Gibson Kirk Hammett “Greeny”
Don't stop at the appearance. There's more here than questionable looks
I must confess, that when I first saw this guitar on a hook, I was unimpressed. For $3999 CAD MAP (originally $4299) the boring finish and jaundiced colour was hardly inspiring. Word is that they haven’t sold well, so I wanted to understand why. With the help of Shane and Carl from The Arts Music Store, I was able to obtain one for review. The first had a bit more sustain, but weighed well over ten pounds, and the second was still good, once I set the action to suit me, and had a more pronounced flame and weighed in at only nine pounds. I was willing to give up some sustain in exchange for less weight. That’s a personal decision but one of the reasons why when buying a higher end guitar that I like to check the weight of the different in stock versions.
Gibson Les Paul Kirk Hammett “Greeny”
A very long name, so henceforth, I shall refer to this guitar as Greeny. The idea is that this is an accurate reproduction of the Les Paul guitar played by Peter Green when he was in Fleetwood Mac, and then sold to Gary Moore who played it as a solo artist and while a member of Thin Lizzy and then most recently sold to Kirk Hammett of Metallica for a price rumoured to be over one million dollars. I know that some folks really yearn for “signature” guitars. Ok for them, but to me that’s just a waste of money because the guitar is immediately more expensive to pay the “name” fee to the signature artist. I don’t look at guitars as investments, I buy guitars because they feel and sound great. To each his or her own.
The other thing to know upfront is that the original Greeny was modded a lot over its life, so while Gibson continues to use its common bullshit bingo buzzwords of authentic and iconic, the real Greeny is a player’s guitar, not a closet Queen. What makes the guitar distinctive is that the pickups are out of phase with each other and with the pickup switch in the middle position you get a rather cool out of phase sound, that can be manipulated by altering the value of the volume pots.
Out of Phase?
Out of phase pickups are not unique. Gibson’s stereo versions of their ES series had the pickups out of phase by design because a stereo guitar is meant to feed two different amps and if in phase, weird things happen. The pole pieces on the neck pickup are on the bridge side rather than the neck side which has an effect on the neck pickup magnetic field placement, although this difference is more subtle than some have said. If you want that sound, and the Epiphone version of this guitar does not suit, I can heartily recommend the PG Blues pickup set from Bare Knuckle Pickups. I have a set installed in PRS Custom 22 that I bought used about 25 years ago where the original owner replaced the factory set with a set of very dark PRS Dragon I pickups. I never cared for those, and Tim Mills from Bare Knuckle suggested the PG Blues set as it would give me sounds that I did not have in other guitars. He was absolutely right, so you can get the Greeny sound in any dual humbucker guitar with just a set of replacement pickups.
That being said, this guitar is built for that purpose.
Overview
This is a Les Paul guitar with a mahogany body and neck and a AAAA maple top. Sadly the top is sprayed with a sickly faded yellow and then further hurt by a satin lacquer that is not smooth to the touch. The neck is not a gloss back, thank goodness, but is the same slightly rough and sort of sticky satin. The neck shape is what Gibson calls 50’s vintage (of course they do) and I would say it is more a 59 or 60 carve than the baseball bat of a 57 or 58. So despite the unpleasing finish, it is incredibly comfortable, to me, for extended playing. The inlays are acrylic and are whitish, a huge improvement over the urine yellow ones in some other Les Pauls. The tuners are real Grovers and are smooth with a nice consistency. The nut is from Graph Tech and in my example, cut perfectly. In fact, except for the ugly finish, this is the first Gibson that I have picked up in many years where the setup was pretty much perfect right out of the case. The factory strings are the expected fence wire in 10 to 46 gauge, but a set of decent strings is not expensive when one considers the price of this guitar. You will note that the knobs are different for the bridge and neck pickups. This is cosmetic only and the way that the current real Greeny is equipped. While I dislike the look of the finish, the fit and quality is superb, astoundingly good for a Gibson product. The pickups are called Greenybuckers but what that means when it’s at home is not documented. They sound terrific especially wound full up into an amp that is happy being overdriven. They are also nicely bright and warm into a Fender clean amp, so very versatile.
There are more than a couple of folks who think that I am a Gibson hater. This is not true. I own a lot of Gibson guitars. My frustration is with the operational leadership, not with the good people who work in the factories. So let me be crystal clear. Both Greenys that I tried are far and away the BEST Gibson guitars that I have seen from anywhere, including the Custom Shop, in over five years. They are so good, if I were a suspicious person, I’d say that the builders ignored the time slots allocated for each task and just put the time in to make them great.
Specifications
I have copied and pasted screenshots for the specs directly from the Gibson site.
Playability
This is the greatest case of “don’t judge a book by its cover” that I have encountered in years. The look of the instrument is bland and boring. The first touch of the satin nitro finish is off-putting. So plug into an amp and turn the lights off and prepare to be blown away. I was. Completely. This guitar plays wonderfully, as good as any of my professionally set up Gibsons. The sound of the pickups with the switch in the middle is definitely different with a squonk that you only get from out of phase humbuckers that are not overwound. In the bridge and neck position, they do clean very well and when wound up into the right amp are glorious sounding.
Tuning is excellent and those Grovers are superb. They are traditional tuners, so non-locking and constant ratio but I can see no reason not to keep them as is.
The guitar does include a pickguard but it is not mounted to the guitar and while that is not my favourite Les Paul look, I would not feel compelled to install it if I owned this guitar. The fretwork is excellent, again, the best on a factory Gibson that I have encountered in years. This is not a Custom Shop guitar and I am astounded at how good it is right out of the case. Perhaps the store experts had a go at it before I got it, but from a customer perspective, I don’t care because it is so darn good on first picking it up.
The strap buttons are larger and have better retention than the “vintage” (translated “lousy”) standard strap buttons on Gibsons. If the loony tunes would not lose their shit about the change, I would advise Gibson to go with these on every guitar. They are large enough to hold a strap without a lock washer and small enough that you don’t have to do surgery on a high end proper leather strap. I refer specifically to the leather straps from Walker and Williams of Oxnard California.
After choosing the lighter option for my long term review, I am quite happy. I think that the heavier version has a slightly greater sustain and was certainly set up more to my liking. So this one took a bit of tweaking of the bridge height and bridge pickup height to be more suited to what I like, but once done, it is wonderful.
As this was an evaluation unit, I did not do any of the things that I would do on my own guitar. I would have taken a 3000 grit Shinex buffing pad to the back of the neck, using a neutral soap and water wetting to take that feel away and smooth it out. If it were my guitar, I would be doing that. And of course, I would be changing the strings. I expect shit strings from both Gibson and Fender. They see strings only as cost, not value and it shows and feels to be true. Because I prefer the feel and playability of lighter strings, I would go with a set of 8.5s or even 8s on this guitar. A lighter string, allows for a lighter touch, and there is no scientific evidence to support the assumption that heavy strings sound better. So for me, light strings are all win.
My first play test was through the DSM & Humboldt Simplier X analog amp box into a pair of Headrush 108 FRFR speakers. It sounds great and that middle position where the pickups are out of phase sounds terrific. For my louder play test, I then moved to a PRS HDRX 20 head into a PRS 2 x 12 Stealth cabinet. It sounds great there too, but due to the larger diameter speakers and the real tube amplifier, I had to roll back the bass volume a bit on the head. Once I had the amp setup for the guitar, it was spectacular. As that head is quite basic, I added a PRS Mary Cries compressor which emulates a Teletronix LA-2A optical compressor with limited compression settings and a Universal Audio DelVerb for plate reverb and subtle tape delay. Awesome. Finally in that environment I turned on the oddly named PRS Horsemeat configured for a clean boost and liked that as well, particularly in the out of phase setup as it created a bit more openness and returned some volume. It is very evident that when in the out of phase position that there is a drop in output level.
For the recorded examples, I used my 100 watt Marshall 2550 head into my UA OX. The OX is connected to my Apollo via SPDIF fibre optic cable. My OX is set to my Rig 1 which is a Marshall 4x12 with 25w Greenbacks, miked with a Neumann U67 and a Royer 121. The room mics are turned off and the only master effect is a Plate Reverb shown in the second image below. It’s a model of an EMT-140 analog plate, my favourite reverb. I only recorded an example with the selector in the middle position to get the sound of the out of phase humbuckers. Otherwise, the guitar sounds like any other Les Paul in the bridge and neck positions. Because I also wanted a more “real” application instead of just dry sound, I did add a bus with an Eventide H3000 Harmonizer engaged using the Doubler preset.
Example Sounds
I know my limitations as a player very well. I’ve never claimed to be a great player, not even a good one, so while my samples may not enthuse you, I’m only trying to offer you a sense of the sound, not to impress anyone with my lack of ability.
I kept the recording simple for a couple of reasons. I wanted to offer a practical sense of how the guitar would sound like a regular person might play it, and honestly because I was annoyed that someone decided that it was a good idea to leave a snarky comment about my playing and lack of ability. I’m old and was raised to believe that if you cannot be nice, be quiet, especially when your personal opinion is irrelevant.
Grumpiness aside, I love the sound of this guitar through that amp, and honestly, it was good through every amp I tried. Even my very picky and snobby Tone King Gremlin sounded great and that amp, like the Mikey of old, generally hates everything.
Wrapping Up
I’m honestly blown away by this guitar. When I first saw it in the (to me) ugly matte finish, I was disinclined to even ask to play it. Apparently this model is not a big seller, and I wonder if that is due to the finish, or that Peter Green was best known for this guitar in the nineteen sixties - quite some time ago, or that Gibson completely ignores that Gary Moore owned and played it longer than anyone, or that Metallica / Kirk Hammett fans don’t think about Les Pauls. Whatever the reason, it’s a real shame because the guitar is a complete gem to play and sounds superb. While some might think the out of phase thing is a gimmick, I found myself with the pickup selector in the middle position most of the time because I like the sound so much. I would encourage anyone who likes the feel of a real Gibson Les Paul but wants something different to give one a try. Focus on the centre switch position and my recommendation would be to play though an amp that does a solid clean tone but that can be pushed into natural overdrive to get a sense of the flexibility of this guitar. Think late fifties Fender Tweed or a nice Marshall JTM 45 like Mr. Clapton is known for from the Beano record.
Do I recommend it? I do with some caution. The two versions that I tried were excellent players and were pretty well set up from the factory, although I had to do some minor adjustments on the second one that had the nicer top. While I love the sound of the out of phase humbuckers, $4,000 is a lot to pay for that one thing, especially when you could get a full Jimmy Page wiring loom from Gunstreet Wiring in the US or Six String Supplies in the UK which would give one a LOT more sound choices. Even after paying a pro to do the install, you’d still be well ahead if you already owned a Les Paul that you really liked. And despite a lot of effort on my part, the finish just bugs me. It feels a bit sticky to me, not smooth like a proper gloss or even as flat as a true satin matte. I don’t like matte finishes and while I could live with the look of this one, the tactile sense is just, in the words of a small person, icky. So I’m going to pass. However, I do have other guitars that do the out of phase thing so I am going to have a position on this already.
I have to thank the Arts Music Store again and as always. When I returned the evaluation instrument to them, they had two of the Greeny models in stock. I would encourage ANYONE interested to make a PERSONAL visit to the store. You may find that a personal visit could result in a better deal than one will ever find advertised online. And as far as I am concerned, why would anyone pay that kind of money for any guitar that they could not try before buying?
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