Gordon Smith Gypsy 2 SS Special

A left-handed guitar made to order in 2002 at Gordon-Smith's production center near Manchester, UK. This is a Semi-Solid 'Special' because only the top half of the body is semi-solid with the f-hole, the bottom half being like any other solid-bodied Gypsy II. 22 frets with mahogany body and book-matched tiger-stripe top. Two volumes, two tones, 3-way pickup selector. Volume controls tap the pickups to increase tonal range. Two humbucker pickups also hand-made by Gordon-Smith. Passive electronics. Mahogany slab body with satin finish on sides and back over a lovely tobacco-orange stain. Booked-matched tiger-strip maple flat top, same colour as body but with high gloss finish. Binding effect produced by not staining the edge of the maple top. Double-cutaway body similar to Gibson Les paul Special. Gordon-Smith's own one-piece bridge with individual height-adjustable string saddles, not through-body. Gordon-Smith's own tuners, non-locking. Gordon-Smith's own one-piece medium chubby maple neck finished on high gloss, no skunk stripe (the truss rod is fitted in a hole drilled through the length of the neck, not a groove in the back). Les Paul-style headstock with top as body, Les Paul-style scale. The major Gordon-Smith dealer I ordered the guitar through, located not very far from the factory, replaced the stock strap buttons for me with Schaller Straplocks at no additional cost.

I play this instrument through a Marshall Valvestate 20 Model 8020 and a Peavey Delta Blues (15" speaker). The only effect I may use from time to time is a Marshall Bluesbreaker. In humbucking mode there is no noise. In tapped mode there's the noise you'd expect from single-coil pickups. The tone range is absolutetly terrific, from les Paul to Tele via Strat. The tone control for either pickup can be bypassed altogether by fully rotating its knob.

Here we begin run into some difficulties. This guitar was a mail-order purchase, and it eventually arrived from the dealer with a medium-height action. When I tried to lower the action I found that it wouldn't go down very much at all without resulting in buzz. The pickups were adjusted fine and the book matched top was fairly good. The fret edges had not been filed at all well and were rough, or even jagged, in places. When playing the guitar I found that the 6th string was slipping off the neck quite a lot and on examination it proved to be way closer to the edge of the neck than the 1st string was on its side (all the strings were offset slightly towards the 6th string side). I sent the guitar back to the dealer, who returned it after about a week with a graphite nut in place of the stock brass nut (they were unable to install a new brass nut for some reason). The new nut was set to push the srings over a bit, but it didn't do anything towards fixing the actual cause of the actual cause of the problem. It wasn't until about a year later, when I'd become more knowledgable about guitars, that I realised that the real problem was that either the bridge is fracitionally off to one side or the neck isn't quite true with the centreline of the body. To me this is a major manufacturing defect, as even the cheapest mass-produced guitars I've looked at don't suffer from this kind of thing. To compensate me for the cost of sending the guitar back to them, the dealer gave the guitar a 'free' Plek setup, but this didn't do much for lowering the action, which really requires some neck adjustment. As far as the finish is concerend, although great to look at, it did contained several minor blemishes. After a couple of months the ouput jack broke and Gordon-Smith sent me a replacement, which is still in operation. However, I found that the nut holding it into the body kept coming loose, so to fix this I installed a thin Plectros pickup (the ones with the holes) as a washer. I also found the the pickup selector stopped working properly after a few months - changing from one pickup to another would result in no sound at all. A squirt of switch cleaning lubricant seems to have fixed this.

I've played live with this guitar many times, and, apart from the problem with the pickup selector, it's given no trouble. As time goes by the odd ding is appearing in the finish, but that's what you'd expect with a working instrument. Strap buttons are solid and I can depend on the instrument and I would (do) use it without a backup.

The dealer tried to fix the action/string alignment problems, but without real success. I don't think they understood what the actual problem was. Gordon-Smith replaced the faulty output jack promptly. Had I known when I got the guitar what I know now I wouldn't have accepted the it in the first place.

One year warranty, although my own feeling is that an obvious manufacturing defect should be put right whenever it comes to light.

In recent months I've had cause to contact Grodon-Smith about a possible new order, but I'm sorry to say that several or my messages went unanswered and some promised return calls never happened. I also got conflicting information about possible configurations that might be available.

I've been playing for over 30 years and I own five other guitars. I love the sound of the Gypsy II SSS and its overall appearance, and so does everyone else. I would definitely buy another Gordon-Smith, but not by mail order, I'm afraid, which is a shame as I'd miss on those little personal touches you get only when something is built to your spec.