Customer Reviews

Gibson Songwriter Deluxe Studio EC Acoustic-Electric Guitar

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I love my guitar, but I want to tell you I hated it the day I brought it home. The action was terrible and it did not sound very good- quite harsh. I bought it having faith in my luthier. I took it from the store to the luthier. He adjusted the action, lowered it, and did some miscellaneous things I don't recall now, to correct it. I want to say that given Gibsons reputation and boasting how they are so great, you would expect it to come from their master craftsman already sounding good and set up better than it did especially at the price of $2400. Next I have found that the nut on this guitar is a chincy plastic piece. I had the nut replaced with a real bone nut (altered the extra wide spacing -reduced by 2mm from E to e). It baffles me why Gibson didn't just put a bone nut on in the factory. The guitar doesn't have nearly that much eye candy, as others do but it is okay. In the end its a great quality instrument and if you take the time to get it properly set up by a good luthier, and in my opinion reduce the nut with the bone and reduce the string spacing, lower the action, you can't be wrong. It plays easily, as much like an electric as is possible for an acoustic. Bar chords are quite a bit easier now, as opposed to the day I tried it in the store. I never have issues keeping it in tune. The tuning machines work very nicely. Now that I am breaking it in, it is sounding better and I anticipate that this is a guitar I will never want to part with.

***UPDATE 7 MONTHS LATER***
The guitar broke in with the bone nut- it has tone so sweet I decided to install a bone saddle also. I have not had the saddle installed because I had to get the neck adjusted and ran in to a problem today. The center seam below the saddle has become unglued and allowed a tiny split in the wood between the halves. Regardless of how Gibson handles this (I have almost zero hope they will fix it at no cost to me) I am seriously disappointed. Not because of this repair which should cost about $100. It is because I love the guitar and had such high hopes of how amazing it will be in 40 years from now- and I feel that the dream is gone and the value of a blemished or repaired guitar of this caliber is seriously reduced just like a car that has been wrecked and had the frame pulled back out with new fenders and a hood -we avoid those. I paid $2400 and for this to happen in 7 months (yes I use a sound hold humidifier and keep it stored in the case always when not in use- in addition, I own a 15 year old Charvel Jackson Acoustic guitar that lives in the same room and it is in pristine shape...in case anyone questioned if it was an issue of abuse)really disappoints me. The Guitar Center feels that I should have paid them for the insurance plan and said they can not help me really. I feel that I deserve to have a flawless instrument because I paid their premium price tag for a premium product. I am not asking for anything for free- I gave them my cash in good faith. In manufacturing, they have product which never makes it to retail due to quality issues, and it surely would not *hurt* Gibson to swap this out with new, but who is to say if they should. I am not asking for more than I paid for, or deserve. There really is no perfect solution in my eyes, as I have paid to have it set up, and broken in and already have strong attachment to the guitar. That said, a new replacement would be ideal from a consumer standpoint, but I lose the money invested... so, it feels like a broken arm... you get over it but you are never compensated. I understand that things happen in life, and while I do not know exactly what Gibson will do for me just yet, I assume I am having my well reputed local luthier fix it. He said it will sound just fine, and the repair is internal mostly; only a small blemish on the outside. The reason I think this way is that I was told Gibson would make me pay to ship it back and forth- which would cost more than the $100 repair if I did it locally. (It frightens me to think of having it shipped any place, how much abuse it would receive) I will update this review again soon and let everyone know how it works out. I really love this guitar and its tone. The cutaway is the way to go. I still think the hummingbird is miles ahead cosmetically, but besides the very ordinary plain cosmetics, my guitar is something I am sure I will cherish for a long time, provided that it does not fall apart and this un-glueing problem does not persist.
UPDATE July 2011--
The Guitar Center stepped up and offered to ship the guitar for me, and got Gibson to agree to fix it. They said it would take over 3 months however as warranty work gets less attention than the guitars being sold because a new guitar will bring them $$$$ and mine will bring them ... nothing but a job to do. With the promise of a 3 plus month wait, I decided that I would have the local luthier fix it so that I could have it back within two weeks. I did not get around to updating this review for a while so what happened next was I got the guitar back and then say 3 months afterwards, my action on the high frets has risen and I will need it adjusted. Not being a luthier I can not tell you if the neck bent or what caused this. I have 3 hygrometers now, 2 where I store the guitar and 1 where I play it. NO HUMIDITY ISSUES HERE. It is still very very much playable. I was told by the luthier that the more expensive instruments tend to be "finicky" and move a bit. Well, I sure hope I can get this thing set and stop making trips to the luthier at some point in the future and just enjoy playing the guitar. All the trouble is worth it though, because the sound makes it worth it. I can not say I would do a thing differently if I could have done it over again, other than maybe having the strings removed and looking inside with a flash light and mirror to inspect the guitar internals before buying it. What else could you do? Things happen... I didn't get a t-shirt from Gibson saying "my seriously expensive guitar was a lemon and all I got was this shirt"... LOL I am hoping for the best and still recommend the guitar, but I can give one piece of advice to take away from my experience: Buy the Guitar Center Unconditional warranty, but be careful because when they offer it, they throw you a high price like $350.00 and when you say no, they say how about $250.00. I thought this was less than 100% ethical and this is exactly why I declined the warranty. To each his own, I am sure some people would enjoy the negotiation of the warranty price. It's just not my thing.

I bought my guitar about three years ago. I still love the low action, crisp sound and the ease in which it plays. It is the guitar I turn to when I want to play.