I prefer way and by far the SG.Becuase I am a lead guitarist.A lead guitarist is climbing up to the high registers of the guitar and with an LP you have got to drop your thumb under the neck to get there.You lose a lot of control that way.Remember now that an LP was designed to be a "jazz" guitar,big on the low end.Just look at Jeff Beck on the cover of "blow by blow" and how his thumb is dropped underneath the neck to get to the high end.Same for Mick Taylor.And the thing for jazz guys was always to have your thumb in the middle of the neck,so cooly placed.Yet the truth is you want your thumb up over the top anchoring you left hand so you can wrist your vibrato.How you do that is up to you,B.B. King does it with his index finger and Mick Taylor does it with his third finger,or you can get a vibrato arm.If you do this I suggest to get a stratocaster,set it up with three springs and go to town.Gibson's do not like vibrato arms,you will play hell with the g-string.The lyre vibrato tailpiece is better than the bigsby,prettier too,but you see that most of the real guys either take off the arm or fold it back,they do not even use it.It makes you go out of tune.Every time you use it you have to pick up the g-string and snap it back into place.You want on a gibson to have the stop tailpiece or the violin tuner.The Gibson-USA is the ultimate "Blues" guitar.Big fat dripping humbucking pickups,a modification I must reccomend on an SG is a capcitor on the volume control,they were made to be played full out and when you back off the volume you lose tone control.The standard LP is top notch for a rhythm guitar player.But you see the double cutaway is the thing for lead players.I don't know who came up with the redesign for it at Gibson "the Mary Ford type" it was called.Les Paul himself would not endorse it,he walked out on it.So they called it the SG-solid guitar.It was much lighter but still with a big fat neck.It lost nothing in terms of tone.Yet it is so bratty,made to be played full up on volume.And sounds just as good as a 335/355 or a firebird.It has more tone than a firebird and it is so light.Watch one being used here