The SG design was given a thinner, more contoured body than the Les Paul, and a double cutaway.^[3] Not only did this make the upper frets more accessible, it was further eased by moving the neck joint outwards by three frets. The simpler body construction significantly reduced production costs, and the SG, with its slender neck profile and small heel where it joined the body, was advertised as having the “fastest neck in the world”.

Although the new guitar was popular, Les Paul strongly disliked it.^[4] Problems with the strength of the body and neck made Paul dissatisfied with the new guitar. At the same time, Paul was going through a public divorce from wife and vocalist partner Mary Ford, and his popularity was dwindling as music tastes had changed in the early 1960s. Paul asked lifelong friend and former President of Gibson Ted McCarty to withhold his $1 royalty per guitar, and Gibson mutually agreed to end the contract.^[5] Gibson also honored Les Paul’s request to remove his name from the guitar.

In the early-to-mid 1960s Gibson’s parent corporation, Chicago Musical Instruments, revived the Kalamazoo brand name for a short time. Later models of the KG-1 and KG-2 featured a body style similar to the Gibson SG, effectively creating a budget-line model until the brand was dropped in the late 1960s. Gibson currently makes lower-cost, internationally sourced versions of the SG at their subsidiary Epiphone.