The NIGHTHAWK STANDARD (model DSNS) was discontinued by GIBSON in 1999. This guitar had a single cutaway mahogany body, with a multi-ply bound, quarter inch figured maple top, the cutaway is more pointy than a Les Paul. The Nighthawk Standard had a bound mahogany neck and rosewood fingerboard with pearl parallelogram inlays. The color options were fireburst, translucent amber, and vintage sunburst.

It had humbucker pickups, the bridge one was slanted like a strat or telecaster bridge pickup, perhaps for this reason had it less gain than other Gibson models and had a bright, sharp tone similar to a strat or tele. It also had a five position strat-style pickup selector switch. Being a 2 pickup version it only had 5 tonal varieties. The Nighthawk had a push/pull tone knob. While the tone knob is pushed down, humbuckers work as usual, when pulled up, the humbuckers are split into single coils sounding more like Fender guitars.

The guitar had scale length of 25 1/2", typical for Fenders but unusual for Gibson guitars which usually feature a 24 3/4" scale length.

Photo courtesy of Gibson.