Gibson Nighthawk Electric Guitars

Gibson Nighthawk Electric Guitars were produced from 1993 to 1998 and were quite unique as they had many properties more specific to Fender guitars than to Gibson ones. Having some resemblance to the classic Gibson Less Paul model, they had a mahogany body and a maple top. Gibson Nighthawk electric guitars were produced as three regular models and two special editions.

The Nighthawk Custom had a single-cut body similar to the one of the Les Paul model, ebony fingerboard, and had three colour options: fireburst, amber, and antique natural. It was equipped with mini humbucking pickup at the neck position and a slanted humbucking pickup at the middle with an option to have an extra NSX single-coil pickup at the middle as well. The option of having an extra single-coin pickup was common for all regular models of Gibson Nighthawk electric guitars.

The Nighthawk Standard had split-parallelogram inlays, rosewood fingerboard, and the colour options were fireburst, amber, and sunburst.

The Nighthawk Special was a budget version and had the same components as other two regular models, but had simple dot inlays and didn't have a holly crest headstock decoration. The choice of colours included sunburst, cherry, and ebony.

Two special editions of Gibson Nighthawk electric guitars were the Landmark Series, which had different combination of humbucking pickups, and the Hawk, which was another budget model of Nighthawk and was even simpler than the Nighthawk.

For whatever reasons, Gibson Nighthawk electric guitars had much more in common with Fender guitars than with traditional Gibson ones. They sounded more Fender, had components and parts of hardware used on Fender guitars, and even design in some details was similar to Fender's Stratocaster and Telecaster. The Nighthawk was not the first model of Gibson guitar that was "Fender-like". In 1970s, there was another model, the Marauder, which was very similar to Fender as well. Unfortunately, Gibson Nighthawk electric guitars had the same ill fate as the Marauder. Being just moderately popular, the whole line was discontinued in 1998.

Despite of initial low success, there're some guitarists that prefer Gibson Nighthawk electric guitars as you can play both sound styles common for Gibson and Fender guitars; moreover, the Nighthawk is much lighter than its cuisine Les Paul.

You can see current listings for Gibson Nighthawk Electric Guitars here: