I love my blueshawk

Tiltsta

Tiltsta

Show me your frittatas
Staff member
I know these were never a popular item, but tonight I restrung my Gibson blueshawk, and I got a chance to remember how much I love this little guitar. Light as a feather and dripping with p90 blues and rock tone. It has a neato Variatone circuit that can produce a lot of cool sounds, and the damn thing is silent as can be, as the pickup circuit includes a dummy coil so the pickups are actually humbuckers with one slugless coil. Scale is fender length, with a string through poplar body and a mahogany neck. Bridge is fixed. Diamond neck inlays and headstock inlay give it a bit more flash. It is hollow, and that seems to add some fatness to the sound, although it is more like sound chambers and not an es335 kind of fat/full. Anyway, I bought it new in the late 90's and I still love playing it. I thought I'd put up a few pics after the new strings just to share. I know, gold hardware and all that and an ugly decal on the body...doesn't matter to me.

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I've plinked on a few of them at the local GC that played pretty well :)

If only they were regular Gibson scale...
 
Jbird said:
I've plinked on a few of them at the local GC that played pretty well :)

If only they were regular Gibson scale...
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Yeah, if it was a 24.75", I would have snatched another up by now. Maybe I will, tune it to Eb and throw a capo on the first fret :grin:
 
yabba said:
I can dig it. What's under that cover in the middle back?
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There is another pickup mounted in there with no magnets. It functions as a dummy coil which has the coil of wire to create a humbucker effect with the single coil p90's on the front of the guitar, but no magnet to pickup the string vibrations or create sound. The overall effect is a silent p90 single coil.
 
Google tells me they made a epiphone version of this guitar not too long ago. I guess I missed that.

I'd like to try a Gibson scale version of this guitar. I'm used to the fender scale version I have, but it might be fun to explore something different. I guess the scale and the contraction is why this guitar feels so different from the other Gibson I own. It doesn't feel like a fender either, or really like any other guitar I have ever played.
 
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I have the Epi version. It took a while to grow on me for some reason. wanted to like it , but something was just off. Maybe it is the not Gibson, Not Fender feel it has.

Lately I started using as couch guitar. Semi-hollow makes it loud enough to get quiet acoustic sound that doesn't bother others at night.

Now beginning to get used to it I guess. Even took it last night to gig as a back up. Used it in last set after using strat type guitar all night. Needed to reset amp settings some, but overall it was great for the more classic rock songs we did in that set. Would not have been good for the country , tele style songs earlier, I don't think tho.
 
I had a poster of one of those on my wall when I was a kid. I played a few nice ones, but I haven't found one I've NEEDED to own.
 
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