Gordon Smith Guitars Society

Gordon Smith Guitars are handmade to custom order in Manchester England
and are the longest running guitar maker in continuous production in the UK.
Gordon Smith Guitars make handbuilt guitars that feature their hand wound
pickups and were the first to offer humbuckers with a coil tap as standard on a production guitar and also feature a brass nut.
Gordon Smith Guitars are said to be the English Gibson but do make Fender inspired guitars.
Incredibly Gordon Smith Guitars are at the same price point as far east
imported copies and have an honest quality directed at the working musician.
John Smith the owner says that they don't make furniture and likens the guitars to the indestructable zippo lighter.
The guitars a favourite with punk bands are still played today by Pete Shelley of The Buzzcocks.

I have played a couple of them and they are fine guitars .They have been going years .My own choice would be the LP Junior type model .A quality job .

Hello,

I have a GS 2 that I bought new back in the early 1980s. The specs are similar to a SG (mahogany neck with rosewood fingerboard, slim mahogany body (formes like a Les Paul with symetrical double cutaways), wraparound tailpiece, 2 humbuckers with coil split.
It was my main guitar for many years. Nowadays I play Telecasters most of the time, but the Gordon-Smith is still used occasionally.

Greetings, Klaus

I have a lefty SG2 that I bought last year. It's made from Brazilian cedar. Apparently they no longer use mahogany. Slim neck, plays very well. Nice and resonant body. But I hated the HBs. Too much compressed clickiness to the attack. Drove me nuts. I've now put in Tonerider Rebel 90s (HB sized single coils) and it sounds great. I gig with it a lot.

The NZ agent is now out of business, but at the time it was retailing for NZ$2,200. Due to a stuff up I got it for $1,500, which is half the cost of a Gibson SG standard here. The agent had gone ahead and ordered the guitar from the factory thinking I was going to buy it, but I was only considering it. I did not actually place an order and he forgot to cancel it, so he offered it to me sight unseen at cost price of $1,500.

My GS1.. Bought s/h about 8 yrs ago for £125 .. . Was already pretty beat up then..

Still going strong


http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk62/hiitsbsj/7-3.jpg

That Guitar has certainly got attitude.Be prepared to be very afraid.
The quintessential English punk guitar.Nice one geezer!

I've got a GS1.5 12 string, bought new about 12 years ago costing about £450. Way better than the Yamaha offering which was about the only other 12 on the market at that time (apart from of course the Rikky 360 which was beyond my budget) The GS survived several years of gigging but now unfortunately resides under the bed most of the time as SWMBO will only put up with a small section of the collection cluttering up the living room...

Here's my GS 1.5.

Bought it secondhand maybe 6 or 7 years ago now (paid about £220, I think), and someone had replaced the wraparound with a Hipshot Baby Grand. It looked a bit fancy pants on the GS, and didn't do anything for the guitar's sustain. So, finally, the other week I got around to replacing the Hipshot with a heavy duty intonable wrap around, and fitted a cheap-n-cheerful unlicensed Bigsby unit. All that extra mass has really helped the GS come alive. I've been playing it non-stop ever since.

It's got a little bit of a Gretsch Corvette look about it now...which I'm liking a lot!

I can't claim to be a member, but I'd like to. I heard about the Gordon Smith guitars from the band Leatherface, who won't play anything else. The one time I got to try one out (a G2) it was a great axe, but the neck was quite thin, and not for me. I always figured that if I finally took the plunge, I'd see if they could stick a larger neck on mine. I don't know how flexible they are about that sort of thing.

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