the Varitone circuit set on 1 (flat) it has an exceedingly sweet tone to it. This is one guitar you can amp clean and listen to without it growing annoying to the ears quite unlike most solid body electrics. It is not an acoustic sound, but just has that sense of sweetness. This is why many jazz players use other instruments in this line for playing clean. You really do owe it to yourself to hear a guitar like this played clean with nothing in the signal path. If you love good guitar tone you're in for a real treat.