Univox Les Paul copy (aka Gimme)
I bought the Univox used for $135 in the summer of 1976. The guitar resembled a Les Paul in shape only, employing a bolt on neck rather than set neck. The neck profile was narrow and flat compared to a real Les Paul. The body was all maple, with a blonde flame maple top. The interesting thing was that when I removed the pickups I could see a hollow area between the arched top and the maple body. It was almost as if the body was constructed flat like a Les Paul special and then the arched top was glued on top of that. The main part of the body was made of several (5 or 6?) pieces of maple.
After some initial tuning problems I swapped the tuning machines for grovers (which required reaming the headstock holes out a bit), and everything was great after that. To this day the Univox was one of the most stable guitars I’ve owned. It stayed in tune extremely well.
At one point years later I decided I needed a change and swapped out the pickups for Dimarzios – a PAF in the neck position, and a Super Distortion in the bridge. I almost immediately swapped them back out. The Univox pickups were significantly hotter and better sounding I thought. Later I put the Super Distortion back in, but I wasn’t using the guitar much at that point. I held on to the PAF and recently used it in a project guitar where it sounds amazingly sweet.
My Peavey/Univox “rig” stood in against countless Strat/Twin combinations, and although I love the Strat/Twin sound, I was never disappointed in my sound either. I could generate much more gain and overdrive the amp due to the hotter pickups and pre-amp setup, whereas a Twin needs to be at ear-bleed levels before it overdrives.
Tags: Guitar, Les Paul, Univox