Today I discovered that the Gibson Vibrola SUCKS!

[toomanycats]

This afternoon I had the opportunity to spend about an hour playing a 2019 Gibson SGS3 exactly like the one pictured below.

I think the guitar is visually stunning. The neck is a dream, the three classic 57 pickups are incredibly toneful, and the fit and finish were perfect.

However, that Sideways Vibrola tremolo is friggin' useless. Okay, maybe I'm being too harsh. After all, it does look cool, and aesthetics do matter; and its mass does act as a counter weight in preventing the neck dive that SGs are notorious for. But considered as a functional vibrato that's intended to allow the user to alter pitch and then (presumably) return to and maintain proper tuning . . . what a complete piece of crap! Who invented this over complicated thing anyways?

The even crazier thing is that I'm seriously thinking about buying this guitar. I would just fold that sucker up, never touch it, and probably even block it off just for good measure.

[archetype]

That's pretty much the majority opinion. As a functional vibrato tailpiece it's worse than any other kind, at least the ones I've played with.

Fortunately, they mostly used the Maestro-style Gibson Vibrola which was primitive, but functional. It was basically a curved leaf spring and the long version had a long, fancy plate that did absolutely nothing.

[nomadh]

Dont think I ever heard much about them but some how I just assumed they didnt work very well.

For some reason

[toomanycats]

Dont think I ever heard much about them but some how I just assumed they didnt work very well.

For some reason

The shop owner took that big gold cover off the Vibrola to show me the inner workings. My understanding is that it has had something of an update from the original 60s version, though in principal it is the same design. There's a bearing in there that is really expensive to replace, as in hundreds of dollars (or so he said).

When the Vibrola lever is pushed to activate it the bridge rocks back and forth. The whole set up is rickety and unstable. So long as you don't go anywhere near the Vibrola, the guitar sounds really good and stays in tune.

[mickey]

What took you so long?

[OMB]

57's are nice but if it ain't a bigsby...