Electric Guitar Review

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of Gibson’s Firebird (based purely on aesthetics mind you,) but I rather like this one for its Frankenstein-ish good looks.

The Firebird Studio is Gibson’s Guitar Of The Week #24, and it looks like a beauty, but unfortunately, as has happened on a few earlier occasions, the specs on Gibson’s product page for this instrument don’t seem to match up very well with the photo. Anyway, I’ll do my best to fill in the gaps.

At first glance the guitar appears to be a suped-up version of the standard Firebird Studio, sporting the same traditional “reverse-body” design, with a mahogany neck & body––however, the inclusion of Flame Maple “wings” has to make you wonder whether the instrument truly features the set-neck design of the Studio, or the classic neck-through-body design of the more expensive Firebird V.

In fact, if you take a closer look you’ll find that this guitar looks a lot more like a Firebird V than a Firebird Studio… the photo clearly shows what appears to be a pair of mini-humbuckers––probably high-output, and most certainly not the full-size 490R & 498T listed in the specs––not to mention trapezoid inlays (as opposed to dots,) a fancy Firebird headstock, and what are more than likely a set of inline tuners.

Taking all that into consideration, it seems a bit futile to post the rest of Gibson’s official specs, so I think I’ll stop right here. Anyway, I’ll keep you informed if and when more accurate info comes my way.

UPDATE: It looks like I was right––Gibson has updated their product page for this instrument, and is now calling it the Firebird V… you can still see the words “Firebird Studio” in the url though. ;)