Guitar Review: Gibson Nighthawk

Believe it or not, here's another blog post written while flying across the Atlantic. This is sort of a follow-up to an entry from a year ago, where I said I don't have any Gibson guitars, yet think of myself as a "Gibson guy".

So, I finally did get myself a Gibson guitar. And yet the Nighthawk is very much like a Fender in a lot of respects. Nevertheless, perhaps this one guitar sums up why I was previously so torn.

I had seen this specific guitar at the home of an acquaintance, and it haunted me for months, though I hadn't even played or heard it. Early this year I had seen advertising for the new Epiphone Nighthawk, which further stirred my interest.

The first thing that caught my eye about these guitars was the diagonally placed humbucker pickup, and the total of three different types of pickups in the guitar. The second was the body shape... to my eye having pretty lines like a Les Paul, but somehow not quite right.

Anyway, a couple of months back I finally got my hands on one of the new Epiphone Nighthawk guitars at Long & McQuade music in Vancouver, and I just about bought it on the spot. I also handled one of the new 2011 Gibson Nighthawks as well, though it didn't have the 3-pickup configuration. The initial impression of these guitars was that they're significantly lighter than a Les Paul but otherwise feel rather similar. I really liked the feel of the neck, with a smooth low action and comfortable medium-profile neck cross-section.

In the end I was given the opportunity to buy the genuine mid-90s Gibson model for a good price, and I jumped on it after trying the guitar for a few days. The 2011 Gibson model was very nice, but more money than I was willing to spend, and the model I tried didn't have the pickup configuration I wanted. The 2011 Epiphone model was very nice, and a great price. Made in Indonesia, I didn't see any quality issues on the model I tried out, and would have been happy to purchase that guitar. But we have an Epiphone (Dot Studio) and I really wanted to own one Gibson.

The original Nighthawks were made by Gibson from 1993-1996, and were not considered a commercial success. I'll point out here that the same fate befell the now-iconic Les Paul and Flying V guitars at the beginning of the 1960s, only to be resurrected when Gibson realized how popular the used guitars had become. So also the Nighthawk, which was reborn (apparently significantly redesigned) as a Gibson model in 2009 and as an Epiphone this year.

Although the esthetic of this guitar is very Gibson, the guitar has a number of characteristics more commonly found on Fender guitars:

- the neck scale is 25 1/4" rather than the shorter scale common on Gibsons, which gives the strings more tension and a different feel

- the single-coil pickup, and coil-splitting tone pot (pull up on the tone knob to split the humbuckers into single-coil mode) offer up lots of chimy tones heard typically from Fender guitars (Stratocaster tones to my ears)

The 3-pickup model offers 9 different pickup combinations using the 5-position selector and the coil-splitting pot. The pickups are a mini-humbucker in the neck position, single coil in the middle, and a humbucker in the bridge position. I've been playing the guitar through a Fender Blues Jr III amp, and am amazed at the range of tones I get out of the guitar. The single coil and split coil modes give great glassy and chimy tones that I've never heard from this amp with my humbucker guitars. I really like the tone of the neck mini-humbucker as well, as it seems somehow different (in a nice way) as well.

Overall, the tone spectrum is so varied that I can see how this would become the go-to guitar for any occasion. And it's light enough to remain comfortable. So maybe now I can really claim I'm a Gibson guy.