First, a disclaimer – I don’t like Earl Slick. I don’t like his playing, I don’t like his cockiness (on stage,) and I don’t like his attitude in the GFS videos for his guitars and pickups – after taping about three videos, he’s obviously pretty bored and has an attitude of “well, here’s yet another video.” But my bias comes from the David Bowie “Let’s Dance” tour. I was hip to Stevie Ray Vaughan before he played on Let’s Dance, and I loved the Let’s Dance album like nobody’s business, and I was a SRV and Bowie fan. I got to go to the see the tour in Syracuse, and unfortunately instead of SRV playing guitar for Bowie (like Bowie wanted,) we got… Earl Slick. And Earl Slick was awful. He overplayed on everything. The crowd loved it. I thought he has terrible. The show, however, remains one of the best I’ve ever seen, despite his hack guitar playing, because the rest of the band and the man himself were stellar. Bowie had a huge personality. HUGE. I was in awe of him.
Maybe Earl just got carried away that night when he overplayed on every single fucking song. But boy did he suck. The only thing I can compare it to was seeing Vinnie Vincent play with KISS on the Creatures of the Night tour. I thought I’d be seeing Ace. Imagine my surprise to see Vinnie Vincent butcher every KISS guitar solo with his over the top “look at me” craptacular shitstorm of notes. And some people disrespect Ace. I do, sometimes, a little bit. But he’s Mozart compared to Vinnie. Ahem.
ANYWAY, when GFS came out with a line of Slick guitars, I thought “Oh hell no.” But my bias against Slick could never overcome my interest in guitars. Especially in the SL60, because it sort of looks like a Les Paul Junior with double cutaways and P90 pickups. And only one knob? That’s… that’s almost like something I would do. Brass saddles? I’ve always been a big fan. At $239 new, I had to at least read the specs and hear the demo. But YouTube demos are as pointless as arguments about the impact of finish on sound. You’re hearing the amp, pretty much. 80% of what you’re hearing is the amp. There’ve been times when I’ve actually thought about buying one of these SL60’s, but once I got my GLP with P90’s I lost interest. I already have a rock guitar with P90’s now… I don’t need 2. So I thought I’d never get a chance to play one of these.
I was wrong. Two weeks ago I walked into Guitar Center, waved to Al, and started looking over the used guitars section, and there it was. A GFS Slick SL60, with its shitty looking fake relic finish and dorky stumpy headstock. And wonderful P90’s. I had to try it. I imagined it would suck. I was wrong. First, it’s a little heavy. I expected something like a $99 Epiphone POS type weight. It was reassuringly heavy and solid. The wood appeared to be decent. The fake relic finish that “allowed the wood to breathe” was terrible. It doesn’t look like an old guitar. It looks like someone painted it to look like faded wood. And that dorky headstock is just awful looking. It’s stumpy. But the neck was thick and solid, the pickups sounded good, and the fretwork was… actually very, very good for a guitar in this price range. I’ve seen worse fretwork on a $500 Mexican Strat. I checked every note, and there was no buzz.
If I were going to buy a budget guitar with P90’s, I would seriously consider this one. It’s very good for the money. Ugly, yes, but that could be fixed. I am forced to admit, GFS and Earl Slick hit this one out of the park. It’s a better guitar than the money they’re charging, it plays and sounds very good, and I’m impressed what they pulled off for such a small amount of cash.
